What Facing History and Ourselves Meant to Me
As a student and as a person, I have
grown from this course. I remember 5 specific moments throughout the duration
of the course that really stuck with me. The orders in which I present them are
in no particular order in terms of their impact and importance to me. The first
moment was in the first week of the course, when Mr. Gallagher told us a story
about being a bully. Then he posed the question to us, “What are you going to
be when you walk out of this course?” The second moment was the film 12 Angry Men. Finally, the last three
moments that will stay with me all had to do with the Holocaust. The final
scene of The Grey Zone stuck with me,
as did the soup/potato scene of the film Fateless.
And last, but not least, was the bulldozer scene of the film showed during the
Nuremberg trials.
I remember quite clearly the story
Mr. Gallagher told of one of his former students; specifically one that he
thought had done well in the course and whom he had as an intern. This
particular student, he relayed to us, had decided to follow around a boy and
call him “gay” in the hallway, because this boy had made his girlfriend stop
hanging out with this particular student. This particular event was not
shocking to me, rather, I would not be surprised if I were in the hallway and
had seen something like this happening myself. What struck me was what Mr.
Gallagher said next, “If you come into this class as a jerk, like that student,
you’re going to leave this class as a jerk. But, if you’re a bystander, then
hopefully this class will teach you to do something, to take action.” I
realized something in the first week of this class – I was a bystander. If I
had seen what Mr. Gallagher described in the hallway, one boy grilling another,
I likely wouldn’t have done anything about it. I would have simply brushed it
off as a common occurrence, something that really wasn’t my business. But, Mr.
Gallagher’s statement really got me thinking. I needed to make a change, and I
really needed to examine myself throughout the course. This first week really
set in motion the moments in this class that I would remember, and the reaction
I would have throughout the course. I had decided I didn’t want to be a
bystander anymore.
12
Angry Men is a film I will remember not only because it was a riveting film
that I thought had excellent acting, but rather because the juror that stood up
to the group and was able to sway the entire group towards the decision of “Not
Guilty” is the type of person who I aspire to be like. Not only was he the
moral man, but also he stood up for what he believed was right, and he was
influential in doing so. He made a difference, which I think gave me some hope.
It demonstrated that if I stood up for something, however unpopular it may be,
I could always have the ability to make a difference like the dissenting juror
did. The dissenting juror gave me a vision, or rather a goal, of the type of
person I want to be.
While the first two moments that
stuck with me throughout this course mainly were causing me to analyze myself
and think about who I wanted to be, the final three important moments were ones
that incited anger inside of me. I would say that I find them to be moments
that would stick with me because they were all times that I wish I could have
done something, that I could have made a difference.
The first such a time was the
conclusion of the film The Grey Zone.
Specifically, I am talking about the scene when the girl who survived is
running away from the Nazis and was shot. It was a scene that simply completely
destroyed my sense of justice. Nothing was fair. This was a girl who had defied
all odds. She had survived the gas chambers to have the most powerful Jew in
the camp on her side. She went through Hell and came out on the other side
alive, only to have her life taken from her at the last possible moment. I
somewhat suspected her to not survive all along, but the simple fact is that
when she died, It was still very shocking. I was just very angry, and very
disturbed. Inside of me, it ignited a feeling that I wish I could have done
something, anything. I wish I could
have given the girl a fighting chance. This film will always stick with me
because it destroyed my idea of fairness, of justice, and this made me angry.
The next moment in the class that
really ignited the feelings inside of me was during the film Fateless. In one scene of the movie, the
main character saw another man in the camp “selling” a potato. The man would
sell the “potato” in exchange for the buyer’s portion of soup at dinner time.
The main character agreed to the exchange, and ate the potato. Of course, when
dinner came, he wouldn’t give the soup ration to the man who he bought the
potato from, and they ended up fighting over the soup. Most of the soup was
spilled during the altercation. I wasn’t particularly angry at the main
character. At first, I was a little bit angry at the man with potato, or almost
disappointed. How could he have been so stupid? How did he possibly think that
he would get the soup for the potato? Didn’t he understand the situation? Then
I took a step back, and saw the situation for what it was. The Nazis had
created this situation. The man with the potato was innocent enough to believe
the deal would be upheld. But, the concentration camps are no moral place.
There is no justice. I think that’s why this scene stuck with me, because yet
again there was no justice. It is simply a free-for-all, everyone for
themselves.
Finally, the last image that will haunt me from
this course is that of the bulldozer scene during the film shown at the
Nuremberg trials. By the time we reached that scene in class, we had been
watching for about 45 minutes. I remember seeing the piles of dead bodies, and
then seeing the bulldozer pushing the mounds of dead bodies into the pit. I had
seen so many horrible images and so much death and destruction by this point
that the horrendous nature of this scene didn’t immediately register. Then, Mr.
Gallagher paused the movie, and said something I won’t forget, “The Nazis
taught all the Germans that Jews were like garbage, that they were less than
human, and here they are getting pushed around by a bulldozer, like garbage
would at a landfill.” This is when the enormity of scene hit me. It made me so
angry. The Nazis had been driven out of the concentration camps. The bully was
gone. But still, the Jews couldn’t get treated properly. After death, we were
pushing them around like trash. We couldn’t even give them a proper burial. I
think this was the greatest injustice of all. If the Nazis had seen this scene,
they would have been happy, and that ignited the most anger inside of me.
Works Cited
Bystander. Google images. Image. 11 January 2014.
Work Makes You Free. Google images. Image. 11 January 2014.
Fateless. Google images. Image. 11 January 2014.
12 Angry Men. Google images. Image. 11 January 2014.
The Grey Zone. Google images. Image. 11 January 2014.
Bulldozer Nuremberg Trials. Google images. Image. 11 January 2014.
