This Blog is a resource tool for the students taking the "FACING HISTORY AND OURSELVES" elective at Westborough High School, Westborough, Massachusetts.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
PERIOD 3 - THE AUSCHWITZ ALBUM
Please share your thoughts about the segment you saw from Sophie's Choice and the pictures you viewed in class today.
23 comments:
Erica Price
said...
After watching the segment from Sophie's Choice, I was very upset. I couldn;t believe that the Sophie was able to giev her daughter away, only to know she would die. I didn't understand why she wouldn't have given up her own life for her children and I was left thinking Sophie was very selfish. But late ron I realized, the Nazis did not give her a choice at all. She was not able to choose for herself and she was forced to make a decision. It was a very intense scene to watch. After viewing the photos from the Auschwitz album, the Holocaust became very real to me. The photos of the little innocent children walking off to the death camps left me feelign sick to my stomach. These were innocent people, being treated like animals, left to die. I can explain how it felt to look at these pictures, realizing that this wasn't just a movie but rather a real event from history that should not be forgotten.
I thought that the scene from Sophie's Choice was very disturbing. Just watching these Nazi soldiers get the men, women and children all lined up just to walk to their deaths. The people on the trains were packed in like cattle and then Nazi soldiers were practically playing God. Their judgement determined who was able to work or not, so basically who would live and who would die. Then scene when the Nazi soldier demaneded that the mother choose only one of her children to live while the other would die was also horrible to watch. I feel like that would probably be one of the worst things they could have had her do. Pick one of her two chilren to survive. Although I found this film rather disturbing I found the pictures we viewed in class to be even worse. Seeing REAL people, not actors who were being treated so badly and knowing that they were all killed is very scewed up to think about. I think it was good that we saw the pictures because it made it all feel more real but it was not enjoyable to do so in the least bit.
I thought the scene from Sophie’s Choice was horrible. The choice Sophie made was awful, but I don’t know what she could have done to let her two children live. I think that she should have fought the Germans, giving her children time to try and hide or go with another person that had no children instead of letting them take her child. I thought the pictures of the concentration camps viewed in class really struck me because they were real people that were all waiting to die. I though the worst picture to see was the huge pile of shoes from the people that had died.
The scene in the movie Sophie’s Choice was sad. The Nazi made the woman decide which of her children would die and which one would live. I do not know what I would have done. It was also sad to watch the men and women being taken off of the cattle carts and sent away to their death. Even though it was sad to watch, it was not as upsetting as the actual pictures taken. The pictures of the women and the children walking to the gas chambers, unaware of what they are was very upsetting. Out of all the pictures, the picture with the two brothers was the one that had the biggest impact on me.
The scene from Sophie's choice really showed me how the Nazis were able force the people to do anything they wanted. Sophie was forced to make a decision that she just couldn't make. Choosing between which child to be sent away is something that no parent would ever be able to make. The Nazis forced Sophie to make this decision similar to how they force the Jews to do anything they want. Watching this scene was horrible and I can't even imagine being in Sophie's position. The photographs that we saw in class made the Holocaust even more real for me. It was heartbreaking to see the photos with the young children. The photos with the group of Jewish people who were headed to their deaths showed how the Nazis had the power to choose the fates of the Jewish people in merely a couple of minutes.
Seeing first hand evidence of the Holocaust through those photos made the whole idea of the massacre surreal to me. It was hard for me to look at some of the photos and think that those people are my ancestors. Watching Sophie's Choice also made me realize it was not only Jews being murder, it was anyone Hitler said "didn't belong". Overall, the segment of the movie and the photos gave me a new perspective on the Holocaust and the pictures definitely allowed me to feel more connected with my families past history.
sophies choice made me SO mad....i know that mr gallagher explained that how we have choices and she didnt but i hated her. hated her so much for her decision. i have no idea what i would do in that situation but it killed me. and those pictures were worse. those kids looked like people i know. it was so rough. it really gong to piss me off when or if i hear anyone say the Holocaust didnt happen
I thought the scene from Sophie's Choice was very upsetting to me. She had a choice to keep one of her children and had to let one go and die. She had to choose between one of them. I still couldn't believe she let her daughter die I thought she might have try to fight to keep both of her children. I thought she was going to make them take her and leave her children alone. It was very disturbing to watch. After seeing the photo album you saw how bad the life for the jews were old people getting killed because unable to work you also saw kids walking to death camps to work their lives away. Also the jews were forced to smile or they would have be killed or torture. I just thought the photo and the part of the fill was very upsetting and disturbing.
