Introduction

My name is Nick Judd and I am a senior at Westborough High School. Over the first semester I took a course called Facing History and Ourselves. I decided to take this course because I was familiar with the teacher, Mr. Gallagher, and also I thought learning more about the Holocaust and its affect on society would be somewhat interesting. I was correct in my assumption. This class is not based on tests and quizzes, but blog posts by students discussing the films we watch and articles we read during class. At the beginning of the year we started off doing many readings, most of which weren’t focused on the Holocaust as much as they were focused on being a good human being and important dilemmas and principles people may encounter throughout their life. As the semester proceeded we began watching more films that were about the Jews and Nazis during the time period of the Holocaust. I found these to be much more interesting than the readings, as seeing and hearing real life experiences from people who were actually there and experienced the atrocities that took place during that period of time made much more of an impact on me than just text from the various articles we read. Through these films and readings we learned a great deal about how to treat others and how people should stand by their own beliefs rather than follow the crowd. This course is not your typical educational class by any means. It teaches you how to be a good and responsible human being, more than it teaches you to be a good student.