Introduction

Facing History is a course that teaches people more about themselves. It shows them decisions and choices that other people have made in different situations such as the holocaust and exposes those who take it to see what happens when no one stands up for the victims of the situation. The course teaches students about racism, prejudice and anti-Semitism. Through movies, pictures and actual footage taken during the holocaust it gives the students civic agency or the ability to have a moral, intellectual and emotional connection to what is being taught. It challenges students to think about what they would do if placed in a situation where dehumanization and severe humiliation of certain groups of people was present. It also teaches importance of standing up for what you think is right. The course shows what happens when racism and prejudices go on without anyone stopping it and how easy it makes it to mass exterminate millions of people. The course does an awesome job teaching about the holocaust. It shows the rise and fall of Hitler’s rule. It also takes those who are in the course inside concentration camps in Europe and shows what went on there. The class is basically a series of films that are shown. They get progressively worse and by the end of them as a student I have seen inside the camps of Nazi Germany, I have seen the Warsaw ghetto. I have seen the Jewish people resist against the Nazis. The one thing in the course I never saw was the Germany people or the Polish people or anyone that was not being persecuted stand up for those who were. Many of them were bystanders but the course also taught me not to judge them because I cannot imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes. The course is designed in hopes that the students learn to think about the things they say and do before they do them. It teaches them to stand up for those who are bullied or mistreated because otherwise they are just a bystander. A bystander is exactly like the perpetrator because by not saying anything you are allowing what is happening to happen.