Rick Casparriello

Mr. Gallagher

Period 1

5/23/12

Facing Myself

                I have taken many interesting courses throughout my life time but none more unique or beneficial than Facing History and Ourselves.  This course not only goes through an in depth view of the Holocaust but also provides a foundation for this major topic by explaining the racial issues and the wave of discrimination covering all parts of the world during the first half of the 1900’s.  This miraculous feat is achieved through the use of both primary film in its original state and other films which are based on actual events but portray them in a more cinematic interpretation.  I chose to take this course not only to learn about the Holocaust, one of the world’s darkest moments, but also to learn about myself and how I fit in the web of history.  I wanted to understand not only what happened in the past to other but also what my part would be in the present and future to prevent such a travesty from ever happening again.  I consider myself a very independent, strong willed,  , person so when I heard about this class I knew it was a unique opportunity to look at myself in an unbiased light.  I never turn down an opportunity to learn more about myself so this class was no different.  I viewed it as another chance to find out more about myself and maybe even unearth a little more character along the way.  I never expected the class I was about to take would alter the course of my history in the perpetual way in which it has.

                Of the written documents we read during the beginning part of the course was The Bear That Wasn’t.  This was a story about a bear that was hibernating in a cave in the woods but when he wakes up the forest has been developed by businessmen.  The bear is trying to find out what has happened to his forest but all along his journey when people ask him why he cares about the forest he replies “because I’m a bear”.  To this the people say “no you’re not you’re just a silly man who needs to shave and wears a fur coat”.  Of course this is a ridiculous suggestion however after being told it often enough the bear begins to believe he actually is just “a silly man who needs to shave and wears a fur coat”.  Although it sounds somewhat humorous the lesson was not lost on me, I understand what the author meant by this amusing story.  He wanted to show that if a person is told something about themselves over and over again no matter what it maybe they will eventually come to accept it as fact.  This is what happened during the Holocaust to the Jews, disabled peoples, homosexuals, and other minority groups.  They were told over and over again over the course of decades and in the Jewish people’s case centuries that they were somehow inferior and undeserving of basic human rights.  And eventually it changed the mind set of not only everyone around them but also their own minds to the point at which they certainly may have thought less of themselves.  This lesson I felt was one of the most important because it described how people’s points of views of themselves and others could be altered merely through the use brutal repetition and ignorance.  This is a lesson I fear it may have taken me much longer to learn, if I ever learned it at all, had I not taken Facing History and Ourselves.  This reading was the first of three major shocks I had in the class.

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               The second major shock I had came from a completely unexpected place, the one place in fact I had vowed I would never be shocked or surprised; school,  a small school in Riceville, Iowa to be precise.  Here is where Jane Elliot began her crusade against discrimination and indifference one small, short, backpack-lugging, third grader at a time.  She invented a two day experiment in which she divided the class into two groups those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes.  She would then chose one eye color to be the dominant race for the day and not only allow but encourage the children of the dominant race to discriminate and pick on the children of the lower race.  The next day she swapped the social classes and repeated the experiment all over again.  Within those two days she saw tension and in some cases even violence build between the two separate “races” as these third graders learned how to hate each other.  After the experiment was over Elliot talked to the children about their experiences and help to mediate any remaining tensions.  This was a dramatic lesson not only for the children involved but also for me personally watching the experiment documentary right from the comfort of my own classroom.  I was amazed at how little it took to make two groups feel different or separate from one another and how quickly one of the two groups could come to believe that they were in some way superior to the other group.  This was not only shocking but also critical to my understanding of how the world works and how events such as the Holocaust can ever possibly occur.  Jane Elliot and her brave students helped instill in me a lesson which I am only now beginning to fully understand, man does not seek to find differences between themselves, but once noticed man will struggle to show that his difference makes him better or more superior in some way.  I believe this to be a survival instinct, one must make his differences at the very least appear to be advantages so they are not mistaken as disadvantages, but when this survivalist instinct goes too far people can be hurt.

