Reflective Essay

The course that I am taking is Facing History and Ourselves and this course has benefits me as a student and as a person as of how the Nazis treated the Jewish people. The things that I’ve learned in this class are as follows The Bear That Wasn't, Little Boxes, After the First, White Man's Image, The Children's March, Freedom Writers, The Nazis: A Warning from History, THE LONGEST HATRED, America and the Holocaust, Swing Kids, Milgram experiment, The Pianist, Uprising, Treblinka, and The Grey Zone. This course has benefited me because I learned about each of these topics in this class. One of the facets that I have learned about is the Milgram Experiment. That’s where people would be volunteers in a test. He would read the words to the other guy behind the door, he would have to guess what the right answer is. If the guy gets it wrong then he will be shocked with electric volts. The experiment would keep going until the guy gets all of the words correct. The professor would take full responsibly if something happens to the guy that is being shocked by the electric volts.  

          

           The Grey Zone is about Jewish prisoners that have arrived and all are immediately sent to the gas chambers. The groups are given instructions about "delousing," a fearful, angry man that is in the group. He begins to shout questions at one of the Sonderkommando, Hoffman. Hoffman has been issuing the instructions for the groups. Hoffman starts to beat him to death in an outburst of frustration. In an attempt to make the man stop talking was to beat him and start an outburst of frustration. After the gassing of the same group, Hoffman finds a young girl alive beneath a pile of dead bodies. He removes the young girl out from the gas chamber. After Hoffman informed the leader of the insurgency, he has Schlermer take her to a storage room to hide her from the others. He summons Nyiszli, who revives this young girl. The group has decided to take the little girl and hide her in the children’s camp to keep her safe. The doctor Nyiszli has taken Muhsfeldt outside and talk about the uprising. Muhsfeldt had agreed to protect the young girl. When I watched this film, I felt bad about the people that were working at the camps and then when there was a little girl that was still alive, the Jews started a war at the camp and blew up the buildings. The others that were laying on the ground, had to lay on their stomach but I think that it wasn’t right of the Nazis to be shooting them all. Then the commander said to the little girl that she can go but then the guy takes out his gun and kills her. I thought that was not right of him to kill that little girl.

      

      Treblinka is about where the Jews and the Polish were at and how they are located 2 km from each other. They were forced to do labor work and it was controlled by the Germans. The camp is also divided into three different parts. The first of the camp of Treblinka is where the administrative section is. This section is where the guards, camp commander’s quarter, a bakery, a storage place, and the barracks which is for 800 prisoners are locked. The second part of the camp is where the railroad extends from the Treblinka station into the camp. There are only two barracks that are near the railroad tracks. This was used to store the all of the belongings of the prisoners. There were also two other buildings and they were about 100 meters away from the tracks. All of these buildings were used for the belongings of prisoners. There was one building that was used for an undressing room for women, who were also shorn of all their hair. Another building was a safekeeping building where there was a cashiers office for the jewelry, another building is the infirmary room where people that are sick go.

            Freedom Writers is about this teacher named Erin Gruwell who is happy about teaching at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School. She starts to realize that her students are all at risk and that they are all unteachable. The high school students are self-segregated into racial groups in the classroom. Also there would be gang break outs that would happen and then most of the students won’t attend school. Erin Gruwell is having difficulties with her department head. She first starts off not getting along with her students at the school. Eva’s boyfriend Paco attempts a drive by shooting and he accidently shoots Sindy’s boyfriend. He was trying to kill Grant but he missed him. As a witness, Eva is to testify at the court but intends to guard her own in the testimony. Gruwell starts to intercept a racial drawing that is done by one of her high school students and that she utilizes it to teach them about the Holocaust. She starts to gain the trust from her students. She gives them a notebook so they can write down anything they want about themselves. She also told them that if they would like for the teacher to read it, put it in the cabinet and that it she would be the only one to read them. So later on that day, she looks inside the cabinet and then she sees her student’s notebooks in there. She takes them out and starts to read them so she can understand more about each of her students.

         

   This course has benefited me because I learned about so many things in this class. I have learned how people were being treated and how that the Jews had to go to the concentration camps to go to work and live there. Most of the Jewish people were killed for no reason and I just thought that’s not right of the Nazis to do that to the Jews. I also thought that when I was watching documentaries, I felt bad for the people that went through it and that they had to work at these camps. I was also surprised that there was one Jew that escaped from the camp and left Germany. In my opinion I thought that Hitler really didn’t care about what he did to the Jews that were innocent and that had been put to work or just killed in the gas chambers for no reason. The reason why I took this course is because I thought that the Holocaust was not right for what the Nazis have done to the Jews who were innocent. I also thought this course is very interesting because I've learned a lot and that it will help me become a better person in the future.