What Facing History Meant to Me

When you are a senior in high school you never realize that a course you are about to take will change your outlook on events that have happened in history.  It was with the guidance of a great teacher, Mr. Gallagher, who made you want to know about the Holocaust and the people who lived through it.  I have had the honor of being in Mr. Gallagher’s classes before and did an internship with him.  I knew what I was about to learn was going to touch my soul and make me want to know more and more about the events and the survivors of this time period.  Before this class I really didn’t care about that part of history it happened long before I was alive, and it didn’t affect me or my family.  Mr. Gallagher opened my eyes to events through documentation, films, real life stories of how the Jewish population was treated and the mass murders that took place.  The Holocaust came about because people were led to believe that Jewish people were bad and the only way to rid society of this plague was to wipe out all Jewish people, and only then would we as a society is safe from these evils.  If I had been alive would I have been strong enough to take a stance against the Germans and try to protect Jewish families or would I have turned my back and let happen what would?  After what I have learned in this class I believe that I would have tried to make a difference and would have helped to hide and protect Jewish people.

“In the story The Bear That Wasn’t”, the bear went to work in a factory.  The officials believed that the bear was a man who needed a shave and who wore a fur coat.  He told everyone he was a bear but they believed if he was a bear he would be in the zoo or a circus, and he would not be coming to work in a factory.   Soon the bear started to believe that he wasn’t a bear because everyday people told him he wasn’t a bear.  This is exactly what we see in history and present day.  If you are led to believe that you are worthless eventually you will believe it along with everyone who is telling you.  It is what happens in our lives today the media jumps onto a story and even if the person is innocent the public is led to believe he is guilty, and before they go in front of a judge and jury they have been convicted by the media and the public.  This happens to the bear he believes that he is a man and he goes along with it because he is told it so many times.

One of the stories that really touched me was The Freedom Writers by Richard LaGravenese.  In the film a young teacher, played by Hillary Swank asks her students if they know about the Holocaust and how it pertains to their lives today.  She helps them to understand that society might want us to be portrayed as under privileged just as the Jews were portrayed as being a class beneath the Germans.  Hillary Swank brings Erin Gurwell the teacher to life and helps her student s to understand that they are equal to everyone else.  They may have to overcome adversity, but that they had the power to do it.  I saw myself in past and present history.  We write our own life stories, we overcome the evils against us, and we become strong and confident.  I see myself with my learning disability having to face adversity in the belief that I would have trouble graduating from high school, but I took that negativity and found the strength to overcome.  I found I had the confidence to seek victory.  You see this in the Holocaust and you see it again in the movie.

The next film that helped me to understand how important history is was The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.  It is about two boys one Jewish and one German.  How the German boy would go and visit the Jewish boy through the fence of the concentration camp.  The German boy thought the Jewish boy was on a farm.  As they became friends the German boy wanted to help the Jewish boy find his father.  So he dug a hole under the fence, striped off his clothes, climbed through the fence and put on a striped pair of pajamas like the Jewish boy.  They then went in search of the Jewish boy’s father.  They were separated and forced into the gas chamber and killed.  The film helped me to see that you may be called one thing, but if you change to look like something else no one can tell the difference.  That sometimes good doesn’t win out.  You can try to make things better but you might be fighting an endless battle.

I have begun to question my understanding of history and what makes some people followers and what makes some people leaders.  I would like to believe that I am a leader who would be willing to take a stance on what is right and what is wrong.  If we let society continue on as it was and no change has occurred then we would all be followers.  Do we just keep quiet and let the unjust happen to the weaker continue or do we fight for their rights.  We see this over and over again throughout history.  Examples would be the Germans and the Jews, then with our fight for equality between races, and with the consequences of bullying, and we as a nation see this happen today through terrorism and the fear of the unknown.  There are numerous events in history, but with each event there were people who took a stance against the evils to try to bring some good to the world.  Mr. Gallagher opened my eyes to history and how it plays a role in my life.