Introduction

            I had no idea what Facing History and Ourselves was when my guidance counselor recommended it. I had a hole in my schedule, and my guidance counselor told me what courses I could take.

“Facing History?” my guidance counselor asked.

“What’s it about?” I responded, kind of interested.

“It focuses on the Holocaust and-”

“Yes, sign me up.”  I remember thinking that I had never really learned about the Holocaust in school. I had only learned about it in Hebrew School. I was preparing myself for a difficult course, but I never expected the course to be as hard as it was.

Facing History is a course about you. It is about learning who you are. In this class I have learned that I am not a bystander, nor can I ever be one. This course was very emotional for me due to the material and the way in which it was taught. The course was mainly taught using film. Whether it was propaganda film like Triumph of the Will or other films such as The Grey Zone, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas or Swing Kids, each movie taught me more and more about World War II and the Holocaust, especially the emotional connection that these movies give you. They have really tugged at my heart strings and affected me in a big way. This course is like nothing I have ever taken. I was taken into Nazi Germany, into the Concentration Camps. I experienced what it must have felt like to be in Europe during World War II. It is one thing to read about history, but when you watch movies of first-hand experiences of the people in World War II, you really take away more from it. I have seen so much in the past semester and I know that all of this will remain in my mind and my heart forever.