Introduction

     Facing History and Ourselves is a course that focuses on genocide and crimes against humanity in history.  In Facing History we look in depth at historical events such as The Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Jim Crow Era, and the injustice done towards the Native Americans during the United States’s period of expansion.  All of these events have a common theme, injustice and crimes against humanity.  Through studying these events, your impact on the world and the importance of your choices and actions are illuminated.  We also watched many films and read many readings that predicated upon discrimination and the dangers of ignorance.  This course exposes the appalling amount of cruelty, hatred, and discrimination that is present in the world.  In this class you are educated about what it means to be a victim, a bystander, a rescuer, and a fighter.  It is a class that will cause you to question your identity and often leave you horrified by the material that you study.  I chose to take this course because I am someone who is very active in clubs that are centralized around social justice.  The humanitarian and global awareness aspects of this class are what drew me to it.  

     I am a high school senior and will be attending Washington University in St. Louis in the fall.  I hope to study medicine while there, with a focus on global health and humanitarian aid.  I am someone who has always had an intense desire to help others and I plan to do this through becoming a doctor and eventually starting my own free clinic in an impoverished area of the world.  

What Facing History Meant to Me

     Throughout my years in school, there have been countless classes that have impacted my identity and personal perspective.  This course, “Facing History and Ourselves,” has affected who I am more than any other class that I have taken.  As a student, the knowledge that I have acquired from taking this class about The Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the injustice of the Native Americans, the Jim Crow era, and social injustice and intolerance in general, has made me a more worldly, introspective, and invested student.  “Facing History and Ourselves” did not just leave an impression on my school experience; instead, the class material clings to me inside and outside of academic environments and shapes many of my thoughts, relationships, and actions.  Studying such shocking examples of injustice and inhumanity throughout history has prompted my interest in social justice and genocide prevention. This class has taught be to be conscious of the choices that I make and has inspired me to live my life as a rescuer, not a bystander.    



Ms. Gruwell and The "Freedom Writers"



     It can be very easy to view a situation in black and white, defining one side as good and another as evil, one person as safe and one as dangerous.  However, often times these judgments are blurred by prejudice and stereotyping.  It is through the “Facing History and Ourselves” class that I was able to realize how grey the world really is and begin to understand the value of knowledge and the danger or ignorance.  The movie “Freedom Writers” was the first film that caused me to recognize the importance of tolerance and the terrible consequences that come from prejudging.  I found Ms. Gruwell’s faith in her students (especially when she decided not to take the advice of her superior and wear her pearl necklace) to be an example of how first impressions should be made, with faith and optimism and without stereotypical labels.  Ms. Gruwell’s discussion about the Holocaust following the situation with the ugly picture made me realize that the discrimination in Ms. Gruwell’s classroom and in the heart of the Holocaust are the same and the gross reality that the sentiments needed to start another genocide are still prevalent in today’s society.  I recognize now that it is vital to judge people based off of your own sound judgment and experiences, not off of rumors, stereotypes, or prejudices. 

     One of the main themes of the “Facing History and Ourselves” class that resonated with me was the role of ignorance in mass killings and crimes against humanity.  “Freedom Writers” showed me how ignorance and a reliance on stereotyping can cause such intense hatred and fear to form between two people or ethnicities.  The documentary that we watched about the relationship between the Native Americans and the Americans, “White Man’s Image” exposed me to a truth about our country’s past and cruelty that I had never know about.  I never knew how terribly Americans had treated the Native Americans and through seeing some flaws and examples of injustice in our nation’s history, I have a sense of humility and commitment to prevent such atrocities from occurring again.  Beforehand, when I learned about the Holocaust in Hebrew School, I felt almost superior to the Nazis because I lived in a country that preached justice and fairness to all.  Superiority, in any situation, is dangerous and often breeds cruelty; in learning about the Jim Crow Era and our treatment of the Native Americans, I now realize that no group of people or person is superior to another in any way, shape, or form.  Studying the Jim Crow Era and the conflict with the Native Americans also showed me how ignorance of other people and cultures, and the rejection of what is different, can inhibit cross-cultural relationships and even lead to the destruction and dehumanization of an entire race.  In these two moments of history, differences in culture caused people to separate and attack one another instead of allowing for a more diverse and rich nation to be formed.  I can now fully appreciate the dangers of ignorance and its massive impact on world conflict.   

