What Facing History & Ourselves Meant To Me

This Facing History and Ourselves course done by Mr. Gallagher has been unlike any other course I have ever taken before. I came into this course baring the opinions of my friends who took the course in the previous semester. From what I had been told I came in with high expectations and this course met or surpassed every one of them. This course was truly everything I had expected and hoped for plus more. This course is the first course I have ever taken where the information and knowledge being presented to me by the teacher wasn’t just more school work. I don’t mean to say that this class was just another fun class, while it was a fun course and I did look forward to the class each day it was really much more than that; the course lead me to interpret everything and look at myself and who I am. The title of the course is perfect, I was not only facing history and learning more history I was also facing myself and learning more about me.

To write this essay I had to think about over the course and everything we did starting just a few months ago, currently focusing mainly on the present and the very recent past of the course until then I didn’t realize how much meaningful and useful information we covered. The first film we viewed that enticed me to let me guard down and really open up to the course was the documentary A Class Divided. This documentary really struck home for me because my sister AshleyLynn, who I am extremely close with, is a third grade teacher at Saint Peter’s Catholic School in a small town called Reserve in Louisiana. I found the documentary easily relatable due to the stories I hear from my sister. Watching the little kids in Mrs. Elliot’s class discriminate against each other immediately took me back to when my sister first started her job and came home shocked by the racism of her third graders and when she was absolutely appalled the first time she heard a third grade student use the word “nigger” in her classroom. Being able to relate so closely to this documentary early on in the course allowed me to really open up for the rest of the semester which allowed me to take much more from this course.

Two of the films we viewed that I enjoyed the most during this course were The Pianist and the Uprising. The Pianist tells the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman who was a very successful piano player in Poland in the 1930’s but still lived in Warsaw. I really enjoyed this film, when we were unable to finish it during class I rented the movie and watched it from the beginning with my mother. While watching this film I felt emotionally connected to the characters including Wladyslaw and his family. While enjoying the film though I was still learning about how it became impossible for the Jewish people to escape the Nazis. A few things in the movie really stuck in my mind. I was shocked to see the Jewish police help the Nazis and turn on their own people; this actually made me quite upset during the film. Another thing that I found shocking and that has still stuck with me today was the raids by the soldiers specifically the scene where they threw the elderly handicapped man over the balcony. The other movie that became one of my favorites, for some of the same reasons, was the Uprising. The Uprising is a film about the armed uprising by the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto. Before watching the Uprising I was completely unaware that the Jews fought back and did so with such success. I found it very impressive that the Jews were able to be so successful that the German army had to shell the ghetto and even with this some Jews still managed to escape. This film, like The Pianist, I felt emotionally connected to the main characters and was held in complete suspense between the classes when we were watching. This movie gave me the exact opposite reaction and emotions that I had when I saw the Jewish Police turn against their own people. I found myself being overwhelmed with how proud I was at the people who stepped up as leaders in the ghetto.

Some of the most powerful classes we had during this course were a few of the final ones; the class in which we watched the actual footage from inside the concentration camp as well as the class in which we passed around the photographs depicting various scenes of the holocaust. The video of the actual footage from inside the concentration camps was the most emotionally tolling video of the year for me. There were numerous time were it was physically hard to watch. I continuously found myself with my jaw dropped throughout the entire movie. The final moments of the video were just as shocking as the opening moments; no human being could become used to seeing such images. Many of these emotions were very similar to the emotions felt the day we viewed the photographs in class. There is something to be said about holding an actual photograph in your hand, the connection is so much more real that the images become even more moving and powerful. One of the moments from these two class periods that is still vividly stuck in my mind is when Mr. Gallagher held up the photograph of the group of German people laughing and said, “I want you to look at this and remember this photograph for the rest of your lives. This is what you look like when you feel that you are better than or that you are above another human being.” I will remember for the rest of my life that photograph and Mr. Gallagher’s words as well as his facial expression and body language as he delivered this life lesson to my class.

The greatest lesson I learned and will be taking away from this course is that when a person becomes a bystander they enable perpetrators to impose anything they want. Facing myself through this course lead me to realize the negativity that can come from personally being a bystander. Along with this I additionally realized that no matter how insignificant an individual may believe they are or feel they are still capable of making a significant difference. Because of this course I vow to continue to uphold that when faced against oppression or witness it occurring I will never be a bystander.