Reflective Essay: Having The Holocaust As A Teacher

Having the Holocaust as a Teacher When I signed up for this course last semester I thought we would be talking about Hitler and his plan to kill people the whole time and that it would be gruesome and sad. It was gruesome and sad but for entirely different reasons. This class made me feel emotions that I didn’t think I had. The Holocaust made me think differently about what is going on around me and be aware of what decisions are being made for me politically. I have grown tremendously in taking this course and I wish I could take it again and again to learn more. At the beginning of the class we started reading the Bergen book and I was mad about it. That book was so technical and boring that it brought tears to my eyes. I am not much of a read-and-learn-it type of person so I knew things were just flying out of my brain as soon as I read them. Once we got into the novels it was a new world for me. In the novels I could put myself inside what the survivors had gone through and feel what they felt. I felt terrified and more blue than I thought possible. As I imagined being in those camps I realized that I could never really understand what it was like. I will hopefully never be scared enough or sad enough to feel …show more content…
I am thinking about how people are treated everyday in my own country. I think about how I treat people in my close circle and just strangers walking down the street. To know that indifference is what helped move the Holocaust right along is heart breaking to me. I hope that I would never be so uncaring about a person or group of people that I would turn a blind eye to murder. I am going to be more conscious to what is going on around me. I am trying to work on my voice so when I see something that shouldn’t be happening I can say something about it. Being a kind and caring person should not just stop at family and friends. People should be watching out for