The scene from Sophie's Choice was difficult to watch. It is so wrong for a human being to force another human being, a mother, to choose between which of her children she can keep, knowing the other one will be sent to their death. I don't understand why Sophie wouldn't try to give her own life, rather than sacrifice her baby girl, but it's impossible to say what anyone would do in that situation. She was clearly haunted by the memory of her choice. Watching the little girl cry as she was ripped apart from her mother and knowing she was going to be killed just makes me wonder how people could do that to innocent little children. The pictures from the Auschwitz album were hard to look at as well. The Nazis were so hardened and unfeeling that they were able to enjoy themselves. That disgusts me. The picture of the little grandmother walking with her grandchildren is so sad. Those people had no idea that they were about to be murdered in cold blood and the Nazis were able to calm them down and escort them to the chambers with a smile on their face.
I think "Sophie's Choice" was powerful because it was so painful to imagine myself making such a decision since it wasn't sugarcoated with unrealistic nobility it was gritty and tangibly real. However, nothing compared to seeing the actual pictures of Auschwitz. Seeing the eyes and faces and picturing the camp in all its hustle and noise and hurried crowds and to see the uncertain eyes and faces of men and women and even children was truly and purely haunting. There is no film depiction of Auschwitz that can even slightly match just one of the photographs shown in class.
While watching the segment from Sohpie's Choice, I sat there thinking what would I do in her situation. I couldn't imagine I could ever choose a child to give away, yet Sophie was not given a choice. It was awful to watch innocent humans like Sophie and her children, stuck in a situation where other humans controlled thier fate. After seeing the photographs, I realized how realistic the movies were. Seeing the real thing in existence, seeing the faces of the Nazis and the Jews, seeing the buildings, they were all apparent in the movies. A lot of the movies were scarey in that the events were disturbing and awful to watch, and seeing actual evidence that such events occured almost the same way they did in the movie is so scarey.
After watching the clip from the movie Sophie's Choice, it made me really sad. It made me sad to see that someone could give their daughter away knowing what was going to happen to her. It also made me sick that the solider made her choose one kid. At first it made me see Sophie as a selfish person, because if I were in her position I would have given my own life. If the solider told me to choose someone from my own family, I would choose myself. As the movie went on I realized that she didn't have the option to choose herself and she was forced to make a decision that she did not want to, which was very common back then. Im glad that I saw this scene because it gave me a better understanding of the lack of choices that these people were given back then. When viewing the Auschwitz album, everything became more realistic. The movies make the Holocaust very realistic to me, but to see actual evidence and real pictures made everything even realer. The photos were heartbreaking, especially the ones with the children walking to gas chambers. The innocence and the child not knowing what is about to happen is what makes these photos so sad. These people thought they were here for a better life, and it is sad to see them walking to their deaths and not knowing what is about to happen to them. These pictures made me angry at the people who believe that the Holocaust never happened and it was a realization that this was a real event that happened in history.
The scene that we watched from sophies choice was very sad but also very realistic to what the camps were actually like. I could never imagine having to choose between two of my children like Meryl Streep's character had to. The photographs were even more powerful to me though because they were actual snapshots of important history that not many people have ever seen. The most powerful image i saw was the one of the SS gaurds living it up right down the road from the concentration camps. That just shows to me how they've been indoctrined with these ideas of racial purity. And for what? What good did that do for them as a country? Nothing. If anything the after effects put Germany further back from where they started after world war I was over
I think that the scene from Sophie's Choice that we watched really showed how terrible the Nazi SS guards actually were. Here was a guard, clearly infatuated with Sophie, yet forced this "beautiful woman" into making an impossible decision. The guards had been completely desensitized to any feelings of sadness towards the Jews. The pictures from the Auschwitz Album really got to me. Watching the little kids trot off, thinking they're going to get some food or a shower, made me sick. The prisoners had no chance to fight for their lives because they were simply being lied to the whole entire time.
After watching Sophie's Choice i was very confused. i didnt know if she chose to give her daughter away from being rushed in the moment or what but it was sad to hear the screams of the little girl as she was being taken away. And after looking at the photos i felt like i was the person taking the pictures because they were so up close and i just felt like i was actually there with them inside the photos. i wanted to talk to the people and tell them not to go but i had to realize they were just pictures....
The pictures viewed in class were extermely moving. No person should ever be treated that way, as though they were livestock. The worst picture however may have been the German soldiers photo where they were happy and joyful. It made me sick, and probably more annoyed and frustrated than anything because they were oblivious blind to the Nazi and they were souless. The clip from Sohpie's choice was interesting, the woman had to make a choice of whether to send her daughter or son to death. I wondered why she chose her daughter. But the whole scene is very sad as the woman breaksdown and repeats "you can't make me choose". Probably the worst situation for a mother to be in, choose the death of one of your children. The Nazis were ruthless and heartless, there was always death.
