What Facing History Meant To Me

Facing History and Ourselves is one of the most interesting courses I have ever gotten to take at the high school. From just a student perspective, it helped me a lot in understanding World War II, Civil Rights, and the holocaust, because as a junior, World War II plays a big role in my history curriculum. Having this class at the same time as these subjects were introduced in my US History class really helped me get a strong understanding of what it meant. As a person, Facing History really changed my perspective on a lot of things. Everybody knows that World War II sucked, the Holocaust was evil, and we should treat all people equally. But these are usually just superficial thoughts for all of us. They come and pass as the subjects come up, but we never have any real understanding of what they mean. We do not understand the pain of living in a country where we are not treated as equals. We do not understand the feeling of watching your children, your brothers and your sisters being arrested and physically assaulted for standing up against injustice. We do not understand the fear of being waken in the middle of the night, being kicked out of your home and put on a train heading far away based solely on your religion. And we will never be close to understanding the horror of watching your family and friends worked and starved to death and then watching the ones who survive being lined up to die like sheep, nor will we ever understand the depth of the pain felt by somebody who lived in the concentration camps. After taking Facing History, you may not be able to feel what they felt, but you will be able to begin to understand the depth of what it is they went through. I would urge all high school students to go through this course.

There were a lot of movies that had a big impact on me, but the one that had the biggest impact on me personally was The Boy with the Striped Pajamas. This was because it was really heart wrenching. It was the story of a little German boy named Bruno whose father is an SS Officer that runs a concentration camp, unbeknownst to him or his mother and sister. Bruno doesn’t understand why he can’t go to the farm near his house and doesn’t understand why the Jewish workers around the house are treated so badly. Not having any friends to play with, Bruno begins exploring and finds another boy like him sitting behind the fence of the concentration camp. Bruno thinks the concentration camp is the fun kind of camp and one day he goes under the fence to help the other boy find his father. He dresses like a prisoner and then him and his friend are led to a gas chamber and are killed. Bruno’s father and the rest of his family figures out what has happened and are completely devastated. This story drove home the injustice of the holocaust for me for many reasons. The first reason was the innocence of both Bruno and the little boy. Neither of them deserved to be in situation that they ended up in. One of the other reasons was the fact that nobody cares about anything until it happens to them. People hear about sad things all the time, but until it affects them they only treat it with an “awh” or an “I’m sorry”. Bruno’s father was killing hundreds of Jews without a second thought, but the minute his son was in danger, he rushed to rescue him. Maybe it was karma that he was late, I don’t know. All I know is that nobody should have died in that situation. Not Bruno, not his friend, not anybody in that camp.

One of the things that we read that had a big impact on me was the story “Little Boxes”. It was about a kid who talked about how his mixed race has always posed a problem in his life. From having to deal with multiple stereotypes or being alienated by all parts of his family, being mixed race has sucked for him. A lot of people found it hard to relate to this story, but it really resonated with me. Being a person of mixed race, I can completely understand everything he was talking about. People always feel the need to put things in little, easy to digest, boxes so that they don’t have to think about it. Outward features and stereotypes make it easy for people to just look at people and figure out who they are. The fact that people think that all they have to do is look at somebody and completely figure out who they are is completely wrong. The story reminded me that people that use stereotypes aren’t bad; they just do it because it’s easy to do. But we should all take a lesson that stereotypes should still not be used because they could lead to things a lot worse, after all the holocaust started with stereotypes of Jews.

Another film that also influenced me was The Choice. It is a scene in a larger movie where a non-Jewish woman is sent to a concentration camp with her son and daughter for helping her boyfriend who was in the resistance. She appeals to an SS officer to help her because she is not Jewish nor a Communist, and he says that she will let her go, but she can only pick one child. She isn’t able to do it and the officer tells her that if she doesn’t pick one, they will take both her children. She begins having a panic attack and screaming and as the guards begin to reach for both her children she tells them to take her daughter in the heat of the moment. Being faced with such a decision is probably the hardest thing a parent will ever have to do. There is no pain equivalent to that of losing a child. One of the questions we were asked was “what would you have done?” I think that there is no telling what somebody would do in that situation until you are faced with it. The human mind was not built to comprehend such a situation. Somebody in our class said that he would try to take an SS officer’s gun and start a riot and, no offense, but I think that was one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. When you are in that situation you are not sure if you are being sent to die or not. You don’t know about the gas chambers or the crematoriums. All you know is that you are being sent to a work camp and that you don’t want to be there. You will be so paralyzed with fear that nothing will be making sense and nobody will know what you will do. Being able to think clearly enough to formulate a plan to escape would be a miracle. This film really helped me grasp the incomprehensible cruelty of the Nazi’s.

Before I took this class, the holocaust was just something in the distant past that didn’t really have much of an effect on the way things were now.  It was only after taking this class that I realized the consequences of thinking that way. Every event in human history should be taken as a lesson so that we don’t find ourselves repeating the same mistakes over and over again. I think that every student in Westborough High School should take this class so that they will understand it really means to “face” history.