The Facing History in Ourselves course benefits students in several ways. This course puts a huge emphasis on the kind of person someone is, or who they may aspire to be. There are five different types of people: the perpetrator, the victim, the bystander, the rescue, and the resistance. Throughout this course we saw many examples of each of these types of people. Perpetrator is defined as someone who is responsible for a criminal act. The perpetrator in the Holocaust would be considered the Nazis. Next, a victim is a person who suffers from a destructive or harmful action or agency. Those who would be considered victims in the Holocaust would be the Jewish people as well as many other races which were considered to be minorities. The bystander is another type of person one could be. A bystander is defined as a person who is present, but it not involved. However, there are many who disagree with this definition. A bystander is similar to whiteness. They see something go on but not part take in it. Although seeing something go on and being involved in the act are not that different. Those who witnessed crimes such as what happened in the Holocaust are just as guilty as those who were actually doing the crimes. The “bystanders” had the opportunity to make a difference and try to stop what was going on because it was clearly unfair to the victims. However they chose not to do that. They chose to stand back and watch the horrors that were going on before them and chose not to do anything about it. They could be considered to be just as guilty as the perpetrators. The Nazi party as well as many others who witnessed these happenings is considered bystanders. The sad thing is that they thought that they were innocent. They did not believe that they had done anything wrong because they were not the ones who were working to concentration camps; they were not the ones killing innocent people. But that is not the case. When someone witnesses something, they too, are guilty for not doing the right thing. If the bystanders were to try to make a change and stand up for what they believed was right, then they would become what is known as the rescue. The rescuer is the person who saves the victims. They stand up for what they believe is right. This can work sometimes, and the victims can end up being saved, however, there are also times where this may not work, and the victim is still in danger. However, the intensions of the rescuer were to rescue or save the victim, and if more people were like that, then the turn out of the Holocaust could have been so different. And lastly, the resistance is considered to be a group of people who come together to resist against the perpetrator. An example of resistance now, would be the Facing History in Ourselves class. Now that we have come together in a group and learned about all these things, we are now a group that would resist against any perpetrator in which we think is wrong. By learning these types of people that one could be or become, I have learned the type of person that I want to be. And the person that is, is the rescue. I never want to be considered a person who just stands there and watches things to happen without trying to help. I am the kind of person who avoids conflict at all costs; however this is something I need to work on, especially if I want to become a rescuer. I can’t imagine the feeling I would have if I witnessed something that was hurting someone else and I stood back and did nothing but watch them get hurt. I wouldn’t want to admit to myself that I was that kind of person. But being a rescuer is something I can be proud of. It is something that I’m going to have to work on because I am very shy when it comes to confrontation. But I am definitely willing to work on that characteristic of myself because I believe that I could make some kind of a difference.
There were a lot of facets of this course that were meaningful to me and caused me to now think the way that I do. I think that the movies were what affected me the most. There were a few that were really meaningful to me more than the others. “The Pianist” was one film that completely changed my view of this course as soon as I watched it. Mainly, it was the scene where the Jewish families were in the ghetto, and the Nazis came in the middle of the night and told them all to get out of the building. When an older man couldn’t stand from his wheelchair, the Nazi soldiers tipped the man out of his wheelchair and out the window. They then rushed the families out of the building and told them to run, but as they were running they shot them all. And the ones who still seemed to be alive they ran over with their truck. This was one of the most gruesome things I’ve ever seen. It really put into perspective to me of what exactly the Nazis would do to the Jews. For the rest of the course I understood so much better what went on during this time and what it was like for Jewish people- the constant fear they had of not knowing what was going to happen or when they would be killed. The next film that was really meaningful to me was “The Grey Zone”. This was not an easy movie for me to watch. I don’t enjoy watching movies where there is a lot of graphic or gory scenes. When I watch those kinds of movies I find myself telling myself that it’s okay, because it’s only a movie. However this isn’t something that I could do with this film. I tried doing that when sad or somewhat scary parts would come up, but I could not do that, because this was real and did actually happen. It was scary and hard for me to just watch this film, and the victims during that Holocaust had to actually live in this horror. I can’t even imagine their thoughts or feelings. Again, I don’t think that I will ever truly understand what being a victim in the Holocaust was like, but these movies gave me a good sense of how horrible it was. The next film that was meaningful to me was the U.S. Army film footage of the “Nazi Concentration Camps”. This film was meaningful to me because this was actual footage from the Holocaust. I had seen pictures of it before, however it did not actually come to life until I saw the film. The part of the film that I found the hardest to watch was when the soldiers were tossing the bodies into the ditch to bury them. The way they were handling the bodies were completely disgusting and absurd and I honestly had to look away at times because I didn’t think that I could handle watching something like that. They completely tortured the prisoners while they were living, and then once they had died, they treated them even worse. The way their bodies were literally tossed around made it seem like they were not even humans to begin with. It was so horrifying to see exactly how the Nazis treated the prisoners because I don’t see how someone could treat another human being that way. After watching these three films along with the discussions that we’ve had throughout the class, I know exactly what went on during the time of the Holocaust and makes me truly disgusted that people could do that to each other.