Having to watch a woman choose between her two kids was a very hard to scene to watch because it is literally an impossible choice to make as a parent. The pain she felt as she told the guard to take her daughter must have been unmeasurable, and it made me feel terrible to have to watch that. As for the photos of the death camps, I had really never seen anything like them. Going through them and seeing the real people who had to live through that horror, it made me realize the strength that the Jewish people had. The jewish people had to endure so much pain that no one will fully understand and it shows in their faces
This isn't for a grade, but I am just posting my opinion regardless. I thought that Sophie's Choice was an amazingly well put together scene. I felt like I was literally watching this woman have her children torn away from her, and it really gave me a greater insight into these camps. It wasn't mothers and children dying in each other's clutches, it was all of them dying lonely and scared, wishing just to hold on to that one glimmer of happiness that was their family. When I viewed the pictures from the Auschwitz album I was amazed to look into the eyes of real people who were murdered so brutally. Seeing pictures of the senior Nazi party members made me shudder, because I felt like I could literally feel their evilness emanating off of the photos. The atrocities committed by the Nazis weren't taken and over exaggerated to look good for Hollywood, they were put out and tried to be made completely real so that people wouldn't be able to forget and move on, leaving this horrible, evil decade in the past.
I wasnt in class to see the segment fromm Sophie's Choice, but I thought it was interesting to see real pictures that were taken during the Holocaust. It was sad to see children and their familes walking towards their death not knowing what to expect. I'm glad I got to see those pictures because I know not a lot of people have. Watching the movies we saw in class made me sick to my stomach and really upset but seeing real live pictures that were taken of actual people who were there, was more difficult to look at. I couldnt imagine going into what they went through, and it scares me just to think about it.
I was disgusted with the scene from Sophie's Choice. The Nazi's did such horrible things on a day to day basis and didn't think twice about it. They stripped this women's children from her. I also was thinking about how the Nazi said he'd like to have her in bed. If the Nazi's viewed Jewish people so low, as animals than how could he say something like that. This fully forms the monstrous image of an officer like that. He can at one moment tell a women he would like to sleep with her and than strip her children from her. What kind of sick person could do such things. I felt so bad for her losing her kids. The photos from the Auschwitz album are images that will stay with me for a very long time. They were such real images and such horrifying pictures. The made everything the Nazi's did even more real. The disgusting acts documented, given a face. The peoples faces was one of the worst things because these were real people you could see them, not actors or just pictures of reenactments. I won't ever forget this event and it shouldn't ever be forgotten.
I feel very uncomfortable and so sad after watching "Sophie's Choice". I was upset that Sophie gave her little daughter away to the officer because she didn't want to die. Screaming from little daughter was so sad and that made me angry. I couldn't believe that her selfish choice. The photos of Auschwitz album made me feel real Holocaust. I could not say anything. I could read feeling and mind of people in the photos. The saddest photo was grandchildren with grandmother are going to gas chamber together. That made me really sad. After seeing these photos, I realized the Holocaust is the most terrible history event so this cannot be forgotten in the Earth.
23 comments:
After watching the segment from Sophie's Choice, I was very upset. I couldn;t believe that the Sophie was able to giev her daughter away, only to know she would die. I didn't understand why she wouldn't have given up her own life for her children and I was left thinking Sophie was very selfish. But late ron I realized, the Nazis did not give her a choice at all. She was not able to choose for herself and she was forced to make a decision. It was a very intense scene to watch. After viewing the photos from the Auschwitz album, the Holocaust became very real to me. The photos of the little innocent children walking off to the death camps left me feelign sick to my stomach. These were innocent people, being treated like animals, left to die. I can explain how it felt to look at these pictures, realizing that this wasn't just a movie but rather a real event from history that should not be forgotten.
I thought that the scene from Sophie's Choice was very disturbing. Just watching these Nazi soldiers get the men, women and children all lined up just to walk to their deaths. The people on the trains were packed in like cattle and then Nazi soldiers were practically playing God. Their judgement determined who was able to work or not, so basically who would live and who would die. Then scene when the Nazi soldier demaneded that the mother choose only one of her children to live while the other would die was also horrible to watch. I feel like that would probably be one of the worst things they could have had her do. Pick one of her two chilren to survive. Although I found this film rather disturbing I found the pictures we viewed in class to be even worse. Seeing REAL people, not actors who were being treated so badly and knowing that they were all killed is very scewed up to think about. I think it was good that we saw the pictures because it made it all feel more real but it was not enjoyable to do so in the least bit.
