Introduction

         One of the first things you are asked in this course, is who are you? With this course you will learn about yourself and will be able to answer this question. You will also learn why people act the way they do and why people do what they do.   Many people say that this course is just watching movies about the Holocaust, but it is much more than that.  Yes, you will watch movies, but you will also, participate in group small group discussion, look at photos from the Holocaust and read about other decisions people have made.  In this course you will experience what it would have been like to go through these hard times and see how truly awful it was.  Through this course you will learn about civic agency and how to improve your own.  You will be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, who has been put in a difficult situation, and figure out what you would have done.  You will not only watch movies about the Holocaust, you will learn from them about the decisions made by both sides of it.  These all relate this to the idea of who people are and why they do what they do.

                Like I said earlier this course makes you think about who you are as a person. When asked this question I would say I am a good friend, a sister, and a daughter.  I am kind, friendly, outgoing, sensitive, loving and filled with laughter.  I am someone that goes with the flow.  I am not one that likes to make all the decisions, which can be a good and a bad thing.  I come from divorced parents and my mom has gotten remarried.  I have an older brother and two younger half-sisters.  I am 18 years old.  I am going to Endicott College next fall.  I am majoring in Hospitality and minoring in photography.  I played field hockey for three years and was the manager this year.  I just finished my tenth and hopefully not last year of dance.  I am also, a dance teacher for three to five year olds.  So, when asked who I am this is that is what I would say.

                There are many reasons I wanted to take this course.  There are the general reasons and the more specific ones.  I had Mr. Gallagher when I was a sophomore.  One day in class he told us all about the Facing History Course that he teaches.  He showed us some clips of what his students were watching in class.  I was interested from the start.  I have never been the biggest fan of history, but there has always been one topic that I have loved learning about, the Holocaust.  From then I had wanted to learn more about it.  The more generic reasons I wanted to take it are because I needed another elective for my senior schedule and I wanted one that didn’t seem to have a lot of work.  On another level I had heard that this course changed people and their lives.  I heard that this course changed the way people think and made decisions.  I thought this would be a perfect senior year class, and see if what all those people said was true.

Essay

I had heard that Facing History leaves a mark on people and can even make a difference or change their lives.  I strongly agree with that.  Not just because I learned all this new information, but because it taught me how to think.  This class showed me how hard life could be.  It showed me that there are people in this world that will do anything to make them superior.  The most important thing I learned was how to think about all these different situations and figure out what I would have done if I were put in one.  Through watching a movie or reading something then having a small group discussion I was able to put myself in these difficult situations.  We watched and talked about many films in this class.  They all made a big difference in my opinion on the subject of the Holocaust.  They also, really made me think about people and their decisions versus mine.  Some of these films were, The Milgram Experiment, Scrapbooks from Hell, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and The Pianist.   All these films have parts that stick out to me the most and really made me think.  These parts of the films, are what mean the most to me from this class.

This photo is from the Milgram Experiment.  This was one of earlier films we watched in this class.  This film showed us that someone can easily control another person.  In this case it was the experimenter convincing the teacher to keep asking the questions to the students, and keep increasing the voltage.  I found this to be very interesting.  Before I found out that it was all staged, I thought that I would not be able to go through with the testing.  All the noises and pain the student seemed to be in was too much for me.   I could not cause someone that much pain and hurt them like that.  This was very meaningful to me because the teachers who wanted to stop felt forced to keep going.  This showed me that people are very easily persuaded and will do as they are told in this kind of situation.  Thinking about it now in relation to the Holocaust, I can understand why people went with the flow and killed so many people, and why Jews went against their own people.  They felt forced to do what the higher power wanted.  I do not agree with those people that did this.  Anyone can stop something like the Milgram Experiment or the Holocaust or something smaller that they believe is wrong.

This photo is from the film Scrapbooks from Hell.  This film is very meaningful to me.  The picture above is of Nazis and women.  What strikes me the most about this photo and many others from this movie was that all the Nazis seemed to be so happy and having so much fun.  I can’t wrap my mind about how someone could be happy when killing thousands of people.  The other thing I find shocking about these photos is that they all seem like normal happy people, who are out having fun with friends.  However, they are not, they are all killers.  At first glance I would never have guessed these people would kill someone.  These photos make me question everyone’s judgment and decisions now because you never really know who someone is.  Looks can be deceiving.

 Both the photos above are from the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.  I found this film to be very moving and emotional.  If I had been in the Bruno’s position I don’t think I would have made the same decision as he did.  If I was an eight year old at this time, I think I  would have listened to my father and would have stayed by my house and not wondered off.  Even though he is a movie character I admire the choices he made.  Even though he just though he was going off to find his friends father.  I think the fact that he went into a camp and even into the gas chambers without knowing it is very brave.  This had one of the biggest impacts on me because it showed the Holocaust from a different point of view and really made me think.  This film really made me think about how this affected all kinds of people and all different families. 

The last film that really left an impression on me was The Pianist.  This photo is not actually from the movie, but it shows the struggle that Jewish and other kinds of families had to go through.  There were so many kinds of choices people had to make in order to live for as long as they could.  Other than seeing these struggles, there is one other major part of this movie that I will never forget.  This is when they are looking out of the window and looking at the other building and they see a Nazi rolling out an old man in a wheelchair, on to a balcony.  They then lifted him up and dropped him out of the balcony, many stories down to his death.  I find this to be extremely shocking and disturbing.  Again this made me question other people’s choices and my own.  I could not believe this actually happened. This was probably one of the worst things I saw in this class and I will never forget it.

            In conclusion, this class has changed me in many ways. One way it changed me was as a student.  I finally learned a lot about a topic that I always had wanted to learn about, the Holocaust.  On the other hand I learned that there are people out there that I will not agree and they will be able to create something awful, but I need to be able to stand up for what I believe in so that something as bad as the Holocaust never happens again.  This course taught me to question mine and other people decisions before acting upon them.  It taught me to put myself in someone else’s shoes first before making my final decisions.

Works Cited

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Google images. Online Image. 23 May 2012.

Families of the Holocaust. Google images. Online Image. 23 May 2012.

Friends through the Holocaust. Google images. Online Image. 23 May 2012.

The Milgram Experiment.   Google images. Online Image. 23 May 2012.

Spend a Holiday Weekend with Nazi Scrapbooks from Hell. Google images. Online Image. 23 May  2012.