Preparations for our community book event are underway!

Most recently, we have been watching the documentary movie The Last Days, which focuses in on a group of Holocaust survivors as they describe their experiences during that period. I find that the movie, with its "personal touch," better helps me understand and relate to the material. Furthermore, the people featured in the documentary seem more-or-less happy now, which I believe to be a powerful testament to the human ability to heal, even after horrific trauma.

A variety of interesting and provocative discussions have come up in class. One was the many "impossible decisions" people were forced to make during the Holocaust. These are decisions in which there is no right or wrong. Many, for instance, were forced to choose between helping the Nazis kill their fellow Jews--who were going to die anyway--, or dying alongside them. In this type of situation, what does a person do? And what does it mean, that people were forced to make such decisions in the first place?

I have also been researching eugenics personally, for a research project I am doing for this class. Eugenics, the study/practice of "improving" the human race by discouraging reproduction in "defective" humans and increasing reproduction in "better" people, relates directly to the Holocaust. Today I read in one of my sources, "Someone has to decide who the 'good people' are, and anyone who considers that he/she is qualified to make this determinition is the last person who should have this power."