http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1024&bih=681&tbm=isch&tbnid=d7ery7qiVTYy6M:&imgrefurl=http://ecryptical.blogspot.com/2010/06/when-i-first-saw-eye-of-storm-on-pbs.html&docid=A3pX9ohJCWjUrM&imgurl=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5280oqrot5AtUvnPMcbQpQuLL2-TwbfsOBsj6fIMQyX15ZSzCWJlF8zMxDWxzd3g4s6-tPMsGrCHp90aY5nWx9GQf4OPgK8nNk0df6ZZ2Q_NTow98L1rPVmIyw589ny3S-_7r4WwI2M29/s1600/janeelliott1-460x350.jpg&w=460&h=350&ei=euK-T7PPDvOd6AHwidXQCg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=426&vpy=187&dur=383&hovh=196&hovw=257&tx=158&ty=94&sig=110788657697327100838&page=1&tbnh=140&tbnw=178&start=0&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:105

                An instance in which people were hurt by this need to be superior would be the Holocaust.  A film I watched in Facing History and Ourselves called The Nazi Death Camps told the all too horrifying story of the genocide perpetrated by the German government and people during World War II.  This documentary showed actual footage taken by Allied soldiers as they liberated the camps.  As the title of the film suggests the Nazi Death Camps are where the most brutal and savage killings of the genocide occurred although not where the vast majority of the victims involved were killed.  Most in fact were starved to death in ghettos before ever reaching the death camps but those unlucky enough to live long enough to make it to one of the death camps faced poisonous gas showers and then the crematorium.  Those even more unlucky were worked on starvation diets until months later they too were killed.  This film showed the gruesome aftermath of the murder of an entire race of people.  The terror I felt when I for the first time realized the scale on which this genocide was taking place overwhelmed me.  I had heard the numbers before but there’s a difference between being told thousands of bodies lay scattered on the ground and seeing it for yourself.  It also occurred to me as I watched that if I was so shocked and surprised by the devastation I was viewing was it possible that others were the way I had been only moments prior, happy, content, unaware of the full extent of this atrocious travesty?  I will never go back to what I was moments prior to watching that film, I know not what I would have done, who I would have been, or what I would have thought and quite frankly I try not to think about what my life would have been like without having seen this film because I am certain my life has now changed for the better.  Everyone on the plant needs to watch, not should watch, needs to watch this film and others like it so that it can have the same affect on them that it did on me.

http://www.google.com/imgres?start=12&num=10&um=1&hl=en&biw=1024&bih=681&tbm=isch&tbnid=zuSS6Iqc-Z8uDM:&imgrefurl=http://mrbrownww2.pbworks.com/w/page/24477339/nazi%2520holocaust(erica%2520and%2520caroline)&docid=q2iX9-a87fU21M&imgurl=http://mrbrownww2.pbworks.com/f/1269380418/concentration%252520camps.gif&w=600&h=485&ei=s-O-T9nkHKaX6QHf1tCyCg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=741&vpy=72&dur=495&hovh=170&hovw=211&tx=200&ty=140&sig=110788657697327100838&page=2&tbnh=146&tbnw=182&ndsp=17&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:12,i:11


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       In conclusion Facing History and Ourselves is not merely another class which helps you fill a credit requirement.  It is a class capable of altering your life and your mind if you open yourself up to it.  Before this class I realize I was hiding in the shadows completely innocent and oblivious to history and what it can teach us.  History is not made up of statistics, or numbers, or dates and times.  It is made up of people and thoughts and beliefs, hopes, dreams, triumphs, failures and everything in between.  It is a scary thing to explore but the toughest part is getting started.  And for those who do decide to turn out of the darkness and face the people of history, well, they find that their not just turning to face the world and all it has to offer but their also turning to face themselves and whatever they themselves might hold.