Facing History and Myself
Looking Back From the End
I can’t even begin to describe the significance of the course know as Facing History and Ourselves. When I was signing up for it, I had no idea what the course entailed. After the first few days I had started to understand the purpose of the course. I did, however, know that I was nowhere near understanding what the course was trying to teach me, or the benefit of such teachings. We started by reading a short story called The Bear that Wasn’t. To me, the point of the story was to show how there will be people that tell you that you are something that you are not and you have to stick to your guns and believe in you own words. As the course went on for the first quarter, we had many more lessons in belief in oneself. We watch movies, such as The Freedom Writers, showing the same idea as that first story. After a while, we finally got into the unit that has taken us all the way up to the point where we have ended up. We began to learn about the Holocaust. The first movie that had a huge impact on me was named The Uprising. It was a movie about the Jewish rebellion in the Warsaw ghetto. As bad as this sounds, I almost enjoyed seeing Jews killing the Nazis. That movie made me feel proud because I am also Jewish and I was tired of seeing no such rebellion when the mass murders began to occur. As we got deeper into the topic, I began to see many things that would turn my stomach. One such scene was in The Pianist when Nazi soldiers threw a man in a wheelchair off the balcony because he could not stand up. That was the first, and definitely not the last, time that I actually got angry. It made me sick. I could not wrap my mind around the idea that people could do something like that to another person for no reason at all. We persevered and continued watching as the movies increased in violence, prejudice, and became increasingly depressing. It got to the point where I would walk into the room happy and walk out dragging my feet. The film that hit home the hardest was The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Calling that movie sad is a huge understatement. It was extremely difficult to watch and even more difficult to digest after completion. The movie was about a German boy who befriended a Jewish boy locked up in a concentration camp. At first the movie did not seem like anything overly-dramatic but it quickly took a turn. As the movie progressed I saw more and more injustice that the boys had to deal with. The final scene shook me to the point where I had to take a breather before my next period class and walk around. The end depicts the boys’ death and that seen is something that I will never be able to forget. The course was difficult to sit through, but I firmly believe that it was an extreme benefit for me. I would go so far as to say that this course should be a requirement. It would open the eyes of kids everywhere. No one could be indifferent if they saw the movies we have been shown this year. It would also help prevent anything like this from ever happening again because people would then consider their actions more carefully and act differently.
The benefit of the course was great. It allowed me to see what was actually happening. Up until this point I knew what was going on but I had no way to connect to it. This course changed that drastically. As a student, the benefit was studying how events shaped the Holocaust into the giant massacre that it became. I allowed me to see what had to happen and it allowed me to see the indifference of people and its effect. I would not trade that for anything. As a person, the benefit was much more profound. The course got me thinking about many topics that I would usually not even consider. I saw atrocities that will be seared into my mind the single greatest question is “Why”. In my mind there is absolutely no explanation for it. I cannot understand how one human can do such things to another, even if the other is dehumanized. I trust my eyes and if it looks human, talks human, and thinks human then it is a human, regardless of what my government wants to make me believe. I also began thinking about what I would have done. In the beginning of the year I would be saying that I would obviously stand up for this and now my resolve is even more solid. I believe I would fight this with everything I would muster. After great thought I decided to refuse the inaction that is plaguing people due to their indifference. “I WILL NOT BE A BYSTANDER” was what I keep on repeating over and over in my mind. Taking Facing History and Ourselves was one of the best decisions I have made this year. This course changed my perspective on many of my actions and ideas. To me, the course was as much about self-realization as it was about learning of the horrors committed during the Holocaust. Not a single person can watch the movies we have been shown and remain detached and apathetic. Everyone feels something, be it regret, sympathy, anger, or any other emotion, because we see people not much different from us be tortured in some of the worst ways imaginable. There were many times where the class was silent for a whole fifty minutes because there were no words to describe what was felt after a particular movie. The benefit of the course is centered around making people think about the topics of morality, ethics, and what it means to be human. Overall, the most beneficial aspect of the course is the questions that come up and change many people’s perspective on what is right and what is easy.
