What Facing History and Ourselves Meant To Me

Molly Hester’s Reflective Essay: What Facing History Meant to Me

            Looking back on the expectations I had going into this course, I never could truly imagine how this course would so deeply impact me. I remember on the second day of school coming into this class after the craziness of being a senior on the first day of school was over and my teacher Mr. Gallagher saying “My hope for the outcome of this course is that you will leave here a different person, then when you first came here.” Sitting there I could not help but think that he was a little bit unrealistic. I have taken many different history courses throughout my life, and none of them really affected me that much, this essay is to tell Mr. Gallagher that his hope he had for me became a reality. I am leaving this course deeply impacted by the many emotional discussions, readings and films that we watched throughout the course. I feel as though this course is one that I will remember forever, though every part of this course was important in some way. The three biggest parts that affected me would be our talks about bullying, the movie the Amen!, and finally the last film that we watched about all of the concentration camps produced by the United States military, along with the pictures taken at a real concentration camp those images, and the pain in the people’s eyes are something that will be forever imprinted in my brain.

            Talking about bullying and how bystanders are sometimes even worse than the person actually doing the bullying was a very moving discussion. We have all been bullied at one point in our lives, seen bullying, and maybe we have even been the bully at one point or another. I can say looking back now that I have been a part in all three of those groups. I was bullied, I once bullied a girl who was mean to me first because I thought the best way to stop her was to get even with her. I have seen bullying and just been a bystander, because I have thought well maybe they provoked the person, or if I try to help them out then they will just pick on me next. Looking back now after taking this course I have learned that it is NEVER okay to sit back and be a bystander. Far too many teenagers and kids have been killing themselves as a result of being constantly bullied. Through our talk in class I heard the pain in people’s voices whenever they talked about their experiences with bullying. Then Mr. Gallagher said something that I had never thought of before, “When you are a bully then you are no better than the Nazis.” This idea here really struck something inside of me. As he said this his voice was intense and emotional. He is a hundred percent right, when you bully someone you are ultimately putting people down, because they are less than you are, or because they are “different” these are the same mentalities that Hitler and the rest of the Nazi regime had, these are the same ideas that lead to the mass executions and imprisonments of innocent people. These ideas lead to Father and Sons Mothers, and daughters having to put their own family members into mass graves, or watch their bodies burst into flames at the crematorium. This idea of bullying people who are different or you consider to be below you is something that Hitler would have thought, and I know now that if I ever even considered bullying someone to “get even” like I did in the past all I would have to do to stop that awful reaction from coming out would be to think of the innocent families who were tortured, degraded and killed by the ultimate bully Adolf Hitler and I will never act on that impulse again. Another thing that Mr. Gallagher told us was “The bystander is just as bad as the bully.” This too struck a chord with me, because Mr. Gallagher went on to talk about how all of the citizens of Germany, and France and most of Eastern Europe who were of the Arian race would just sit there, watching the Jewish families get hauled off to concentration camps, being sent to their deaths and they did nothing. This is much like people today who see a kid being bullied, and may think to themselves that this is awful and unfair, but they never say anything to the bully. They let a person get bullied over and over again until the person can’t take it anymore and sometimes this results in tragedy, because many victims believe the only way to escape the wrath of their bully is to commit suicide. Our discussions about bullying and relating it back to the way the Nazis and people of Germany acted during the holocaust, was something that forever changed me, and made me make a promise to myself, that I will never be a bully, or a bystander ever again. If I see any bullying I will try my best to stop it, and if I cannot do it then I will bring it to someone who can fix it, because I never want to share any common ideas or act like the Nazis or anyone who helped them do their mass killings and I have learned to right this wrong doing of mine through the help of this course.

            Another part of this course that really impacted me was all of the movies that we watched, and I do have to say that they all taught me a lesson in some way, and that they all were very important, but one movie stood out more to me than the others. The movie Amen! really stood out to me, because it answered all of the questions I had such as, why didn’t people help out the Jewish people?, How could all of the Nazis be so heartless?, and finally the one that hurt me the most and changed me as a person was Why didn’t the Catholic Church help? I have been a devout Irish Catholic all of my life. I believe in the healing powers of God, and that everything happens for a reason, but after seeing all of the horrors of the Holocaust I began to question that. I began to wonder why if the Church knew what was happening why on earth they wouldn’t reach out to help. Whatever happened to “love thy neighbor as you love thyself”? This movie answered all of these questions for me. Through the movie I was heartbroken by SS officer Kurt Gerstein to try and stop the mass killings. Gerstein would plead with the church, and beg people to help out the Jewish people, and all they would say was “we need proof” or “They are not a member of our church.” When the Church would not help him he would think of ways to try and stall the killings, by saying he needed more chemicals to make the gas for the showers, or he would go out of town to plead to the church again bringing them proof, but they would still deny him this right. There was however one member of the church who came to his aid. Father Ricardo actually went to the camp and lived amongst the Jewish people, because he knew it was unfair that he should live and while all of them are suffering and dying. This movie showed me just how hard it truly was to get help for the Jewish people, even from the people of the Church who are supposed to care and love for everyone no matter what. This was a truly heartbreaking story that left me in shock for quite some time. I couldn’t understand at first why this would happen, and I have learned that sometimes you get a better understanding of things and a deeper emotional connection through film rather than reading text books every day. I feel as though this movie helped me to connect to the pain of the Jewish people, and the severe desperation that Gerstein the SS soldier felt, because he had to decide between doing his orders, and just living with the consequences, or going against the crowd, and risking not only his life but his family’s life in order to protect the innocent people being so wrongfully killed. This movie demonstrated the effects of just one bystander stepping out and making a difference in this world. Because just like Mr. Gallagher has always said “What may seem like a small change to you can be the biggest difference in the world for someone else. Through this movie I have learned to not be afraid to step out and speak my mind even if it goes against the crowd, because what you are saying may be what everyone else does not have to guts to say, and it could change a person’s world, or save their life. This part of the course may seem like you would not be able to relate to the past of Jewish people and SS soldiers, but you can think about it in terms of innocent being taken advantaged by the oppressive ignorant minds. This course helps me to learn to connect the past, and how we can learn from those mistakes to work towards a better future.

