"We must bear witness to the dead and the living," said Elie Wiesel based on his personal experiences during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel and many other Jews suffered during the Holocaust, during Hitler's extermination of their kind. Hitler introduced the extermination of a group of people in 1944, also known as “genocide”. The genocide in particular was first classified in 1944, but it was certainly not the last. Genocide erupted in Guatemala in 1981. Political and social inequalities led to the 1981 Guatemalan genocide, leaving the native population annihilated and the country in need of social and economic restoration. Guatemala is mainly made up of mountains in Central America which has suffered from many disparities. It was once a great home of the Mayan civilization and still is to a lesser extent, which thrived until the 10th century AD. When Spanish explorers conquered this area in the 16th century, this influenced the Mayans to become slaves in their own homeland. Due to the fact that many conquistadors perceived the Maya as "infidels" who needed to be converted and appeased by force, ignoring the achievements of their civilization (Keen). The first contact between the Maya and European explorers occurred in the early 16th century, when a Spanish ship sailing from Panama to Santo Domingo was shipwrecked on the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in 1511 ("Spanish conquest of Guatemala için özet bilgi.. "). The Mayans were clearly seen as the inferior superiority. In 2014, the Mayans still represent the disadvantaged majority of Guatemala's population. Social inequalities in Guatemala were one of the main factors contributing to the genocide. It all started when Guatemala's Mayan population was deprived of... half the paper... and the country needed economic and social reform. Political and social inequalities towards one's government were the main reason why this particular genocide was committed. Due to political and social inequalities, a couple of years after the genocide Guatemala had to reform itself from all the damage done physically and emotionally. One of the reforms included the “Guatemala: Memory of Silence” policy. Not paying attention to this human rights issue could in fact cause further genocide because many people may not know the very disturbing social and economic consequences of crimes against groups of people or large populations. As Elie Wiesel said, the truth must be known and told to prevent something like this from happening again, considering how tragic the Holocaust and the Guatemalan genocide were. In any case, this should not happen again.