Facing History in Myself

Facing history in short is a very different class. Though there are preconceived notions about the curriculum and the teacher alike, like all things one must experience this course to truly understand and appreciate it. People take this course for a multitude of reasons,” it’s an easy A”, “Having heard Mr. Gallagher’s the man”, etcetera. For whatever the reason may be, just know that it will change. The class is an opportunity for individuals to learn of the past via the analytical break down of the Civil Rights movement and the Holocaust. Then using those same lessons, we then interpret the mentality and/or life lessons to be learned and apply them to the modern era. We are exposed to a surplus of film and primary sources. In those very films we see just how evil or misguided people can be. Overtime, the people in the pictures and films evolve to our senses and become real people. No longer are they just memories of the deceased it’s almost like close family. This is not to say we don’t learn the conflicting mentality. Although students do not typically agree with the ideals and practices or the Nazi’s sinister methods, we do comprehend it. We understand just why and how genocide can occur. We also learn a means of combating it. In this class we are given the ability to fully express our right of free speech. That is, we are not censored in the same way we would be in another class. So long as we don’t interrupt each other we were more than welcome to use, “sentence enhancers”. For those who are willing and able I highly recommend you take this class.

What Facing History in Ourselves Meant to me

Period 3 class of Facing History,

Lessons of genocide and Human based misery,

Masses of people killed for counter ideals, race and religion,

Join or die fools,” I’d NEVER be a part of Hitler’s clearly propaganda imbued legion”,

Neither logic nor reason the Nazi science was flawed,

Despite religion we’re all siblings in the eyes of God,

Hitler inadvertently removed Albert Einstein, the concept of which truly perplexed my mind, Hypothetical lives in his clutches, though circumstantial were thoroughly intertwined,

Atom bombs born of his Theory of relativity,

Radiation could have decimated an even broader surplus of cities,

Culminations formed based on the purge of difference,

One means to unify, killing is a cold inference,

Hitler a soldier turned and made sire,

So threatened by the Jews he left them a blaze in well-lit pyres,

Flesh and hair destroyed alike in immense oceans of fire,

He claimed his cause noble though murder was his only desire,

Propaganda absorbed teachers, spoke proud like theological based preachers,

For the smallest “little one’s” Hitler was their only divine creature,

Nazis together form a metaphor, “savage mother ursine”,

Prisoners cried out the borrowed squeals of, “inhumanely tortured swine” reminiscent,

S.S slaughtered individuals catalysts for the amalgam of agonized screams of the innocent,

If this life were mine I would be bruised bloodied and broken,

With Pandora’s Box Open, I would be found Hopin’ with hands tight around their necks choking,

No means to cope, and my palms thoroughly soaked crimson, air filled with brimstone and fire emissions listen, I would require to be discovered Nazi Blood drenched,

The animalistic blood thirst of my trauma induced psyche never content nor quenched,

The National impurity forged from the powerful corrupted,

Their unrelenting anger like the lava from our planet’s inner depths erupted,

The Nazi’s never to be trusted; they left more casualties than the radiation of Chernobyl,

It didn’t matter if you were German “Juden” were never to be considered locals,

I possess neither Fair blonde hair nor crystal blue eyes,

Even the “Aryan” people were nothing more the ignorant Nazi lies,

Meanwhile being an outspoken “nigger” I’d be one of the first to die,

At sunrise I admire the sky and look to the past,

What to do when post-traumatic stress disorder surely comes to pass,

Mothers forced to choose between 2 beloved children,

Stripped of her off spring the perpetual emptiness found with-in,

Story dark like an Aesop fable or a tome of the brothers Grimm,

Sodom and Gomorra like actions reminiscent of evil biblical hymns,

Have you seen individuals starved to the point found exceeding the very word “thin”,

As unfortunate as it is the past will never be left behind,

The atrocities I’ve seen I wish I could reset the clock and put it on rewind,

Unfortunately we look to the past to benefit the future,

So many disemboweled living corpses beyond the help of a suture,

Flesh bone and ash scattered across the land,

The ash so thick it was thought to be snow or sand,

It’s beyond comprehension that this was because of the efforts of one ignorant man,

When people weren’t burned they were promised a “shower”,

Reassured by their fellow man and yet death came within the hour,

Zyklon-B an evil solution argued to be augmented artificial death,

Individuals would be in the dark screaming in agony while the gasp and breathe their last breath,

After is a silence, soulless emptiness found in the gas chamber room,

Killed faster than an astronaut drifting aimless without a proper suit in the depths space,

Also known to be a dark filled vacuum, an entire people thought unfit of the human race,

Loss of loved ones old and new abused and killed in the streets,

How could it ever be possible for souls so savagely beaten to ever find peace?

We do no good if we belittle the onslaught from so many years prior,

Under those circumstances ignorance allows Mass genocide to survive and prosper,

Remember we must, making sure to learn from the past and better the potential future, “preventing vile humanity to thrive and conquer”,

After all genocide is a cruel temptress born of nature only by cutting her roots may we attempt to stop “Her”.

Feeling inspired by the class, I felt it necessary to attempt to put the amalgam of emotions and lessons into a poem. I felt this course to be a quite enlightening experience. I’d strongly recommend it to anyone. Unfortunately, not everyone will have this experience. From the first day I walked in and as I enter my last, I feel myself evolving for the better. Call it “brainwashing” or call it awakening. Mr. Gallagher’s class broadened my view on the world I once thought worthy of my analytically endowed cynical view. A majority of the class is exposing the human psyche to evils we believed we fully understood. We bore witness to the horrors that fellow humans can create in depth. The course is also a catalyst for spiritual healing as well as philosophical rebirth. Over time we were said to develop, “Civic agency”, the ability to view the past with an understanding not out of hate. Essentially it is the ability to view through the eyes of both sides of the coin both the good and the evil. I wish more schools across the nation were given the opportunity to learn, study genocide and develop the ability. Some might claim, “The course focusses too much on the holocaust”. In my opinion Mr. Gallagher was able to incorporate a multitude of different periods of oppression/ genocide. Moreover, he successfully tied the modern era with the past in both hypothetical ad literal ways. This is not to say the class way only “Doom and Gloom”. Each and every day (unless the topic or film of the day was powerful) we were my peers and I were greeted and welcomed and given our own introductions. To put it simply the class was a, “Fucking thrill” and I could never regret being in the class.

Facing History in Myself

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Introduction

What Facing History in Ourselves Meant to me