Introduction

 My names Mike Klimavich; a 17 year old student at Westborough High school. I am I very considerate, caring, and kind person. I believe that all people are equal and deserve to have an equal opportunity at everything regardless of their race, gender, or religion. For the first semester of my senior year, I decided to take the Facing History and Ourselves course that our school offers. I wanted to take the class because I had heard only good things about it from other students that had taken it. Also, I was told that the course studied the holocaust, which was something that I had very little understanding of.   I wasn’t to sure what to expect from this class, only the things that one can gather from the name of the course. As I began attending the classes I learned that the course was all about standing up for what’s right. The class serves as such an eye-opener and I really think that everyone should take it. We started out by learning about what the holocaust was, who was involved and what happened. Then we watched multiple films which brought us inside of the Nazi concentration camps and helped us to really understand what went on inside of the camps along with what really happened to the Jews.  We also got to understand a little bit of why all of the Nazis felt the way they did. This course did a lot for me, it made me think twice about saying certain things, and really helped me to become a better person overall.

What Facing History and Ourselves Meant to Me

Facing History and Ourselves was by far the most interesting class I’ve ever had. The class not only opened my eyes to so many things that I had never even thought about, but it also taught me something about myself. If I have the opportunity to take another class like this in college, I will sign up for it without thinking twice.

 Many people think don’t understand why some people think they are so much better then others are. However, we watched a film in class that showed just how simple it is to make people feel like they are better then others. We watched a movie called “A Class Divided” which showed exactly how easy it was. The lady who conducted the experiment started it with kids, and within minutes it was working. She also conducted the experiment with grown adults, and had the same results. This goes to show how all of the Nazi propaganda made all of the Germans feel that they were better then the Jews. I thought that this film was  amazing because the experiment actually worked; all the lady had to do was say something like blue eyed people are smarter then brown eyed people. This made me realize that with all of the negative images that the Nazis were putting out into public it would have been hard for many of the Germans to not feel better then the Jews.

This brings me to my next point; even with all negative things being said about the Jews, there were still a few Germans that tried to help the Jews because they knew what was right. We watched a movie title “AMEN” and in it a German SS Officer witnessed the killings of thousands of Jews, and he tried to get the other countries to stop what the Germans were doing. Unfortunately they would not listen to him. He never stopped trying to get the other states to intervene in the Germans actions, and eventually they did, however the officer was had already died in jail. This taught me that even if everyone around you is doing something, it doesn’t mean it’s always the right thing to do. People have to make their own choices and not just do what other people say to do; otherwise the results could be terrible. 

There was another movie that was made about an experiment. In this experiment there were two people, one that would ask questions, and one that would answer questions. If the person that was answering the question answered incorrectly, it would be the person asking the questions duty to shock them with an increasing amount of electricity for every question the answered wrong. Some people never stopped zapping the person even after multiple screams and cries for help. But, there were a few people that stopped to help the person and refused to continue onwards regardless of what the instructors were saying. The people that stopped knew what was the right thing to do and they were stubborn enough to know that they were right, and just because someone was telling them what to do they didn’t have to do it. The name of this documentary was “The Milgram Experiment”. However, there was a big change in results when the people asking the questions could see the people answering the question being harmed, which goes to show that if people can see the direct consequences of their actions they think twice about doing it. This documentary taught me a lot about sticking up for what I think is right, if I were one of the people asking the questions I believe I would have stopped because hearing the person complaining and asking for mercy would be to much for me to handle and would not have been able to push myself into harming another human being over and over just because someone was telling me to.

During WWII in Germany there is was so much propaganda against the Jews and all of these made up “facts” about them. All of these things were designed to make the Germans hate the Jews and want to send them to the concentrations camps. The Germans also tried to trick some of the other countries into thinking that they were helping out the Jews with their work camps and such, making them think that they were a almost fun place. The movie “The Eternal Jew” is an example of the Nazi propaganda that was put out to change the Germans view of Jews. This movie showed made up facts about Jews, and they even tried to say that they had proven certain things through experiments and such. The thing that this film taught me is that you can’t believe everything you see; you have to find things out for yourself. Of course there are certain things that you can believe, but for something as big as saying that another race is worse then another people need to find out for themselves and not be stereotyping a whole race. Everyone in this world deserves a chance, and they shouldn’t be judged just because of where they come from, just because people start to say certain things about a race, doesn’t mean they’re true.

 We watched a movie in class called “The Boy in Striped Pajamas” and it was about a boy who befriends a Jew, who lives inside of a concentration camp. The kid sneaks out of his house almost every day to go see the boy at the camp. One day the Jewish boy’s father goes missing, and the other boy, Bruno, sneaks into the camp to try and help him find his father. Within minutes the boy and the Jewish boy get rounded up and sent into the gas chamber to be killed. Bruno’s father realizes that he is inside the camp, but he is too late to stop him from being killed. This film really helped me to think about what it would be like if I knew someone who was killed in the holocaust. Throughout the film we really got to know the boy, and then he gets gassed, even though he isn’t a Jew. Even though this wasn’t a true story, it really gets the point across of how terrible the holocaust was because many innocent people, including women and children were killed just for being Jewish.

 One of the facts that I learned from this course, was that many of the Jews actually tried to fight back. We watched the movie called “Warsaw Uprising” which showed just how well the Jews were able to fight back. They were able to get help from people outside of the ghetto, and everyone that was fighting back, was 100% committed to the cause, because they knew that either way they would die. The Nazis even brought down the whole entire city around them, and some of them still survived and continued to fight. This film was an excellent example of fighting for what you believe in because the people in it were literally fighting off the Nazis to stay alive. This film was very inspirational to me because even though almost all of them died, they died with honor, knowing that they did the right thing.

Works Cited

A class divided. Google Images. Image. 17 January 2011.
AMEN!. Google Images. Image. 17 January 2011.
Milgram Experiment. Google Images. Image. 17 January 2011.
The Eternal Jew. Google Images. Image. 17 January 2011.
The Boy in Striped Pajamas. Google Images. Image. 17 January 2011.
The Warsaw Uprising. Google Images. Image. 17 January 2011.