     I am still unsure as to what I specifically gained from viewing the Milgram Experiment, but I do know that it affected me deeply.  The ‘teachers’ that refused to continue after the first signs of pain by the ‘learner’ were a comfort to me because of their strong sense of morality.  However, the ‘teachers’ that continued the experiment after realizing that the ‘learner’ was in excruciating pain or was potentially dead was appalling to me.  I cannot determine whether they continued solely because of the threat of authority or because of an innate sadistic nature of theirs.  This movie forced me to consider something that I always, and for the most part still do, refused to believe: that there may a part of the human character that instinctively favors sadism.  

     The core of the Facing History class was rooted in the Holocaust.  I entered this class expecting to know all of the material already and worried that the class would lack the ‘wow’ factor because of my background knowledge of the Holocaust.  I was completely mistaken.  These couple of months in Facing History have left me confused, distraught, and lost at times.  After seeing the graphic and tragic scenes of “The Pianist” and “The Grey Zone” I felt sick, both physically and with emotionally.  I cried for two hours after watching “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” because I could not understand how such innocence could be misconstrued as ‘the enemy.’  I was so wrong to think that I would ever become desensitized to the events and atrocities of the Holocaust after repeatedly learning about it.  I am someone who internalizes almost everything, and because of that, at times I felt a massive amount of guilt because of the fact that I am alive right now, usually consumed by petty things, while the Jews during the Holocaust had to suffer such unthinkable and disgusting tortures.  As a way to counterbalance the guilt that I feel, I have resolved wear my Jewish heritage with a deep sense of kinship and humility and to dedicate my life to preventing other genocides and crimes against humanity occurring across the world.  Through learning from the horrors of the Holocaust and stopping genocide across the world, the countless people murdered by the Nazis will not have died in vain.  I always knew that I wanted to help others when I grew up, but it was the Facing History class that determined my career in social justice.      

     Community Across Nations will be an organization dedicated to promoting cross-cultural unity and awareness, and a desire to help others.  It will connect two towns, locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds through community service, pen-paling, and other unifying experiences.  Ignorance has caused the sense of camaraderie and kinship between human beings to be lost.  As a result, intense hatreds and rivalries have bred and unthinkable evils such as the Holocaust have been able to occur.  I am not willing to live in a world where such crimes against humanity are being committed.  Community Across Nations will be a non-profit organization designed to benefit everyone by advocating for a world fully united and connected through mutual understanding and respect for each others’ cultures, economic backgrounds, and histories.

     I used to think that all of my efforts and thoughts towards ‘saving Darfur’ and creating a world without genocide were insignificant because I was only one person.  Facing History has given me a voice and the knowledge that even one voice can make all of the difference.  Change comes from within, it comes from personal choices to act instead of sit idly, to speak instead of remain silent.  I choose to act and I choose to speak because I know now that to be a bystander is to be just as bad as the murderer.  Gandhi once said “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  And I will be; it is time to reintroduce the human connection to the world around us, because together we can make a difference in the lives surrounding us, together we C.A.N.            

Works Cited

Milgram Experiment. Google Images. Image. 18 May 2011.
Freedom Writers. Google Images. Image. 18 May 2011.
Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Google Images. Image. 18 May 2011.
Americanization of Native Americans. Google Images. Image. 18 May 2011.
The Pianist. Google Images. Image. 18 May 2011.
Ghandi Be the Change. Google Images. Image. 19 May 2011.