What Facing History Means to Me

Taking the Facing History and Ourselves has changed me forever. It gave me great insight into what kind of person that I am morally. It showed me all of the horrors of the Holocaust. It also showed me the resilience of the Jewish people, to stay alive and fight back against the Nazi’s. They endured unimaginable conditions, torture, starvation, pain, and incredible sadness and loss in the form of death of family members and friends. They lost everything that they had and yet they kept going, trying to live another day. It truly inspired me to see the Jews rise up against the Nazis in several different films. Their bravery and resilience is something that I wish that someday I could reflect. In the movie about the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, I was horrified at the way that the Jews were being treated. Nazi’s randomly shooting people in the street, bodies on the ground, people starving to death so desperate for food that they would do anything. One man literally licked soup off the street. A Nazi officer dumped an elderly person in a wheelchair out the window to their death. It was horrible. When the Jews decided to rise up against the Nazis, I was so happy. It displays great bravery, because each of the Jews knew that they would probably die. Even so, they still decided to smuggle in weapons, and try to liberate the ghetto. It was also amazing to see how long they lasted in the ghetto. The Nazis were unable to stop the uprising for much longer than they had expected, and the Jews killed a lot of Nazis. They were obviously no match for the German army, yet they fought effectively and did a lot of damage. Some of them even escaped and survived. This story really touched me because it showed the great bravery that the Jews carried, even though they had been dehumanized and humiliated by the Germans.

This course also gave me a lot of insight into the lives of individuals living in the camps and ghettos, Germans civilians, and Nazi officers. It showed me that the Holocaust was not black and white. Everyone had difficult decisions to make, and often these decisions made me step back and think, “What would I have done?” Usually in classes these types of decisions are easy to make, because it is easy to sit in a class room and say that the decisions that I would’ve made would be the perfect moral answer. This class showed me how difficult it really is to make decisions when it’s a choice between an immoral life and death. Though every film had these kinds of decisions, the film that really stuck with me is “The Gray Zone”. This film was about the Jews in the camps that helped to run the crematorium. These Jews would send the new arrivals into the gas chambers steal their belongings, clean up the gas chamber and the bodies after they were gassed, and burn the bodies in the crematorium. It also featured a Jewish doctor who performed experiments on Jews in the camps that were often times painful and cruel. These characters made these decisions because they wanted to survive, or in the doctor’s case, wanted his family to survive. It showed me that, in the face of life and death the choice that people choose is always going to be life. It showed how the Nazis were playing a messed up game of how far can we make the Jews go to survive. It made me realize that in a classroom situation decisions are easy to make, but in real life there are so many more factors that contribute, and many decisions that would seem immoral in a classroom are understandable when all the alternatives are taken into account. It showed me that I cannot be angry with the Jews who took on these dirty jobs because they were just trying to survive to see another day, and they were not happy doing the work that they were doing.

During this course I also conquered a fear of mine that I have been affected with all my life. I have been horribly squeamish my entire life, to the point where I would faint with the slightest glimpse of blood in a movie. I had even fainted during the safety video they show in science class. This class has helped me to overcome my fear. I was so proud of myself when I watched the opening scene of “Saving Private Ryan” without fainting, vomiting, or dying (a bit of an exaggeration on the dying part). One of the things that I was most afraid of when signing up for this course is that I wasn't sure if I could handle it. There were many times during the class that I felt sick to my stomach, utterly disgusted, and felt that I should leave the room. I am proud to say that I did not. I overcame my fear, which allowed me to truly learn and absorb the content. I find that Facing History is one of the most important classes that are offered at our school, because it uncovers something that people are uncomfortable talking about and truly diving into. Though the material is graphic and upsetting, it is crucial to learn because without knowledge another Holocaust cannot be prevented. I am therefore, extremely glad that I was able to take this course, and absorb it to the fullest without any trips to the nurses office. I can admit that I am one of softest people that I know, very emotionally involved in everything that I do and learn about. I cried during many of the movies, and often felt that it was too horrible to even watch. This fear is one that has been limiting me throughout my life, and though I am still very uncomfortable with blood, and gore, I know that if I can handle a course with the amount of blood and guts that there is, I can handle much more than I ever believed that I could.

This class helped to teach me that I am stronger than I ever imagined, and that I have to continue to be strong. I need to stand up for what I believe in, and not allow myself to become a bystander of something that I know is wrong. It has taught me that genocide can happen in civilized, cultured countries, if the citizens and the rest of the world allow it to. I also know that I will never stand by and let another holocaust occur. I will also never let anyone tell me that the holocaust did not happen, or wasn’t as bad as it is made out to be. After seeing the final video of the camp liberations, I will never forget the image of the piles of bodies, and the walking skeletons of the survivors, nor will I forget the sight of the horrible wounds they had inflicted on them by the Nazi soldiers. I am grateful that as a junior I had the opportunity and the privilege to take this course. I will never forget the lessons that I learned in it until the day that I die.