Introduction

Introduction: What Facing History Means To Me

If you were to ask a person if they had seen Grey Zone, Amen, Uprising, or The Pianist they probably would have never heard of or seen the movie. If you asked a person what the words Concentration Camp, Nazis, or Sonderkommando meant to them they probably would be able to give a brief definition of these words that they got from a high school text where they learned about the horrific times of the Holocaust for only one week. If you were to say these same words to a student who has taken facing history in ourselves, then they would have a completely different point of view. Through the course of Facing History we as students have been given the amazing opportunity to really get an in depth look into the holocaust, and develop deep emotional connections to help us understand what the people in the camps were feeling like, the mental state of Germany and the rest of the world, the emotional conflicts many Jewish people as well as SS soldiers felt. It seems easy to just look at the holocaust and say things about how it was a mass killing, and say how all SS members are heartless killers, but through the movies we watched I learned that many soldiers did not want to do the things that they did, and some tried to help out the people. I saw the harmful effects of the bystander, and when people wonder why anyone didn’t try to save the Jews I now know the answer. Being a senior at WHS you would have expected me to know and understand all of these important terms, but I went into this course as the youngest girl in a big family of Irish Catholics who knew very little about such a huge event. This course was truly and eye opening course and throughout it I feel as though I have learned more about the holocausts in these couple of months then I have in my whole life.

     I always had wanted to take facing history ever since I got to the high school, I had heard about the truly moving events that you witness, how when you leave that class you are a better person than when you entered it. I was originally scheduled to take Physics during first period, which I knew was not the right path for me. I have always been a history fanatic, and was always interested in learning more about the Holocaust, finally getting a course where you are not just lectured or where you learn the information for the test. I was excited about the blogging and learning because you wanted to, not because you felt you needed to do well on a test. When my schedule opened up and I was offered this course I was thrilled. I went into the course expecting to learn about this important part of history, that seems to get glanced over in regular history classes, never did I imagine all the emotions, and reflections I felt about myself during this course. In this course I have learned more about the dangers of being a by stander as well as how whenever you bully you are being just as bad as a Nazi. Which I believe is an important lesson that teens today should learn, given the rise in teen bullying that leads to suicide in today’s society. I believe that this course is one that every high school student should take, because as the great philosopher George Santayana once said "Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it."