World War II And The Holocaust: A Comparative Analysis

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Learning from history means to learn from the mistakes of the past. By analyzing what has happened and what went wrong, the same errors can be prevented from happening again. In all of history, World War II and the Holocaust hold some very valuable lessons. They teach of the importance of equality, of aiding others, by being aware of world activities, and of education. Well over half a century has passed since the end of the war, allowing a great amount of time for a nation to showcase how it has learned lessons from such an atrocity. Canada has shown that it has learned from its response to the “boat people” of Vietnam. Although there is room for improvement, Canada has demonstrated its ability to learn from mistakes through its change in…show more content…
The Great Depression was over and people were getting back on their feet; the unemployment rate dropped from an extremely high 23% during the Depression to a much lower rate of around 4.4% during the later fifties . The demand for more and more immigrants increased, and in 1967, a point system was introduced to allow the admittance of immigrants, based on their education, occupation, age, and language ability . This greatly decreased the amount of bias towards certain ethnic groups, and opened doors for many immigrants worldwide. The system is still in effect, decades later, demonstrating the great success it has received. Something that has also changed since the war is Canada’s refugee policy. Refugees are now also taken into the country on a case-by-case basis, each claim being appealed to Citizenship and Immigration Canada and then transferred to Refugee Board of Canada if deemed eligible . In situations like during the Vietnam War, the refugees are able to be taken in large numbers, like the “boat people. Between 1979 and 1980, nearly 50,000 Vietnamese refugees arrived, settling across Canada . The acceptance of this amount of people shows that Canada has indeed learned their lesson from World War 2 and the Holocaust. If the country had been anywhere near as willing to accept the Jews as it would be now, there is no saying as…show more content…
As more and more immigrants of different ethnic groups settled in the country, the prejudiced, racist attitudes of the Canadians have changed. These new immigrants were educated and skilled – valuable to the workforce – and as they arrived in larger and larger numbers, the prejudice continued to weaken. As later generations are raised in such multicultural communities, lingering hatred and prejudices will eventually disappear. However, after the events of September 11 2001, a hatred and paranoia towards Muslims grew, creating that separation that took years to lessen. Canada prides itself in its multiculturalism, but Muslim immigrants after 9/11 felt themselves being targeted, humiliated and discriminated against. It was found that 75% of new Muslim immigrants could not find jobs within their professions, and that even the spare cleaning or security guard job is kept away from them . A large reason why the Jews were allowed to be persecuted and denied entrance to Canada during the Holocaust is due to the population’s anti-Semitic views influencing the government’s decisions, and Muslims are facing a similar problem, with the attitudes of the rest of the population turned against them. The amount of immigrants and the diversity of them has helped change Canadians’ attitudes greatly, but there is still work to
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