Facing history and ourselves benefit me as a student and person in some ways. As a student, I’ve learned more about the holocaust by taking this course. One of the things I learned was how some of the Jews actually fought back against the Nazis and actually had weapons to fight back. When I saw that the Jews fought back I was actually happy that they tried to fight back. Another interesting thing I learned in this course was how people in Germany loved Adolf Hitler. One other thing last thing that was interesting which was why Hitler didn’t like the Jews and I finally learned the reasons why. Blogging what we learned about was more interesting because I was curious to know what everyone else thought and it was interesting seeing what everyone said. There would be someone who would agree with my opinion or I agree with someone’s opinion.
Another thing we did during class that was interesting was the discussions we had during class. The specific discussion that brought my attention was the Penn state football coach being fired and how the students at Penn state reacted to that. During that discussion someone would say that the head coach shouldn’t have had a very big punishment and that the other coach that was doing things to younger kids should’ve had been punished way more dealed with the consequences that the head coach has to deal with. Then someone else said that the head coach did the deserve the punishment and should have dealed with the consequences even though he wasn’t really involved in the situation. Then there was a discussion about how the students at Penn state reacted to the coach being fired. We were arguing if it was necessary for the students to react the way they did. In my opinion, I thought it was necessary since the head coach at Penn state was there for a very long time and also he was not involved with the kids and the other coach. Just hearing what other say was interesting and what they said to back up what they think.
There were some movies that I thought were pretty disturbing but glad I watched them because learned something out of those movies and I probably won’t forget about them and remember where I learned that stuff from. The movie I found really disturbing was the boy in the striped pajamas. What made the movie disturbing was that there was the little Jewish kid that was in the movie and how the Nazis treated him and I just thought it was unbelievable and unfortunately it was true that there were little kids in the concentration camps and were treated bad by the Nazis. I was shocked to see this one scene where Bruno, a little boy whose father is a Nazi, gave that little Jewish boy food and that kid got yelled at by a Nazi just for talking to Bruno. Also there was this other scene where Bruno went to go visit Bruno at the side of the concentration camp where both of them would go just to talk and when the Jewish kid showed his face for the first in that scene, you could see that he had a scar on his face. I thought it was just so terrible and hard to even see that scar on his face. I never knew anyone would even hit a kid and leave a scar like that on his face. I really thought that was sad. Throughout the movie I noticed that Bruno didn’t know why the all the Jews were dressed in their uniforms and why they were treated badly by the Nazis. I thought that he would’ve known what was going on since his dad is a Nazi and all these Nazis were around his house and all these other Nazis were having meetings at his dad’s office. The whole movie was just so disturbing and hard to watch especially the ending. At the end I was really shocked to see that Bruno’s parents never noticed he was gone and went into the concentration camp and from there the Nazis never noticed that Bruno wasn’t a Jew. Then he went to the gas chambers and his parents didn’t come on time to save him. That was one of the saddest endings I’ve ever seen in a movie.
The pictures that we had to see after watching the boy in the striped pajamas was really sad and disturbing to see too. What made them hard to see was that you could see in all the Jew’s faces that they don’t want to be there and really don’t want to die. There were some pictures where you could see that some Jews have not eaten in a very long time. They were so hungry that you could see their bones popping out and they get so weak that they can’t walk or even stand up straight. There was one picture where you see some Nazis really happy. It looked like they were having a blast I really don’t see what’s so awesome about torturing and killing people. It just made me so mad when I saw that picture because what would happen if they were suffering like the Jews, they wouldn’t be laughing at that. Seeing those pictures of the Jews was just sad to see.
I’ve learned much from this course and it really benefits me. I got to learn more about the holocaust and I’ve really wanted to learn more about Nazi Germany. I wanted to learn more about the Auschwitz concentration camp. It was shocking to me hearing about all the things that happened in Auschwitz but I’m glad I know more about the holocaust. Our discussions we had were very interesting and the movies were disturbing but good to learn from because they showed more detail about what happened to the Jews in the concentration camps. I really learned allot this semester and really glad I took this course.
