About Facing History
About
three fourths of the way through my junior year of high school I felt that,
because I am Jewish and the high school offers a course about the events of the
holocaust, it would be a good idea to take the facing history course. It especially felt like the right thing to do
since family on my Russian- Jewish side had to experience the holocaust as well
as the Russian pogroms. Going into the
class with these two points in mind made me ready to experience the events
through movies, primary documents, and pictures. The end goal for me leaving the class was to
not just be another uninformed and ignorant member of society which I feel has
been achieved over the half year.
Before
taking the course the holocaust and genocide in general seemed like a very distant
topic even though it happens through the world in past, present, and most
likely future. This is one of the
unfortunate side effects of living in a very “politically correct” suburban
town with a fairly small Jewish community.
However, this distant feeling started to change throughout the
course. Movies like “Freedom Writers”
made the topic of hardships, struggles, pain, and fear more relatable because
it was in a school environment which is something I, and other students,
recognize as being place of drama and social warfare. On the other hand Freedom Writers did not
have the same emotional impact that future segments had, but definitely gave me
a new prospective. “The Longest Hatred”
film that followed Freedom Writers elicit the first strongly negative emotional
response of disgust and to be honest anger, because it angers me that people
could get away with treating fellow human beings so badly. Another thing that I found was that even
though movies like Swing Kids and The Pianist are more entertaining than
documentaries, due to the fact that they are plot driven, they do not have
anywhere near as powerful an impact as the documentaries and do not give rise
to as many questions. One exception to
that rule was the movie “The Grey Zone.”
It is one of those weird feelings, but whenever I see the actual gas
chambers and the ash from the crematorium I get this pit in my stomach almost
like I feel like I am going to be sick.
I can’t be one hundred percent sure of why but a reasonable guess would
be that it just seems so surreal that these evens did happen in the not so
distant past. In fact some of the people
that took part in the events of the holocaust are still alive and in some cases
walking the streets freely which to me is unacceptable. Other activities in class like class
discussions also provided a good dynamic to the movies because, and I don’t
know about anyone else, but they can get a bit heavy and difficult to
watch. Discussions about the “Milgram
Experiment” were quite interesting since it truly shows how easy it is to
influence people when told by an authority figure especially if the one being
told is just a child like the children in the Hitler Youth. This also brings up another goal of the
course which is to not give into social pressures of a crowd just because it is
the so called “popular” thing to do. In
addition specifically pertaining to the Milgram Experiment is the logical
fallacy of appealing to authority which is when one seeks to persuade people
not by giving an argument or evidence, but by appealing to the respect people
have for that person. With all this in
mind it made bringing up class discussions about current events, social,
political, and economic issues much more respectful and mature which is
refreshing these days. Especially since
most people even United States Congressmen and women can’t even do that. One of the more memorable class discussions
was about gun laws in the United States in the aftermath of the Newtown,
Connecticut shooting.
Moving
onto what sections or lessons were the most meaningful to me is somewhat brief
and is absolutely specific to one topic.
This topic being the actual acts of genocide during the holocaust, be it
indiscriminate executions of Jewish men, women, and children, the gassing of prisoners
at concentration camps and death camps, burning of bodies, and the list goes on
of all the Nazi’s war crimes. My
reasoning for this being the most meaningful topic was that evoked the most
anger from me which does not usually happen when I am watching something on a
screen and also does not directly impact me.
Some of these included the movies “Road to Treblinka”, “The Gestapo”,
and all of the BBC documentaries. What I
found to be the most meaningful of all even more than these three documentaries
was when the class was able to see photos taken by the SS of the death camps. They sent a shiver down my spine whenever I
saw the actual victims of the holocaust, even children, being marched off to
the gas chambers as well as seeing the inside of the gas chamber which also
gave off its own ominous and very creepy vibe even though it looked just like a
shower at an overnight camp. It was also
very infuriating to see the SS soldiers and their wives or girlfriends laughing
and having just a hell of a time like everything fine and dandy, meanwhile they
are robotically killing an entire race of people. And same goes for the people that live in the
houses that over look or just in viewing distance of the camp. The lesson that I felt went parallel with the
album of pictures was about all of the medical experiments the Nazis conducted
on the Jews, Gypsies, and prisoners of war (mainly Russians).
After
a constant stream of these frankly depressing to watch movies, it changes a
person, at least it did for me, in a way that should make one more
compassionate toward their fellow human beings.
As
a side note personally I feel that a key role to this course is a teacher that
has a fiery passion for the subject that they are teaching, which Mr. Gallagher
fills flawlessly. After all how could a
student be expected to become passionate about a subject if the teacher is not
passionate about it?
