Understanding the Holocaust

It's weird to read about your world in a history textbook.

I just finished reading several chapters in my AP World History textbook. It very accurately relays to the reader all of the facts and occurrences about the variety of situations our world has faced. It clearly describes different wars, different organizations, different processes of development. Nonetheless, it is very weird to read about your world in a history textbook. It just doesn't feel right. A textbook presents material as raw fact, but that is not how someone experiences it. For example, reading about 9/11 -- I read the facts, how it happened, when, where, what the effects were. And it makes sense in my academic mind. But that isn't how I remember it. I only remember sitting at my second grade desk listening to my classmates getting called down to the office one by one to go home for some unknown reason. That is how I experienced it, but no textbook will ever share the memories of some second grader halfway across the country.

With that in mind, I realize that I will never truly be able to understand the Holocaust- I wasn't there. Hence, I, along with everyone else, rely on the materials we have to try to understand it. A textbook does a fine job of providing me with the facts and events, but another very helpful source in my quest to understand is stories, whether fiction or non-fiction, and they are the thing that really help to understand what happened from an emotional standpoint.

As a class, we have been reading Mila 18 -- a novel focused particularly on the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. About two weeks ago I reached the point in the book where I could not put it down- the characters and the plot gripped me and I have been reading any free moment I have. I finished it this morning, closing the book with a feeling of grief, sorrow, and, oddly, contentedness. So many had died and their lives had been destroyed, but the Jews in the ghetto were illustrated as brave soldiers fighting with an obscene kind of passion. At the same time, they were illustrated as being just like you or me, trying to deal with relationships or trying to improve their piano skills -- but unlike you or me in that they experienced those things amidst the terror of the ghetto. Reading Mila 18 left me with a kind of understanding about the Holocaust, in particular about the Warsaw Ghetto, that I don't think I could ever obtain from a history textbook.

I understand that fiction isn't necessarily the best factual source and that it can't justify the experience of someone who actually went through the Holocaust. But I never will go through the Holocaust, and reading the experiences of normal people will be as close as I can get to understanding what really happened and what I might have been thinking or feeling if I was there. Novels and books like Mila 18 are the resource that allow me to understand. I can picture the street corner upon which the Warsaw uprising started, I can picture escaping through the sewers, I can feel the emotions and the tensions penetrating the room during the last Seder in Warsaw before it was burned to the ground. A textbook can't give me that.

-Erin Miller

Reflections

I am in a flurry of emotions right now about the entire trip. I'm scared and nervous about flying so far away from home. I'm excited because I've never been to Europe. I just really don't know what to feel.

Five months ago if you asked me why I wanted to go on the Eastern Europe Trip my response would be to go "see the sights" and "enjoy the awesome food", none of which really hold the clout or significance this trip has come to mean to me.

Before this seminar I guess you could say I was very disjointed from the rest of society. I didn't feel the pains of the people when I saw horrible things happening on TV. I felt so disconnected. I wanted to feel something, but it was difficult because I was not there. I couldn't fathom the horrors or see and hear the things that were a part of these people's everyday lives.

Now I can sing a different tune. Ms. Vander Pluym presents the Holocaust to us from a very individualistic standpoint, and although I wasn't there these methods she uses (i.e. creating a circle of things we felt defined who we are) recreates the emotion and the heaviness of the situation at hand.

I feel this seminar asked us to submit our lives, opinions, personalities so that they may be reshaped and reformed to fit the perspectives of those who were living during the time of the Holocaust. Now I'm not saying Ms. V is treating us like prisoners were treated during the Holocaust or is having us run around spreading propaganda or anything of that sorts, but the text we read and the discussions are powerful.

A few times while reading Mila 18 I had to stop for awhile then continue on because the events were so intense and so swift. I could literally feel the fear and the stress and the confusion of the characters. The loss of hope and the weariness of the situation. Every seminar I leave feeling a little more attached to the world and its people. Now I can look forward to this trip knowing that I'll get more out of it than a few good stories and a hand full of pictures.

