The African Slave Trade
and the Holocaust are both very dark and depressing times. Although they were
drastically different they had some similarities as well. The Slave Trade began
in the 1500s and ended in the mid-1800s. During this time 12.5 million Africans
were transported from their home to the Americas. They were treated horribly
from the time they stepped a foot off their homeland to the time they died.
This horrible abuse lasted for generations and swiped out much of the west
coast of Africa. Even after the Slave Trade ended African Americans were still
treated as though they were trash. Up until the 1960s in the UNITED STATES,
African Americans were not regarded as equals.
A
similar thing happened to those of particularly Jewish descent, but many other
people such as gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, blacks, and resistors of any
belief or race. This terrible even is called the Holocaust. The Holocaust occurred
during World War II because Hitler was trying to “cleanse” the World in order
to create one superior race of blond haired blue eyed Caucasians. After WWII
ended only 1/3 of the world’s remaining Jews had survived. Jews were sent to
concentrations camps. Concentration camps were worse than any prison. Every
person there was practically starved, tortured, and treated as if they were
animals in a pound. In the camps there were gas chambers. The people were
tricked to think that they were getting showers, so they rejoiced with the idea
of cleaning their dirty bodies only to find out that they were getting murdered
with no possible escape.
Both
of these horrific events show that no matter how hard we try to do the right
thing we are always harming someone else. Hitler thought he was doing the right
thing. He thought that God wanted him to cleanse and take over the world. The
King of Portugal was only trying to make life easier for his colonies abroad.
We all know that these actions were not right, but they were thought to be. At
this very moment you may be doing something that you think is right that ends
up being the biggest regret of your life. It could be something as simple as
drinking at a high school party which caused you to not be able to play in your
State Championships. Or it could be something as detrimental as driving those
last couple miles home when you’re tired, crashing, and then feeling the weight
of being responsible for the death of a loved one.
Imagine
you are living in Frankfurt in 1934. Hitler has been chancellor for almost a
year now, and things are starting to change. The girls at school treat you
different now as if you were dirty even though you shower every night. Some of
the boys are joining school clubs which your two younger brothers are not
allowed to be a part of. Your papa was forced to shut down his shop for no
reason to your knowledge. Right now you are sitting in your room about to fall
asleep when you hear voices. Not the calm comforting voices of your ma and pa,
but men shouting. Suddenly your door is thrown open and you can see the silhouette
of men, soldiers, streaming through your door. One of them roughly grabs you,
drags you from the comfort of your bed out into the hall where you see your
house as you have never seen it before. The house that you mama usually keeps
so pristine is in a wreck with broken chairs and shattered frames lying around
the floor. You are dragged and are separated from your brothers and papa
leaving you with your ma. Your are pushed in the back of a car, and then herded
along with a bunch of other women and girls are packed into cattle cars. You
get inside, it’s dark and musty. For a while it’s quiet, and then you start to
hear cries break out throughout the train. You sit in there for days cramped
and uncomfortable with no food or water. Finally the train comes to a screeching
halt. Shortly afterwards guards open the doors and everyone is filed out. Right
in front of you is a tall barbed wire fence encompassing some buildings, with a
barren wasteland surrounding it. Everyone passes through the gates, and is then
escorted into a building where you are giving one pair of clothes that you’re forced
to change into and leave your old ones behind. At this point you are dehydrated
and starving but food has yet to come. You are shown your living quarters which
consists of one room with 10 bunks in it with a mattress of hay. You look
around and realize that there are more than 10 of you in the room, and everyone
is forced to double up and in some instances even triple. You and your ma are
sharing a cot together. Finally, you are fed porridge of some kind that looks inedible
but you’re growling stomach makes you eat it anyway. You are forced to work,
work very hard until your hands are raw, and your legs are trembling from
standing on them for too long. You gradually get used to this new way of life
and this way for weeks, months, and then you have finally reached your 5th
year of living in this pathetic excuse of a “camp”. Your mama begins to get
ill, and there is nothing you can do about it. As her condition worsens you
start to get nervous knowing what happens next if she does not get better. And
then one day it does happen. As you are walking back to the compound my ma is
grabbed and they force her into what are called the showers with a group of
women. You try to not break down since you know she is never coming out. After
your ma passes nothing is the same, you stop having the desire to live and just
want to give up. But somehow every day you make it through. At the end of your
10th year you see people on the horizon. They look as though they
are part of an army. The camp is in utter chaos, but all I can look at is the
men coming into the camp and feel an utter sense of relief knowing that you
will be able to come back home. The last thing you remember of that camp is a
soldier coming up to and reaching their hand down towards yours. Then it all
goes dark. The next time you wake up you are in a hospital with shining white
sterile walls, and a doctor tell you that it will be all right, that it is all
over.
Our
history is part of what makes us, us. Without it we would have nothing to learn
from. We would live in this world blinder than we already are if it were not
for our history. There is nothing we can do to change the past; however we do
decide our future. We can ensure that none of our society’s prior mistakes
becomes part of our reality.
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