What Facing History and Ourselves meant to me

When I first began taking facing history, I was not expecting what I got.  For years I had been told that it was this eye-opening, amazing class.   I was expecting so much.  As time went on, the class got more and more interesting, but I still was not quite impressed.  I didn’t find the class to be as shocking as people said it would be.  All I saw was hours and hours of Nazi atrocities recorded on video and played for us.  As the term moved on, I seemed to be learning more and more about the Nazis, but I still did not feel greatly affected by the class personally.  As the class continued, I began to start to notice a pattern, though, and as the class progressed the pattern became more and more prominent.  One person had the power to change something so great.  One person could be the difference between 20 people dying and 100 people dying.  Also, I noticed that for once in a long time I actually understood more than just what happened in history, and that way I was able to learn so much more.  As the class progressed, the videos slowly increased something that was mentioned on one of our very first days in facing history: Civic Agency.  Normally, Teachers only teach the intellectual part of history, or what happened.  They can rarely connect me morally and emotionally with what happened, and watching the footage of these heinous wartime crimes being committed both emotionally effected me and brought in the morality of the Nazi actions.  German people were standing by while their fellow human beings were being slaughtered.  Due to the constant bashing of Jews, the astounding amount of anti-Semitism that occurred in Nazi Germany, the idea that the Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals were not equal humans became widespread and tied into the German culture of the time.  Bystanders allowed this anti-Semitism to spread throughout the culture, and slowly let it take over because they would rather stand back and not get in trouble then stand up for what was right at the time, and due to that the anti-Semite views became what were “right”.  Every single person that stood by and allowed someone to say that the Jews were bad indirectly caused the murder of over six million people.  This is simply just not right.  We did not only learn about how a single person ignoring something can cause deaths, though.  We also learned the power of the human race.  One single person can either create one of the largest genocides in history in Hitler’s case, or stand up for what they believed in and save lives, as in the polish resistance fighters that would fight to the death for their cause and their families.  What those people did was true sacrifice for the bettering of the world.  They were courageous in their actions, not doing it for fame or fortune but to create a better chance for their fellow Jews.  Facing History and Ourselves has taught me so much.  I have learned that I can be one of these people.  By doing the smallest things every day, someone else will see what I did and begin to do the same.  Then, somebody else might notice that person and change something about them for the better.  These miniscule changes by one single person can add up to an amazing outcome, very easily.  Anyone is capable of changing the world, one positive thing at a time.  But only if we let these things prevail, and don’t let the negative words be said and the negative morals changed.  The world we live in is the only one we have, and if we don’t work together as a whole to improve it, we will all end up dead.  It is either cooperate or self-destruct.  Facing history has really taught me so much.  It has taught me to respect my fellow human being even more.  No human being has the right to judge another, because none of us are perfect.  When this does occur, it creates separation and the creation of classes, which eventually will cause war and unhappiness.  Facing history and Ourselves has also really taught me to not say anti-Semitic things, even if I’m just joking around.  Someone close by may become offended by such words, or somebody may take that serious and begin to spread the anti-Semite ideas.  These anti-Semitic ideas may lead to complete bigotry of the population, just like pre-WWII Germany.  By not keeping the memory of the holocaust fresh and minimizing the amount of anti-semite remarks, We are doomed to repeat the past but we may not be so lucky.  You could be the next holocaust victim.  You could be the one on the other side of the electric fence.  You could be the one being marched into the gas chambers.  We all must participate in the removal of racism in society before something horrible like this occurs again.  I, Personally, used to say many anti-semitic things in a joking manner, and I did not realize what I may have been causing until one of my friends approached me and told me how he felt about me saying such things.  This caused me to realize that words are much more than just words.  They can lead to so much more and may severely damage people psychologically.  They can lead to the extermination of an entire race.