Reflective Essay

The course Facing History and Ourselves is certainly one of the most powerful and influential courses a student could possibly experience. Spending only two quick quarters in this class helped change myself into a better student in school and other learning situations but also made me a more intelligent person. One of the biggest lessons I learned from this course was that a single person can always make a difference in anything they believe isn’t correct. During this class we watched the film The Grey Zone, which told the story of Jewish citizens collected into a ghetto and constantly attacked and beaten by the Nazi's. For a good amount of time, the task of transporting the Jewish citizens into ghettos and completely controlling them was going easy because no one was speaking up or fighting for their freedom. But then that all change when a small group of Jewish people began to realize that with enough support and planning, they could attempt their very best to fight off the Nazi power. After watching this film I have never been the kid to see someone being bullied and just walk by and ignore it. Ill stand up for the victim even if I dislike them or don’t even know them because hopefully other people will realize its the right thing to do and never be a bystander again. Another moral lesson I learned from this class and its activities is to not make a judgment before putting yourself in the persons situation. Nowadays people judge people without having a clue what the person has gone through or what their story is. One film that we watched that taught me to put myself in another persons shoe's was The Choice. In this short clip, a women with a young boy and a even younger daughter are in line at one of the concentration camps where they were being determined to go to work or to be sent to their deaths. When the Nazi officer approached her he gave her the choice of giving over one of her children and sending them off to a unknown place alone or handing over both of them. The women refused to make the decision due to the fact that she didn’t know what was to happen to the child sent away. As the officer yelled at her to make the decision she continued to refuse but then the officer demanded she hand over both children and through a state of panic, she said take the youngest child who was a girl. Watching this scene made me thoroughly think about how unbelievably difficult it would be for a mother to abandon one of her children in a completely unknown area. To really understand the difficulty of the decision this mother made I had to place myself in her situation and imagine having to give over one of my children to strangers and I realized that it would be nearly impossible. This lesson of looking farther then just what the eyes can see and putting yourself in the persons situation as if you were in it yourself is very important because it helps truly grasp the feelings and thoughts that can be running through another persons mind and help avoid one person from judging another person. One of the earlier activities we did was read the story “The Bear that wasn’t” . In this story a bear is found in a environment that bears are not normally found in and no one believes him when he tells them who he really is. They all tell him he isn’t who he says he is and after the bear goes through higher authority after higher authority telling him he isn’t who he believes he is, the bear begins believing everyone else and that he doesn’t know who he actually is. Then at the end of the story, the bear realizes that he was right all along about who he really was and that he should never let anyone tell him differently. This story taught me to never let anyone tell me who I can and cant be. Ever since reading and thinking about the lessons displayed in this story, I have stayed true to myself and have not tried changing myself just because someone wants me to or say that I cant be what I proclaim myself as. This is a valuable lesson to learn because some people base their personalities and characteristics off of what make other people happy and what will help them fit in with society but never actually show or act their true selves. Therefore if those people never get to express their true selves they are also never going to be truly happy and only because they feel like they need to make others happy before they can make themselves happy. Those are only a few of the many different activities that I experienced in this class and each and everyone taught me a different lesson on how to become a better person not only in school but also in my future when I am living my own life off on my own. I feel better now that I have learned all of these new life lessons because I am more prepared to deal with all different kind of issues and situations with ease. I believe that I am now a more outspoken and independent person who wont judge someone before I have personally gotten to know the person and what kind of person they are. I also believe that I have become more confident in myself because instead of thinking up something real quick and giving it a shot, I think more about my actions and decisions and how they can affect myself and others around me. Facing History and Ourselves is possibly one of the best courses a student can ever be offered because not only do you learn factual content about the holocaust and Nazi Germany, but also learn from hidden messages delivered in all the films and stories read by the students to make them a better person and prepare them for the outside world.