            In every course there are certain moments that stick out to you more than others, whether it be a certain book you read, a discussion you had or a movie you watched for me one of the final movies that we watched about the concentration camps produced by the United States army along with the first hand photographs taken by Nazi workers at the camp of the innocent Jewish men woman and children being separated and sent off to their deaths. The movie was one of the hardest things I think I ever had to watch. I was shocked by when the German citizens who lived near the concentration camps went over after the camps had been liberated from the Nazi control and the American soldiers came to show the German people the horrific acts that they had taken part in by just being a bystander. These people were so smug coming to the camps dressed in their best clothes, smiling and looking excited to see what their great leader Hitler had been doing to solve the problem of the Jewish people. Their faces immediately changed when they came to the camp and first off saw things like shrunken human heads used for art work, or a lamp shade made entirely out of human skin. These images were disturbing and made my stomach turn, just as you could see the German citizens’ faces changing from delight to horror with each passing moment at the camp. When they went into the barracks and saw the filthy conditions, or when they saw the crematorium where people were forced to put their family, friends, and neighbors bodies into the oven to burn into nothing but dirt and ash, the faces of the citizens when they saw the mass graves with bodies piled high like stacks of wood did not upset me. Because I felt that those people deserved to see all of the horror and evil things that they had taken part in just by being a bystander. I did not feel bad for them when they started crying, or when they felt sick from the smell of the bodies that were decomposing in the ground, because they deserved to see that sight, and smell that stench of the trouble, and horrific acts they have been helping in. This movie showed every part of the camp from the barracks to the showers down to the sick skeleton looking Jewish people who survived the unthinkable in this camp. This movie showed demonstrations of some of the terror, and torture tactics that seemed to be the most painful and unimaginable feelings ever. This movie has affected me, and made me think differently about if I ever hear a racial comment whether it be about a Jewish person, an Irish person, or an African American person that I will stand up, because letting one person say those hurtful things only opens the gate for others to say more hurtful and ignorant things like it, and could cause people to act on their feelings towards a group with violence, and I would have been just as bad as the German citizens sitting back and watching it, and that is NOT okay with me, not since I have seen through the eyes of a camera the pain that the Nazis caused. The photos we got to see from the firsthand account of the camp actually really upset me too, because these photos were taken by Nazis watching families get separated and deceiving them into believing they would get a shower or a glass of water when really the soldiers knew these people were walking off into a certain death by the gas chambers. These photos disgusted me, because all I could think of was that these photos were like a sick little scrap book of the Nazis pride in killing these innocent people. When I looked at these pictures I saw little boys no older than 8 holding hands as they walked towards their death as a final show of strength. I could see the fear in the eyes of all of the people when they started to get separated, or when they were deloused and tattooed their number. These photos are something that will be forever imprinted into my brain, and are images that I believe everyone should see. Through all the movies I saw the horrible events that happened in the camps, but those were just actors this movie and these pictures were actual people who lived through it, and that gave me a deeper connection to history then I could ever imagine possible in any other class.

            

     As you can see I have been clearly affected by this class. I could probably write a 100 pages about how intensely emotional, and moving this class was. I constantly tell people how important this class is to me and how I would definitely suggest this class to everyone here at WHS. I like to tell teachers and students that this course should be mandatory for all students at WHS, because this class has given me the strength to stand up and speak my mind, and maybe with these powerful concepts we could reduce the bullying, hatred, and racism that still exist even within the halls of WHS. This course has given me the chance to see that there are ways to learn through film and pictures rather than just the conventional textbook as well as the fact that what happens in your past really can affect you in the future even after many many long years. I guess if I could sum up what facing history and ourselves means to me in two sentences I would say, that facing history in ourselves means knowledge and emotions tied together into a package, and that with this new found knowledge and emotional connection that you can see the ignorance in the world and try to fix it. Facing history has taught me to be empowered and to really stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. I would like to take this final part of time to truly thank Mr. Gallagher, a terrific teacher who has shown through his passion of teaching an important part of history that I never would have been able to fully understand without his knowledge and resources. Thank you so much for this class, it is something that I will always remember and I will always, always try my best to stand up and teach others about the dangers of being a bystander, because these are lessons I will take with me throughout my life thanks to facing history. And that is what Facing History meant to me.