What Facing History and Ourselves Meant to Me

     Last year when I was looking through the course selection book to sign up for my senior year classes, I had a difficult time picking out my electives. I knew that I wanted to take a history class to keep my schedule balanced, but I wasn’t sure what class would work best for me. European history never really interested me and I had never heard of a course called “facing history and ourselves” before. Trapped in my indecision, I decided to go around and ask some of the seniors what I should do. The first seniors I talked to were all in AP euro. They all told me that if I liked reading and outlining texts books every night and failing tests that I should take AP euro. So I crossed that off the list and sought out seniors who were in facing history and ourselves. From these seniors I got many different answers. One told me that there was no homework, and I thought to myself “I like having no homework”. Another told me that all we did was watch videos, and I thought to myself “I like watching videos too”.  Some told me that they loved the teacher because he was willing to say anything, while others told me they didn’t like him because he was willing to say too much, too which I thought “I’m not easily offended, I think I’ll like him”. Finally, one senior told me that the course was literally “life changing”, and I thought to myself “yeah, ok buddy, sure it is”. And so, with no homework and videos in mind, I decided to sign up for facing history and ourselves.



Mrs. Jane Elliott



     When the term began, even after talking to seniors about the class, I still wasn’t sure what to expect. On the first day that I walked into class I was amazed to find that I knew everyone in the class. I scanned the room and saw a bunch of sayings on the back wall, a bunch of awards on the front wall, and a jar of candy in the back corner. For the first four or five days in noticed that at one point in each of those first classes Mr. Gallagher had brought up the Holocaust and bystanding, seemingly without reason. I had no idea that the Holocaust was going to be such a major part of the class and those first four classes caught me by surprise. For the first few weeks, everyone would get to class and talk, kids would sleep during the movies, and kids didn’t post on the blog. Over the semester we began to act more like adults. We’d quiet down on our own, pay attention during the videos, and post on the blog regularly. Not only did the course inform us and alter our actions, it really helped to mature us.



The Eternal Jew

     We started out with some stories and all through September we focused on racism and segregation, as well as being labeled as something that you aren’t. My favorite video from that month was “A class divided”. The documentary really showed not only how easy it is to become and be racist and a bully, but also the affects of it in terms of performance in the classroom. At this point in the class I really began to revaluate myself and whether I was doing these same things and causing harm to other students in the school. By October we were starting into the lead up to the Holocaust. We watched films about the hatred of Jews and Nazi propaganda films. It was during this month that I began to develop a hatred of injustice. I started to get really angry and worked up whenever I saw cheating or unfair punishment in my everyday life. I began stepping in more often to stick up for people and doing the right thing more often. In December we moved on to the actual Holocaust. We watched many films about the ghettos, Jewish oppression, and the death camps. Some of these videos were tragic and horrific, some of them uplifting, and some of them depressing. We watched the Warsaw Uprising, a video about Jews in the Warsaw ghetto fighting back against the Nazis for nearly a month, and we also watch Amen!, a video about an SS officer who tried to tell all of the bystanding countries and organizations about the atrocities happening at the death camps. We ended with the raw footage from the death camps and it was shocking. I felt like an awful person just for watching it, and it left in unpleasant feeling inside of me.



    By the end of this course I felt like a changed person. I stopped saying things that I used to say and started thinking about the affects of the things that I do more often. I no longer stood idly by and more often than not would step in and help. I’ve come to the realization that we as human beings, can never standby and let any of the things that we have witnessed in this class continue or ever happen again. Some of the things that I saw in the class were horrifying and I would stare in disbelief at the screen wondering how those things could have happened. Some of the things that I saw caused me to change who I am so that I wouldn’t be like the terrible people that I saw on the screen. And some of the things I saw caused me to cringe and wish that I had never seen what I just saw. When I signed up for this course I had no idea that it was going to be as intense as it was. I did not believe that there was any such class that could change who I am. I had scoffed at the senior who had told me that this class had changed their life, and now I’m going to be that senior, with juniors scoffing at me for saying that it had changed mine too.