Jill's Blog: January 2011

Facing history and ourselves is a course about becoming more in touch with ourselves and the past. Many of the things taught in the course are things that students have already heard of such as the Holocaust, the Jim Crowe Era, and yourself as a person. Though instead of skimming the surface of these topics, they are shown, specifically the Holocaust, in much deeper views so that the class can understand why these things were allowed to happen and how they can be prevented. I chose to take this course because of the raving reviews it had from its past students and because of the topics the course covers. I have always been extremely interested in the Holocaust and the Jim Crowe Era and of course finding out more about myself. Facing History is a class unlike many other classes that work on keeping your morals stimulated. I enjoyed the class thoroughly because it kept me thinking about the way I treat others and the way I’ve been treated. High school has been long and emotional for me because of being treated poorly and being honesty enough to admit it, treating others not so well. This class has had me thinking a lot about what high school and the other people here really mean to me which is actually a lot more than I thought they did. I’m not much of a talker in school, nor do I intend to be, but I have a much greater appreciation for the other people around me in school and I think the other kids in the course have found the same appreciation as me.

Facing History and Ourselves is a course about moral fiber and digging deeper into ourselves and things that have happened in the past that should have been stopped but were not. I learned a lot about things that I ignorantly thought I knew everything about and couldn’t be happier that I was proved wrong. The way the course worked is that the first part was about learning about ourselves, then the Jim Crowe Era, and the last but longest section on the Holocaust. The deepest part of the course showed the Holocaust in depth which is something I thought I already knew about. There were three facets of the class that were most important to me. The most important being the real life footage we watched of the death camps. Also, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was very touching to me, while the third facet of the class being the most important to me were lessons that I learned in class about how and why the holocaust started which I was vaguely familiar with and somewhat confused about. They gave me a look at multiple different views of the Holocaust while it happened; which is something I had never experienced before. The Facing History and Ourselves course taught me much about myself that I didn’t already know or even take the chance to think about, like how things like the holocaust are started and being one person making a difference can really change everything. I have a deeper respect for the people I spend my day with no matter how little I know them and I also have a deeper respect for myself knowing how much I can change by being the one to step away from main stream ideas. This helped me benefit as a person in many different ways.

Never before have I seen something as graphic as the footage that I saw in Facing History and Ourselves near the end of the course. To be completely honest it was somewhat traumatizing but that is also a good thing because I don’t ever want to forget the persecution that the innocent people went through during the holocaust. The footage showed different videos from camps across Germany and showed exactly what was going on inside them. The videos even showed demonstrations of how the people were beaten by SS officers and what they were beaten with. Watching one man cry of happiness in being rescued brought me to tears. The video was bitter sweet in the salvation of many people but also the horrors and sadness it brought me from showing the dead bodies and broken people. This movie was the most meaningful to me because it brought me the closest I will ever be to understanding exactly what happened to the Jewish people, even though it was the hardest to watch.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas had a mix of high and low points that grabbed my attention immediately. It was about the story of a family that moved nearer to a death camp because of a father who got a job as a high ranking officer. There is a little boy in the family who believes that the death camp is a farm and he is what they call a little “adventurer” so he goes to explore. During his exploration he finds another boy inside the camp in which he becomes friends with. Because of his age he doesn’t judge the boy for being Jewish because he still has a pure mind. Near the end of the movie everything takes a turn and both the boys end up being killed in the gas chambers because they are really too young to understand the dangers around them. This movie was very moving and meaningful to me because it showed the holocaust through the eyes of children which is the most innocent and pure angle it could be seen from. To see both of them die in the end hit me with the reality of how horrific the holocaust was and as much as I hated the ending I would never change the view it gave me on the horrors of the death camps.

One of the most important facets of the class to me was not one particular lesson but a continuing realization of how the holocaust started and ended. I thought I knew almost everything there was to know about the holocaust, but this was only because I wasn’t asking any questions I just figured I had learned everything there was to know. One thing I didn’t realize or even question was the fact that if I was in Germany at the time I would have gone right along with what everyone else was doing. I had one belief of being myself today in 2011 as liberal as always standing up for the right thing and the humanity of people. And though this may have been the case it would most likely not be, as difficult as it is to realize. I also didn’t realize that the death camps were shown to be nice places, I had the general idea that everyone knew but the Jews were hated so much that no one cared, which is far from true. There are many aspects to the holocaust that are not distinguished in regular history classes that teach about it, I am thankful for getting the chance to learn these things.

I’m concerned that my writing technique and style have held me back from showing my true feelings about the course, when realistically it has taught me so much about myself and others. I’ve never had such an emotional hour each day where I learned more about people and feelings than anything else. I think that this hour each day kept me and the rest of the class thinking all the time about the way we treat others and the way we are treated. I am so thankful for everything I got to feel and learn in the class, and though I was not one for outgoing participation, I think maybe not participating helped me learn more and take in what was going on around me better. I am eternally grateful for my teacher and the rest of the class for sharing themselves with me.

Jill's Blog

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Introduction

What Facing History Meant to Me

Works Cited