Introduction

Everyone has heard of Adolf Hitler. Everyone knows that he hated the Jews and killed a lot of them. But you never really prepare yourself for what actually happened. The idea of 600,000 Jews being crowded together like cattle, its not something easily imagined. But when you use film, and crowd a few thousand into an open area, its something to behold. Facing History and Ourselves is not an academic class, it doesn’t have real homework, and there is no real work to speak of. For the majority of the Semester, you sit and watch movies, and for time to time you take about them. The only work to be spoken of is to go online and blog following a film. Its an easy class, but will rip to pieces any thought you had before on race, prejudice, discrimination, and general evil. The films shown in this class are so powerful, so moving, that sometimes even the most cold-hearted people in the class are brought to tears. You’ll discover the dark side of humanity, one that the world has attempted to prevent from ever happening again. You find out what it really took for the most evil man in history to come about and rise to power. You’ll witness the atrocities that the Nazis committed on the Jews and prisoners. But you’ll also witness the greatness of humanity in its struggle to survive. You’ll see the compassion that people can have, even in the darkest hours of time. You’ll see the courage of men and women, ordinary civilians, in standing up against an evil regime. And you’ll understand just what makes humanity so good, but at the same time, understand how easy it is to lose it forever. Take Facing History and Ourselves, take it for your sake, take it for the purpose of knowledge over ignorance.  Take the class, so you know the truth, and can never be told it was otherwise.