Apartheid and Nelson Mandela

Apartheid was a South African policy of complete legal separation of the races, including the banning of all social contacts between blacks and whites.

Nelson Mandela was born on 18 July 1918, in Transkei, South Africa. He is known as the leader of the African National Congress and for his lifelong struggle against apartheid, which was instituted in South Africa in 1948. The African National Congress was declared a terrorist organization, so Mandela was arrested in 1962 and imprisoned for life on terrorist charges, but in 1990 South African president F.W. de Klerk freed him. His release marked the beginning of the end of Apartheid.

Today, thanks to the self-sacrifice of Nelson Mandela, apartheid has been outlawed. Everyone in South Africa now has an equal opportunity at home and at work to live comfortable. Nelson Mandela is one the world's true freedom fighters, and his life and person triumphs are remembered long after the world has forgotten the evils of Apartheid. Mandela was awarded the Novel Peace Prize and in 1994 he was elected president of South Africa.

African Independence

After World War II, people of Africa were unwilling to return to colonial domination. And so, following the great global conflict, they, too, won their independence from foreign rule and went to work building new nations. They began to express their growing sense of pride in traditional Africa. Africans formed a movement to celebrate African culture, heritage, and values, it was called the Negritude movement. European nations employed two basic styles of government in Africa called direct and indirect. Colonies under indirect rule experienced an easier way to independence. So for colonies under direct rule to gain independence was more difficult. Some colonies even had to fight wars for freedom.

Later in 1947, there was a new leader called Kwame Nkrumah who worked to liberate the Gold Coast African colony. He was often imprisoned by the British government, but in 1957 his efforts were successful, he gained the Gold Coast colony's independence. Then he became the president of this colony and he made new schools, new roads, and expanded health facilities.

The Cuban Missile Crisis.

In July 1962, Khrushchev secretly began to build 42 missile sites in Cuba. In October, an American spy plane discovered the sites. President John Kennedy was informed of the missile installations. Kennedy immediately organized a group of his twelve most important advisers to handle the crisis. After seven days of guarded and intense debate, Kennedy concluded to impose a naval quarantine around Cuba. He wished to prevent the arrival of more Soviet offensive weapons on the island.

On October 22, Kennedy announced the discovery of the missile installations to the public and also announced a naval blockade of Cuba to prevent the Soviets from installing more missiles. He proclaimed that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union and demanded that the Soviets remove all of their offensive weapons from Cuba. Castro Protested his country's being used as a pawn in the Cold War. But Castro was deeply involved. People around the world feared nuclear war. Fortunately Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in return for a U.S. promise not to invade Cuba. The resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis left Castro completely dependent on Soviet support.

NATO and The Warsaw Pact

In April 4, 1949, ten western European nations joined with the United Sates and Canada to form a defensive military alliance. It was called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The major reason for the formation of NATO was that the countries involved wanted a mutual defense alliance so that if one of them were attacked all of the other countries in NATO would come to their aide.

The Soviet Union saw the NATO as a threat and formed it's own alliance in 1955. It was called the Warsaw Pact, and included the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albany. The Soviet Union dominated the alliance. In 1961, the East Germans built a wall to separate East and West Berlin. Members of the Warsaw Pact pledged to defend each other if one or more of the members were attacked.

Film Lesson: "The Right Stuff"

In the Movie the Right Stuff the United Sates and Russia were competing to know who had the best technological advantages, to know it Russia sent their satellite, it made the United States angry. The United States wanted to send a man into the space, but it was too risky, what they did was sent a chimpanzee into space. Two days later Russia sent a man into space. Two days later Russia sent a man into the space. Although they seemed to be winning the race, at the end the United States won the space race.

The scene that will help me remember this event in the Cold War is when the US were training the chimpanzees to be able to use the spaceships and also when the chimpanzee came back from space and everyone was happy, because they had accomplished their goal.

Film Lesson: "Schindler's List"

I consider the "Schindler's list" as one of the most powerful movies of all time. At the beginning of the movie Schindler did not see how the Jews worked hard for him, his main objective was money. He didn't even care about their living conditions, of how the Jews were treated in the concentration camps. The treatment that the Jews received was so inhumane. All the scenes of the movie were so powerful to me, how the workers were jammed in small carriages without water, made them sick or others even died in their trip.

One of the scenes, which I consider most powerful, was the brutal ways the Jews were killed, losing loved ones or loved ones being separated. I was shocked when little kids were running trying to escape from the Nazis. The Nazis had no heart; I don't understand how they could kill millions of innocent people without feeling any compassion for them.

I think what will really stay in my mind was the end of the movie when Schindler was moved by how the Jews submitted themselves for hard labor. Somehow he felt some kind of guilt. Schindler’s had had some changes of mind, because of his pained expression as he saw Jews running and getting shot by the Nazis. So he saved the lives of over one thousand Jews. If it would not being for him, I think all the Jews would have died.

Film Lesson: "Night and Fog"

The film "Night and Fog" was about the Nazi concentration camps. It shows how the Jews people were killed. When I was seeing the movie I felt that "Night and Fog" was a perfect title for it. "Night" because it was the darkest period in human history, and "Fog" because it showed us how the rest of the world was blinded to the abject horror of the concentration camps. The imagery of this short documentary was so powerful and devastating, that i couldn't believe of all the harm that the Nazis caused the Jews, only because Hitler hated them just because he thought they were an inferior race and blamed them for Germany's problems.

I think that the Hollywood version was more effectively because in it is shows everything detail by detail how the Jews were tortured before they were killed, and also it shows how the Nazis enjoyed seeing the Jews suffered, but they didn't have any compassion for them.