Introduction

           Welcome to my blog! My name is Sarah Hart and I am a senior at Westborough High School. This year I chose to take a half-year elective class called Facing History and Ourselves that is taught by Mr. Gallagher. The course focuses on educating students not only about genocides throughout history but the lead-up to them and the cycle that must happen before genocide takes place. Most of the class was dedicated to studying the Holocaust but learned about other genocides too such as the Armenian genocide. We also spent a lot of class time talking about both individual and group identity and the role we as individuals can play in recognizing and doing something about the lead-up to something like genocide. In addition to these things we talked about our own lives and how are actions, no-matter how small, can have a large impact on other people. We learnt about these things through watching many videos based on true events, reading articles, and reading first-hand accounts of the Holocaust and the lead-up to it. There are many reasons I decided to take this course. When I had Mr. Gallagher for U.S. History in ninth grade I loved him. He has definitely been one of my favorite teachers throughout high school. Throughout the year Mr. Gallagher had mentioned his Facing History class a few times and it sounded really interesting. While I didn’t know many of the details about the course I knew that I wanted to look into it more when I had space in my schedule to take electives. When it came time to pick my senior year classes last Spring I read through the course description of the class and it sounded like a class I would enjoy. While I had learned about the Holocaust before I didn’t have a full understanding of what happened and seeing as I have always been interested in history, the fact that we would be reading and watching first-hand sources really caught my attention. I am so glad that I took this course. I went into it thinking that I would just be learning more about the Holocaust but I am finishing it with so much more than that! The course gives you a better understanding of not only yourself but of history and the people around you as well.

What Facing History and Ourselves Meant to Me

Walking into my Facing History and Ourselves class at the start of this school year I expected to learn about the Holocaust. While the course definitely met that expectation, I am coming out of it with a greater knowledge of myself as both a student and a person. Through full class discussions, readings, speakers, and films based on true events I have learned many skills that I know I will carry with me throughout the rest of my education and life.             Although many of our full class discussions took place earlier on in the semester, two of them really stick out in my mind. The discussion we had about identity after reading a story about a bear and the silent group discussions we had in the library. Reading the short story about the bear who was told so often that he was something he wasn’t really got me thinking about both group and individual identity. The fact that the bear seemed to start believing what people were telling him helped me to realize that if somebody is put down enough and told they are wrong, they will eventually take that to be true, no matter how confident they were in the beginning. Along with this, I also realized that even a seemingly off handed comment can seriously affect people. When I began to think about my own identity I realized that where I had once been confident that I knew who I was, I was questioning whether I had let other people effect my identity. I began to understand that while keeping your individual identity is extremely important many people find themselves also identifying with different groups. For example while I am always learning more about my individual identity, I identify with many larger groups such as the area I used to live in and the sport I participate in. the silent group discussions in the library were a completely new concept for me. Where I had always been used to verbal discussions, we now had to write our thoughts and then write a response to somebody else’s. This new technique really forced me to think about my own thoughts before somebody else’s and make sure my comments got my ideas across without being rude or too wordy. During this discussion I also learned how to really think about what other people are saying and how to really try and understand their point of view before making a comment.             Often times in class we would read articles or information sheets about the films we were watching and the two that I distinctly remember are the article we read along with a movie about an SS officer who tried to expose what the Nazi’s were doing and the article The Secrets of Sobibor that showed interviews with survivors of the Sobibor death camp and the scientists who have been working on uncovering what happened there. When we saw a movie about an SS officer who risked his life to show people the reality of what the Nazi’s were doing we also read an excerpt from a biography about him. This really gave me a new insight as to what some insiders of the Nazi party thought of what was happening. Until we read about him we really hadn’t heard of any Nazi members who were against what was going on. It gave us an intimate view as to what he was thinking and it was very interesting because a Nazi trying to expose what their party was doing is the last thing people expect to hear about. The Secrets of Sobibor was very interesting to read because it not only included facts about what happened and new information that scientists have been finding about the camp, it also showed interviews with survivors of the camp. I am always interested by first hand accounts of what happened but it was saddening to hear what they went through. While what they had to say about their time was horrific, it really brought us closer to understanding what people went through.

            While we didn’t have the chance to listen to many speakers this semester, we did have to opportunity to hear from a man who survived the Rwandan genocide. It was amazing to hear his story and the courage he displayed was amazing. The Holocaust was long enough ago now that many of the survivors are no longer alive so hearing somebody tell an eyewitness account of it is nearly impossible. Hearing from this man about what happened to him and his family was amazing because it happened so recently that we could relate to many of the things he was saying about his childhood. I think that hearing the story from somebody who is relatively close to us in terms of age really drove home what he was saying and the severity of what happened.

           

            We spent a lot of classes watching films and documentaries about the Holocaust. Many of them including The Grey Zone, Island on Bird Street, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Nazis: A Warning from History, Uprising!, and a series of films taken at the concentration camps, really stick out in my mind. Many of them were accounts of true events and were heart-wrenching. Personally, the films that involved children such as The Grey Zone, Island on

Bird Street

, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas were especially difficult to see. The movies did a very good job of showing the innocence of the children who were affected by what happened. They had done nothing to deserve what happened to them but the courage they showed throughout was awe-inspiring. While the documentary The Nazis: A Warning from History didn’t grab my attention quite like the others did, it gave me a lot of new information that I previously didn’t know about both the lead-up to the Holocaust and many of the decisions made during it. Knowing the background gave me a lot more understanding of how the Holocaust happened and why many people did nothing to stop it. I still think that it was an awful event but I now know why it went on for so long before anybody stopped it. The movies that told about the many Jewish people who tried to fight back were inspiring to me. I hadn’t known that there was an uprising in the Warsaw ghetto until we watched Uprising!, and I had no idea about what some of the Jewish workers managed to do in Auschwitz until we saw The Grey Zone.    

            I have loved being in this class because it had not only taught me about a major event in our history but it has also helped me to grow as both a student and a person. Some of the discussion techniques we learned and the way we gathered information not through textbooks but by first-hand accounts, films, and readings will definitely affect the way I try to access information in the future. I have also learned a lot about my own identity and beliefs and I know that this new knowledge will stay with me throughout my life.

Works Cited

"Barracks." BBC News. Web. 16 Jan 2011. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/europe_auschwitz/html/4.stm>.

"Child Survivors of Auschwitz." The Holocaust. Web. 16 Jan 2011. <http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/warsaw_uprising.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/holocaust.html&usg=__XDMIC_STfpFCS1NSqA6hSfrIC5Y=&h=400&w=600&sz=35&hl=en&start=1&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=PSSKJPnSivrFKM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwarsaw%2Buprising%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=l7c0TZu3O8KC8gbMp6jBCA>.

"Map of Nazi Camp System." Concentration Camps in Europe. Web. 16 Jan 2011. <http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/MAPS/map009.HTM>.

"Resistence." The Holocaust. Web. 16 Jan 2011. <http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/warsaw_uprising.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/holocaust.html&usg=__XDMIC_STfpFCS1NSqA6hSfrIC5Y=&h=400&w=600&sz=35&hl=en&start=1&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=PSSKJPnSivrFKM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwarsaw%2Buprising%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=l7c0TZu3O8KC8gbMp6jBCA>.

“Washing and Shaving Newly Arrived Prisoners." 20th Century History. Web. 16 Jan 2011. <http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blbuchenwald3.htm>.