What Facing History and Ourselves Meant To Me
During my time in the Facing History and Ourselves course, I was able to really look at myself and learn what kind of person I am and how I can change to benefit me personally, the ones around me, and even society as a whole. At the beginning of the course, we did an activity on our origins and ancestry to figure out where our roots came from. During class I put down confidently that I was fifty percent French and fifty percent Greek. After a few days following this, my family went out to dinner with my Grandma who was on the French side of my family. Out of curiosity, I asked what her and my grandfather’s heritages were and it turns out that I am actually fifty percent Greek, twenty percent Armenian, ten percent German, and only twenty percent French. In reality, I was too ignorant to dig deeper, and spend more time looking at where my origins are really from, so I just accepted and assumed who I was, from things I had briefly heard my mom and dad say. While this was not a life altering event, I feel like it fits in with the status quo of the class of asking yourself what you are doing and why you are doing it. If people during the time of the Holocaust were able to answer this simple question, people would have realized what they were doing was wrong and they could have helped prevent this terrible event from even happening in the first place. Three facets that I found the most eye opening was the American scrapbook, “The Grey Zone”, and “The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas”.
After being in the course for several weeks, I was finding it difficult to connect emotionally to the Holocaust due to the magnitude of so many innocent people being killed. While the documentaries that we watched were very informative and detailed, I was still having a difficult time imagining what the Nazis really did. But after seeing the film, “The Grey Zone”, I felt like I was better exposed to what the Nazi’s did because the film personalized the Holocaust for me by showing innocent characters that you had grown some emotional connection to being killed and severely tortured. I feel like learning the history of Nazis is essential to understanding the Holocaust but I feel like without the films, it is difficult personalize the Holocaust and understand it as a teenager in high school due to how large and horrific it was.
The next part of the Facing History course that was the most meaningful to me was the American film that was created when the concentration camps were being liberated at the end of the war. This film was very graphic and truly exposed what the Nazis tried to cover up. The film went through each camp and showed what the prisoners looked like and the conditions that they had been living in. All of the prisoners were basically skin and bones and barley had enough energy to do simple tasks such as walking. The film also showed scars that many of the prisoners had from the abusive Nazis. Some of the injuries consisted of torn off limbs, burn wounds, and facial disfigurement. The Nazi’s also conducted many experiments on the prisoners which also led to extreme disfigurement and death. While many of the other sources viewed in class affected me emotionally, this short film really hit home with me by seeing real people were put in these concentration camps.
The final part of the Facing History course which was very meaningful to me was the film, “The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas”. This movie used the point of view of an innocent eight year who was the son of a Nazi general. What made this film interesting was how the boy questioned almost everything that the Nazis were doing to the “farmers” because he did not understand what was going on. The young boy even becomes close friends to one of the young Jewish boys in the concentration camp near his home despite his teacher saying that he would be the “best explorer if he found a nice Jew”. The end of this film was heartbreaking to watch when the boy puts on the stripped prison outfit and goes into the camp where he eventually is brought to the gas chambers and is killed. I felt like it took the Nazi leader for his son to die for him to realize how all of these innocent people were killed similarly to his son in the gas chamber and how painful of a death it would be.
The Facing History and Ourselves course has been the most enlightening courses that I have ever taken in my academic career. It has taught me to be less judgmental of others, question what I am doing and why I am doing it, and has brought to life the horrific events of the Holocaust. This course has also challenged me to dig deeper into my roots and figure out what kind of person I really am. This has easily been the most satisfying course I have ever taken and I would highly recommend this course to anyone.
Works Cited
"The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas." The Missing C. Asun Flower, n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2013. http://themissingc.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-film/.
"The Grey Zone." IMDB. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2013. http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1920&bih=979&tbm=isch&tbnid=bfvVVUs6AyDxtM:&imgrefurl=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252480/&docid=cL8PbHrPWipeNM&imgurl=http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTM3NTI5NjI5Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwODMxNDg5._V1._SY317_CR2,0,214,317_.jpg&w=214&h=317&ei=Is_0ULGkLsew0AGe94HoDA&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=335&sig=104659004802063695977&page=1&tbnh=144&tbnw=100&start=0&ndsp=69&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:82&tx=46&ty=59.
"Holocaust." Above Top Secret. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2013. http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread861803/pg1.
"Holocaust." History Wiz. Jennifer Brainard, n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2013. http://www.historywiz.com/holocaust.htm.
"Holocaust Bones." ABC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2013. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-09/artist-claims-he-used-holocaust-victims-ashes-in-painting