Signed,
Chelsea Brown

The Inculcation of a Mad Man

I think what many of us would like to know is how on earth could someone be so naïve and follow Hitler and his ideologies. Before joining this trip I had always wondered how Hitler rounded up the entire German population and led them on his path to destruction. However since we have already seen the outcome of his reign of terror it is almost outlandish to us that any sane human being would want to join him and his mission.
Before we being to answer this question we must consider the current state of Germany after WWI. The Versailles Treaty that had in essence brought Germany down to its knees in front of the world angered many German’s. Germany was in a state of poverty and depravity. And to bring them out of this, they needed a clever leader who with great zeal would bring them out of their misery. Hitler promised the people a new Germany, he told them that they must rise out of their state of submission and reclaim what was rightfully theirs. He innovated Germany and industrialized it like never before. He had taken Germany to new heights in an effort to regain what it had lost from the restraints put on it by the Versailles treaty. Therefore to the German citizens that had been impoverished by the effects of the outcome of WWI, Hitler was a hero for believing in Germany and willing to give them a hand.
He manipulated the population into thinking that following his path was the path to German supremacy and glory. His use of the Hitler youth stirred up the young into following him. I am sure that any teenager struggling to find something to identify with would willingly join the Hitler youth as an outlet for expression. The Nazi (National Socialist) party ensured that everyone would work for the common good of Germany, they would be glorious citizens whose country needed them during this important time in German nationalism. If someone were to tell you that they would help you reclaim what you once had while taking part in a national project how could you refuse, and I bet you that while doing this you would gain a sense of pride for your country. They were almost blinded by nationalism and pride, blinded by race for German glory.
When going back to the main question how could someone follow Hitler and his ideals, we must also ask a counter question to be fair, how could someone refuse a chance at regaining what they had lost? Although this may become very frustrating it is essential that we put ourselves in the shoes of the German people during this time. If we do not then we are blinded by the knowledge we have of Hitler’s outcome and do not gain the full scope of the situation. The German people were in a time of dire straights therefore I as an observer from a different time period can do nothing but point out the obvious bigger picture. And this is what Hitler avoided by boosting German pride and despite his clear thought of exterminating anyone not of the Aryan race, people were given no time to think it through and realize that he was serious and would carry out these plans of mass ethnic cleansing.
The path that Hitler took to manipulate the German population, and the current the state of the country is similar to other instances in history where clever leaders had manipulated a deprived population of people that following them would be the key to their sovereignty. This as seen many times throughout history resulted in mass genocide.

I did not live during this time therefore I am only an outsider looking in.

-Montana Fredrick

Survivors

I write this entry during the holiday of Passover, the commemoration of the Jews' exodus out of slavery in Egypt. While I could go on explaining all the laws and customs that go along with this sacred week to the Jewish people, a famous Rabbi once said that every one of our holidays can be summed up with the phrase "They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!" While this quote is in fact quite humorous, after thinking about it for some time I realized how scary and accurate this message is. And no, I'm not refering to the part at the end about food. The usage of the word "they" could mean any number of nations who have tried, and sometimes succeeded in, murdering large numbers of the Jewish people simply because of their religion: the Egyptians, the Persians, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Spainish, the Nazis. A great deal of our festivals that are not based on events from our holy book the Torah, such as Hannukah and Purim, are about our people's abbility to overcome oppression and save our lives from those who have tried to destroy us. This sets us apart from other relgions. The more I thought about this, the more I realized that Judiasm is really based on survival, both in the sense that it is one of the oldest religions still practiced, if not the oldest, and that throughout time Jews have always been persecuted but in the end they have been able to triumph. In terms of the Holocaust, when we think of survivors we think of the few lucky individuals who were able to live through the horrible atrocities that Hitler and the Nazis commited on millions of innocent people. In our final seminar before spring break, our group of 18 students watched an interview from Steven Spielberg's Shoah Project, which is a documentation of thousands of Holocaust survivors stories. While the phrase "Never Forget" is famous in reguards to the Holocaust, we could see from this particular survivor's account that he had a difficult time remembering exacty where he was and happened to him during this terrible time in history. The human brain is not always the most reliable resource when it comes to studying this event, but sometimes it is the only way for our generation to understand what truly happened to these people, even if we are left with fragmented memories of the old and weary.

In a way, the Holocaust is as much a part of the Jewish people as Passover. While some may argue that Jews should be able to "let things go" and "move on," if we forget the events and horrors of the Holocaust then we are forgetting who we are as a people. The Spanish Inquisition, the war between the Romans and the Maccabees that is commemorated through the holiday of Hannukah, and the Exodus from Egypt are all aspects of our history, and so is the Holocaust. There is a difference between dwelling on our pain and sorrow and learning from it. I think the Holocaust has a great deal to teach us about the wrongdoings of humanity. However, I also think there is a lesson one can learn about hope and moving forward. Looking back at that famous quote, I know there will always be another "they" that will do horrible things to our people at some point in the future. This is not me being pessimistic, just realistic. Antisemitism will never truly go away no matter how many times we say "Never Again." But the pride, stregnth, and determination of the Jewish people will never go away either. Continuity and prosperity are as much a part of us as suffering and sorrow, but if we learn to take the good with the bad then we can see what it really means to be a survivor, and if we learn to listen to those who have been through unimaginable horrors then we will realize how big a difference one life can make.

-Sarah Lawson