What global historical events compare with this story?
There are many sad and tragic historical events in our history. Some that turn out worse than others but are awful just the same. However there are three major historical events that stick out as horrible and awful tragedies. The Holocaust, Slavery, and what happened to the Native Americans after the Europeans invaded America. Even though one of those events may have had more survivors or more casualties than another one, a kill is still a kill, an invasion is still an invasion, and a innocent is still an innocent. There are many similarities and differences between the three of these historical events. However they still end up the same, a horrible event that happened in our history to innocent people who didn't want war. They all end up in death and war, and their is always a victor when there should just be peace.
Unlike the Native Americans, the Jews in Germany were being killed and tortured for who they were, not because they happened to be there. However, the killings and the invasions were just as bad. Both victims were shot on sight, put into camps or "reservations" to hold them prisoner. They were forced to change their religion, or their culture. They were all meant to be dead. The men, the woman, the children and the babies. They were all meant to die.
The Holocaust was a time when the "blond haired, blue eyed" Germans wanted all of the "brown haired, brown eyed" Jews to die by the command of their dictator Hitler. Anybody who followed the Jewish religion would die in the cruelest manor, just like anybody who was an Indian in America. The Germans and the Europeans had to mercy. They wanted control over their victims so they put them into places where they could maintain and watch over everything they did. The Jews were put into camps where they were given little food, put to work, and beaten. Indians were put into reservations where they had to live as the Europeans wanted them to; under their culture and way of life. Tribes and families got separated. Many never saw each other again. Both sets of innocent people never asked for punishment or war, but they both had to fight. They had to fight their attackers until they won or all of them died.
The Jews in Germany were being attacked for the religion they followed. The Germans never wanted anything from them like they did the Indians. The Europeans wanted all of the Indians land and wanted to discover gold. There were millions of Jews killed during the Holocaust, but unlike the Indians there were other countries that new what was going on in Germany and wanted it to stop. Few Jews escaped the camps without being killed but it was eventually enough to get word out. So the Jews and other countries fought the Germans, and eventually the Germans were defeated and the Jews were set free. The Indians fought to be free too, but they had to do it on their own and were eventually brought to extinction.
Slavery is another even in history that resembles the kind of treatment that the Native Americans received from the Europeans. Colored people in America were being discriminated against like the Jews in Germany and were treated horribly by white people. They became slaves to the whites and worked for them for free. Not only did they not get paid but they were controlled by the whites and if they didn't obey their masters they were punished severely or even killed. In this time, this type of cruelty towards colored people was just excepted. Like the slaves killing an Indian was just excepted to everyone in America and the people who couldn't except it couldn't do anything about it. Whites would treat the slaves in the worst manor and thought that all blacks were a waste of life, just as the Europeans treated and thought of the Native Americans. Slaves were separated from their families like the families and tribes of the Indians. Their culture and lives were taken away and they were forced to live and abide by what the white people said. The slaves and Native Americans treatment by their attackers was cruel and unbearable, but as much as they fought it, they couldn't defeat it by themselves.
Unlike the Indians, the whites didn't kill every black man they saw. They used them for free labor and a sort of entertainment while punishing them. They black population didn't dwindle down to nothing like the Native Americans. They were treated wrong and beaten, but they were freed before they could come close to extinction. Like the Jews, the blacks had another set of people start a war to free them. The north took on the south in a civil war to declare the freedom of black people.
There are many similarities between what happened to the Native Americans and other major events that happened in the world, however there are many differences too. What happened to the Native Americans never happened anywhere else. The Indians were wiped clean from their culture to their land to their population. Nothing and nobody was left standing. What is left now is growing less strong year after year compared to Jew and colored people, they are growing in culture and population as fast as any other religion or minority in the world. So even though there are many similarities between the tragedies of other historical events in the world compared to the Native Americans story, none can compare to the result and treatment of the Indians. Nothing can compare to total extinction.
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