Muhannad Barghouthi

UWRT 1102-009
Prof Wertz-Orbaugh
11 January 2015
Holocaust Education
The first time I heard about the Holocaust was when I was in middle school. We started going
over it in English class when we read a book about it. My teacher would gradually work in the
basics about it. She would tell us about the start of World War two and how Adolf Hitler hated
the Jewish people. The Jews were being persecuted and targeted in Germany by Hitler and the
Nazis. Sometimes Germans would hide some of the Jewish people in their homes. This then
prompted Hitler to launch search and seizures of Germans homes for Jews. Anyone who was
found harboring them was punished.
During the reading of the book, the school arranged for a holocaust survivor to visit my
middle school and talk to the whole 7th grade and tell us about his experiences. His story was
powerful and it didnt really shock anyone because he experienced what was written. All the
horrors we heard about it he lived it. He told us about he was deported to a concentration camp
and how he was treated horribly. He would always say how lucky he was to get out of that alive
and how he could continue his life while others couldnt. The one that he went to wasnt
Auschwitz, but it had the same capabilities. He told us about the executions from the guards.
Also he told us about the infamous gas chambers. He was lucky enough not to be forced into
one, but told us how others had no idea what was going to happen to them.

I also learned about the Holocaust in high school during my history and English classes.
We talked about how that it all tied in with World war two. We would watch videos about it in
class, some just random videos telling what happened from a 3rd person point of view. Then we
watched interviews of holocaust survivors describing their experiences. We also had reading
from textbooks to learn from.
One book that my class studied was The Diary of Anne Frank. This is one of the most
infamous pieces of literature. This was a good source of info because it is raw and through a first
person point of view. It provided a good perspective into what happened. There are claims
though that this book was fraud and I find that interesting and will hopefully be able to research
during this course.
This is pretty much all of the education I had on the Holocaust. I learned through people
who experienced it firsthand, books telling stories of it, and articles from the real world that
informed us. Though I think that there is more to the story than what is considered the truth, I
cant deny the basic and general characteristics of this event.