One of the first things that Mr. Gallagher had said to the class at the beginning of this course was that depending on what kind of person you are may change the amount of information you take away from the course. After taking this course I know what he was saying. This course has taught me many lessons and has actually taught me morals to live my life by. One of the most important things the course has taught me is learning how to understand other people from other places and learning how to have compassion for these people even without knowing them. This course has opened my eyes and given me a completely new understanding of The Holocaust and the history of people fighting over religion. And this course has left me asking myself “What would I have done?” I knew that this course was going to teach me about the Holocaust but I didn’t know how many life lessons and morals I would be able to take away with me when this course was finished.
The class’ main topic was by no question the Holocaust, the horrors of Europe and around the world during that time period but this course has taught me much more then just about Holocaust. One of these important lessons was about understanding people from different backgrounds then you and by not judging other people. In the movie we watched called “12 Angry Men” one man out of 12 Jury members was able to separate prejudice from his judgment of the accused and actually think about the case other then what the boy looked like or where he was from. He gave the boy a chance even though everyone else was quick to judge because he was from a slummy area that meant that automatically he was a no good kid and should be guilty for murder. This showed me how people will make judgments about other people without really knowing them and even with all the evidence that proves this person is not guilty and could be a good person they will still discriminate based on how the person looks. I know that good people come from all over the place and that you should never judge someone because they have different background then you. I have done a lot of traveling with my family and no matter where we are in the world there are still nice people around and this just exemplifies how not to be bias towards someone different then you. Sadly people still discriminate and some do it in much more violent ways.
One of the most violent, most aggressive displays of discrimination was the Holocaust. Peoples strong desire to discriminate and alienate people different from themselves lead to what the Nazi party stood for. Before I had taken this class I had a fair amount of knowledge about the Holocaust from other history courses and from visiting multiple Holocaust museums but nothing has ever taught me the gruesome details that I only learned form this class. The Nazi party wanted to completely wipe Jews off the face of the planet it planned to kill off the religion one by one, I knew that the Jews have been discriminated against for thousands of years but never knew the exact reasons why. When we watched the film “The Longest Hatred” I finally learned why it all started. Jews have been discriminated against ever since the birth of Christianity and the death of Jesus Christ. People have discriminated against Jews just because of their religion and not at all based on the actual people they are. There is no reasoning for discriminating a whole religion just because, if 6 million Jews are killed then that is 6 million unique and independent people that are the same as the people who are standing outside the fence. There is so much more this class taught me about the Holocaust and my eyes have been opened to the horrors that the Nazi’s were able to commit but this class has also taught me much more that I can take with me for future in life. 
The point of most of the clips and films we watch is to make you think about the situation of the person and to think about what this person is thinking or how they are feeling. We watched multiple films about experiments conducted by scientists to study human nature. We watched films like “A Class Divided” that showed us how kids will abuse other kids who the teacher has told them isn’t as good as they are. It was an experiment to show how people react to having authority over people and how people react to being put down or oppressed for no reason. The most important film about a experiment that we watched was the “Milgram Experiment”. This film was of one person who was being paid to ask someone a question and if they get it wrong administer an electric shock that got stronger and stronger with every wrong answers. This experiment tested whether someone was as mindless to the point they would torture another person whom they don’t know just because they are being paid and being told to. These people could hear the man moaning and complaining about how much pain he was in but couldn’t see him and continued to administer the shocks. Some people felt guilty but continued on when the scientist told them to. This is just like all the Nazi soldiers who said that they only did what they did because they were being told to. Many of the men in the experiment would ask the scientists whether it would be his fault if the man was injured and as soon as the scientists said that it wasn’t going to be blamed on them they would continue right on giving the victim the shocks. Watching these experiments would always leave me asking “What would I do in this situation?”. Everyone would always answer that they would do “the right thing” or that they could never do that to another person but if you were in the situation would you stop and think about it. If you are in any situation do you ever stop and think whether this is the right choice or not. I think this what this course has done for me the most. This course is making me think before I act no matter what the situation is. This course is making me think about the stuff I say before I say it so I don’t offend or insult anyone. The most important thing this course has done for me is understand other people and understand how to treat other people and make sure that I never say or do anything that might hurt someone just for the sake of it. 
I’m sure most kids will write this paper almost solely about the Holocaust and I’m sure that I could do the same as well since the stuff we saw and learned about the Holocaust has such an impact on me but the lessons I’ve learned from the other videos are just as important because the those lessons are what can prevent the something like the Holocaust from happening. Discrimination has roots and by learning few basic life lessons that prevent bias, racism and prejudice then discrimination could be erased from our everyday lives.
Works Cited
12 Angry Men. N.d. n.p. Web. 14 Jan 2013.
http://witneyman.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/12-angry-men-1.jpg
The Eternal Jew. N.d. n.p. Web. 14 Jan 2013.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51CSRpVmavL._SL500_SS500_.jpg
A Class Divided. N.d. n.p. Web. 14 Jan 2013.
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/a%20class%20divided
The Milgram Experiment. N.d. n.p. Web. 14 Jan 2013.
http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0587db7e2503c0ed56307e97286dbdea.
Facing History and Ourselves. N.d. n.p. Web. 14 Jan 2013.
http://b.vimeocdn.com/ps/120/252/1202523_300.jpg
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