I should've thought about it more, gone 'Hey Zoe, do you really want to learn about how millions of people died horrible deaths for ridiculous and implausible reasons?"
I probably would've said yes anyway, I don't want to know, but I don't want to not know at the same time. I'm horrified, before I even went to class, two pages into the first week's reading and I was horrified. Someone had to create a word for it, I don't mean holocaust (or not only holocaust), I mean genocide. Someone had to come up with a word that could encompass what it mean to attempt to destroy and each and every person of a particular ethnicity (/nationality/race/religion).
I've just started reading one of the 'recommended' texts Neighbours by Jan T. Gross. It's about a town in Poland where half the population murdered the Jewish half. They killed and tortured the old, the sick, babies, women, men, children, indiscriminately. They killed those who had been their neighbours for years in peace. Ordinary people did this, not Nazis, not the Gestapo, not the SS normal people turned on their neighbours, friends, colleagues for...I don't even know why. No one will ever know why, I dont think even they knew why.
I'm 2 chapters in, I haven't even got to the story part yet, I'm still half way through reading about where the author got his information, who his sources were, how he discovered this forgotten bit of history. I've finished reading it now. I dont know how I got through the whole book, I dont know how I got through the whole course. I know I just needed to distance myself from it, desensitise but I just didn't know how. How was I supposed to just look past the horrific crimes against humanity? Do I even want to? Do I want to be the kind of person who isn't affected by reading about this?
I was affected, it was hard to do but I feel better for studying this unequaled period of history. I feel better for having more knowledge of it even though some of things I learnt are impossible to comprehend.
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