"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."-Buddha
The only way people on this earth are going to achieve happiness and peace is by learning how to love one another for their differences. Whether it be for their race, sex/sexual orientation, skin color, or religion; someday we are going to have to learn to accept what makes us different.
To me perfection is one of the most destructive ideas. In today's world it drives teenagers to the point of depression and in the 1930's it started Hitler's idea of purification. The word "Holocaust" is from the Greek words "holos" meaning whole and "kaustos" meaning burned. Put together this was used to describe a sacrificial offering of being burned at an altar. In the 1930's-40's the word "holocaust" was given a whole new meaning; the mass murder of 6 million Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals. To Hitler the Jewish were a threat to racial purity and the perfection of the German community. The first official concentration camp was opened at Dachau (near Munich, Germany) in March 1993. After Hitler and his followers created several more concentration camps and "killing fields". By July 1993 concentrations camps held over 27,000 people under "protective custody". Most of Hitler's supposed followers had no idea that he planned to mass murder the people in the concentration camps. As many as 12,000 Jews were killed a day. In the camps Jews were not given clean water, a proper place to dispose of waste, or nutrition. Sickness spread quickly among the people so many died before escorted to the gas chambers. Before Hitler committed suicide he had murdered over 6 million Jewish children, women and men. While learning about the Holocaust I felt many emotions, but the two I felt the most were fascination and disgust. I am fascinated because one man, insane or not, changed the world. Yes he did this in a negative way and murdered over 6 million people but he had this idea in his mind that he would purify the world and he made it his duty to Germany to see through with it. One man, with one crazy idea, changed the world because he thought it was the right thing to do. That leads me on to being horrified. While researching on the Holocaust I came across gruesome pictures of the gas chambers, bodies, and cruelty of the Nazi's. I scrolled through pages of photos and videos, trying to understand how one man could see the bodies of children he had killed and felt no remorse. I don't think anyone will completely comprehend the hatred Hitler felt towards the Jewish.
In today's society when we hear the word "slavery" we think back to the American Civil War, where one racially superior group owned and harassed another. However slavery takes on many forms, in many societies slaves are merely looked at as property. Some are used to maintain a stable military, for domestic labor, or concubines. Africa has had a long history with slavery; since the 7th century when Arab Muslim and European slave traders sent African slaves to Asia. A few hundred years later Europeans began to transport African slaves to Europe and the USA. Then fast forwarding another hundred years America was torn between slavery and equal rights. African people were discriminated against for their skin color, they were required to sit in the back of buses while the white privladged sat in the front, and forced to work on plantations for no pay. In both of these unfortunate circumstances they follow the same pattern; power and violence. It is hard for us to imagine to pain and suffering these people went though. Its even hard for me to believe that these events actually happened because of how brutal they are. But sadly they did, and our world can learn from past violence and work to make our world beautiful again.
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