I would first like to start off by expressing my gratitude to
Westborough High School and Mr. Gallagher for providing me with the opportunity to take the
Facing History and Ourselves course.
This course has truly benefited me as both a student and a person in several ways.
One of the ways in which
Facing History and Ourselves has benefited me as a person is that I am a much more empathetic and understanding person.
Because the majority of the course was focused on the Holocaust, I have a new found respect for people of a different nature than I.
I have to say that the last film that we watched about the Allies discovering the death camps really emphasized the extreme brutality and hardships that the Jewish race endured.
The images of the mountains of skeleton-like bodies thrown on top of one another with their eyes gouged out and their skulls smashed in, literally made me sick.
I will never forget these horrific scenes. The sadness, fear, and despair that poured out of the prisoners’ eyes as they looked into the cameras were haunting.
I still cannot fathom how so many people allowed this mass massacre to take place because these people were supposedly “different”.
Because I had the opportunity to take this class and see numerous films conveying similar themes, I am much more accepting to people of a different nature and I definitely think twice before I judge anyone.
The media that I have viewed in this course has made me realize that not one person should be viewed as better than another.
Facing History and Ourselves has also taught me to appreciate my surroundings and to treat everything as a blessing.
For example, before the course even began, a man from the
Darfur genocide came to
Westborough High School to tell his story of survival, I immediately realized how fortunate I was to have been born in the
United States of America into a very comfortable lifestyle.
As the course began and started to unfold, we viewed many more films on the Holocaust and had the opportunity to see, first hand, the conditions in which these poor Jewish people and political prisoners were forced to live in.
Seeing these conditions made me question if I would have been able to tolerate and survive life in the death camps, that is if I was even seen fit to perform hard labor instead of being gassed, and I don’t think I would have been able to.
Facing History and Ourselves has made me truly appreciate my home, family, generation, and country.
Also, one day in class two men from
Pakistan came into our classroom as part of a tour of the school and conversed with us.
These men stated that our school was amazing and was nothing compared to the schools in
Pakistan.
This too helped me to realize that I am very spoiled and extremely lucky to have the opportunities that I do at my fingertips.
This course not only helped me change as a person, but also as a student. Facing History and Ourselves helped me to become a better leader. As a captain of the girls’ lacrosse team, leadership is obviously very important. This course made me question what role I would assume if I was placed in a situation where, similar to the Holocaust, someone is being done an injustice. One could be a bystander, a victim, a bully, or a rebel. Facing History and Ourselves has taught me the importance to stand up for what you believe in and what is right every time an injustice occurs, no matter what the majority says. This course has made me think about setting a good example for my team to follow on how to treat one another and how to accept people of all types. It has also taught me to, when leading my team, make sure that every voice is heard no matter how small. One of the films that emphasized the importance of standing up to the people who do you wrong was The Grey Zone. In this film, Jewish prisoners sacrificed their lives for the good of the other prisoners to destroy the crematoriums. The amount of courage and selflessness that it took to commit these heroic acts baffles me and I revere the Jewish race because of these acts.
Another part of the course that really hit home with me was the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. In this film, the main character Bruno befriends a boy in a nearby death camp that his father oversees and eventually Bruno is gassed to death with his friend while trying to help him find his father. Upon seeing the end of this film, I was both surprised but at the same time, not. I originally had hoped and expected that somehow Bruno would help his friend escape the death camp. However, the movie did not have a happy ending and I found my self feeling confused about how to feel after it ended. On one hand, I thought that it was a good ending because the man in charge of the camp now got to know what it felt like to have a family member gassed to death and murdered for no reason. However, Bruno was only trying to help his Jewish friend find his father who had already been systematically murdered and I was upset that he was killed for it. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, like many of the other media pieces shown in class, really made me think about what the right thing to do is. In this case, Bruno was reaching out to his friend in order to try and right their friendship because he had previously betrayed him. I really liked this film because I think it showed the Nazis just how real the death camps and all of the suffering they encompassed were (even though the film was fictional). In conclusion, Facing History and Ourselves taught me to think more, to be forever grateful for my privileges, to be a better leader, and to be a much more empathetic and understanding person.
