What Facing History and Ourselves Meant to Me

                                      What Facing History Meant to Me
                                                     Sam Nichols
                                                          Per.3

          Going into Facing History, I didn’t know what to expect. The only things I really knew about the class was that you watch a lot of movies and everyone who took it in previous years really enjoyed it.  After taking the class myself, I find it very difficult to describe the overall experience. It truly is a complete process that a person has to go through themselves to fully understand it. A big reason for this is there are different facets of the class that ultimately all come together to create an overall understanding.  Despite this, each facet of the class did have its own purpose and certainly each one affected me differently. I think the three facets of the class that affected me the most were the film The Longest Hatred, the film and reading about “the wave”, and the movie and reading about SS officer Kurt Gerstein. Overall these three things showed me the effects of believing in and continuing stereotypes, the dangers of buying into something that a figure of authority says without question, and the dangers of passing off problems because you believe they are not your problem. These realizations I believe have affected and will continue to affect how I conduct myself of a daily basis.
          For thousands of years the Jewish population has had to face the brutality of anti-Semitism. Before this course I was aware of some of the difficult times the Jewish people had to go through. I knew that they had been enslaved in Egypt thousands of years ago, and I knew about what they faced in WWII and the Holocaust. This movie really showed me the constant abuse that they have faced not just in those few instances but throughout their history. It seems as though they have always been an easy scapegoat. From the death of Jesus to Germany losing WWI, they have also been an easy target for taking the blame. This is because derogatory words and stereotypes towards the Jewish population have never gone away. This is depicted in the following famous images below. One is of a famous anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda poster and the other is a famous painting of Jesus carrying the cross surrounded by Jews. These negative images and words have created and kept a constant negative connotation towards the Jewish population that still exists today.  This negative connotation has made it very easy for people to point fingers at Jews for things they didn’t even have anything to do with. This idea of creating negative connotations towards certain groups of people is something I have become aware of in my life. The best example I can give is the word gay. For as long as I can remember, gay has been a word that my peers and I have used habitually to describe something in a negative way. Although most of us don’t realize it, we are helping create a negative connotation towards the gay population. Just like the Jewish community, gays have been fighting prejudice for thousands of years, and our use of the word gay in a negative way helps fuel this injustice. That’s why I have recently been making an effort to not use any words such as the word gay or Jew in a negative way, and I have even corrected some friends on using those words. I believe I truly understand the detrimental impact of the use of these harmful words, and how the things I say do truly matter and have an impact even if I don’t always realize it.
            One question that we were continually asked throughout the course was why the German people did nothing about the Holocaust. The excuse that no one knew is the common belief. We quickly learned that this was not the case. Eventually the true answer to that question appeared to me through the movie The Wave and its reading. The Wave was a teacher’s solution to answering this same difficult question in such a way that his history students would truly understand. This teacher created a club within his classroom called the Wave in which the students unknowingly began working just like the Nazis. They were quickly taught disciple and respect for your authorities, and they even had a salute and symbol. Although the students were aware this was just an activity, they quickly got caught up in it, and they soon had the Wave expanded to 200 students throughout the school. The students in the Wave began taking it too seriously as the rules and regulations of the club started to build up. It got to the point where they began intimating nonmembers and physical altercations even began. Eventually the teacher decided it was time to end the Wave. He had all the members come to the auditorium to watch a live telecast from the national leader of the Wave. They were shocked to find they were actually shown a video of Hitler giving a speech. At that point the students understood what that meant. Just like the people of Germany, they got caught up in something that they believed was bigger than themselves, and they unwaveringly followed a figure of authority without question. I believe this class room exercises did the perfect job of showing that the citizens of Germany weren’t bad people, but they were just like anyone else and loved the idea of being a part of something they believed was important. This idea showed me that we are all susceptible to what happened to the people of Germany under the Nazi regime. I now understand that I must always be aware of what is going on around me. I cannot just accept something that a figure of authority says to me, but rather I must challenge it if I believe it to be wrong. If I don’t do this than I could  find myself  in the same situation as the people of  Germany of the  Students of  the Wave without even realizing it.
            The final facet of the class that had a major impact on me was movie and reading about SS officer Kurt Gerstein. He was a Nazi scientist who became involved in the gassing of the Jews. He was instantly horrified when he was introduced to the process. Gerstein worked tirelessly to do something about what he saw and he put his own life on the line to expose what was going on at the camps on the map below. No matter who he went to, including high up in the Vatican, for the most part anyone who could help didn’t want anything to do with what he was saying. As far as they were concerned, it wasn’t their problem, especially because it involved standing up to the Nazis. Low and behold after it was all said and done, what Gerstein said was true, and an unimaginable number of  Jews had be exterminated. To me the lesson here is very simple. If you are in a position to help a person, and they ask for your help, you cannot merely look at it as something that is not your problem. Obviously if helping that person is ultimately going to be a negative then you shouldn’t help. If you can truly make a positive difference for a person, and you chose not to help them because it is an inconvenience to you then that is an ultimate act of selfishness. Not every example is going to be as extreme as this one, but on a daily or weekly basis I bet most people are asked for a favor. I know I’ve turned down simple things before because I just didn’t feel like it.  From now on, I am sure that if a favor is asked of me, no matter how big or small, and that favor can truly help a person, then I cannot let myself say no.
         Now that this class is coming to an end, I can confidently say that it had a profound effect on me. In many ways I see the world at large as well as my own surroundings differently. I’m more conscience about the things I say as well as what the people around me say. I don’t simply take everything that the media, my teachers, or any adult for that matter says as fact, but rather I think about and decide whether or not it is something I need to look into more. I also try not to blow people off. If someone as me a favor, I do my best to help them out. I’m glad I took this course just before I enter college because many of the new lessons I have learned will be a tremendous help to me when I truly take a step into the real world.