I thought the scene from Sophie’s Choice was horrible. The choice Sophie made was awful, but I don’t know what she could have done to let her two children live. I think that she should have fought the Germans, giving her children time to try and hide or go with another person that had no children instead of letting them take her child. I thought the pictures of the concentration camps viewed in class really struck me because they were real people that were all waiting to die. I though the worst picture to see was the huge pile of shoes from the people that had died.
The scene in the movie Sophie’s Choice was sad. The Nazi made the woman decide which of her children would die and which one would live. I do not know what I would have done. It was also sad to watch the men and women being taken off of the cattle carts and sent away to their death. Even though it was sad to watch, it was not as upsetting as the actual pictures taken. The pictures of the women and the children walking to the gas chambers, unaware of what they are was very upsetting. Out of all the pictures, the picture with the two brothers was the one that had the biggest impact on me.
The scene from Sophie's choice really showed me how the Nazis were able force the people to do anything they wanted. Sophie was forced to make a decision that she just couldn't make. Choosing between which child to be sent away is something that no parent would ever be able to make. The Nazis forced Sophie to make this decision similar to how they force the Jews to do anything they want. Watching this scene was horrible and I can't even imagine being in Sophie's position. The photographs that we saw in class made the Holocaust even more real for me. It was heartbreaking to see the photos with the young children. The photos with the group of Jewish people who were headed to their deaths showed how the Nazis had the power to choose the fates of the Jewish people in merely a couple of minutes.
Seeing first hand evidence of the Holocaust through those photos made the whole idea of the massacre surreal to me. It was hard for me to look at some of the photos and think that those people are my ancestors. Watching Sophie's Choice also made me realize it was not only Jews being murder, it was anyone Hitler said "didn't belong". Overall, the segment of the movie and the photos gave me a new perspective on the Holocaust and the pictures definitely allowed me to feel more connected with my families past history.
sophies choice made me SO mad....i know that mr gallagher explained that how we have choices and she didnt but i hated her. hated her so much for her decision. i have no idea what i would do in that situation but it killed me. and those pictures were worse. those kids looked like people i know. it was so rough. it really gong to piss me off when or if i hear anyone say the Holocaust didnt happen
I was not here i was at guidance
I was not here i was at guidance
I thought the scene from Sophie's Choice was very upsetting to me. She had a choice to keep one of her children and had to let one go and die. She had to choose between one of them. I still couldn't believe she let her daughter die I thought she might have try to fight to keep both of her children. I thought she was going to make them take her and leave her children alone. It was very disturbing to watch. After seeing the photo album you saw how bad the life for the jews were old people getting killed because unable to work you also saw kids walking to death camps to work their lives away. Also the jews were forced to smile or they would have be killed or torture. I just thought the photo and the part of the fill was very upsetting and disturbing.
The scene from Sophie's Choice was difficult to watch. It is so wrong for a human being to force another human being, a mother, to choose between which of her children she can keep, knowing the other one will be sent to their death. I don't understand why Sophie wouldn't try to give her own life, rather than sacrifice her baby girl, but it's impossible to say what anyone would do in that situation. She was clearly haunted by the memory of her choice. Watching the little girl cry as she was ripped apart from her mother and knowing she was going to be killed just makes me wonder how people could do that to innocent little children. The pictures from the Auschwitz album were hard to look at as well. The Nazis were so hardened and unfeeling that they were able to enjoy themselves. That disgusts me. The picture of the little grandmother walking with her grandchildren is so sad. Those people had no idea that they were about to be murdered in cold blood and the Nazis were able to calm them down and escort them to the chambers with a smile on their face.
I think "Sophie's Choice" was powerful because it was so painful to imagine myself making such a decision since it wasn't sugarcoated with unrealistic nobility it was gritty and tangibly real. However, nothing compared to seeing the actual pictures of Auschwitz. Seeing the eyes and faces and picturing the camp in all its hustle and noise and hurried crowds and to see the uncertain eyes and faces of men and women and even children was truly and purely haunting. There is no film depiction of Auschwitz that can even slightly match just one of the photographs shown in class.
While watching the segment from Sohpie's Choice, I sat there thinking what would I do in her situation. I couldn't imagine I could ever choose a child to give away, yet Sophie was not given a choice. It was awful to watch innocent humans like Sophie and her children, stuck in a situation where other humans controlled thier fate.
After seeing the photographs, I realized how realistic the movies were. Seeing the real thing in existence, seeing the faces of the Nazis and the Jews, seeing the buildings, they were all apparent in the movies. A lot of the movies were scarey in that the events were disturbing and awful to watch, and seeing actual evidence that such events occured almost the same way they did in the movie is so scarey.
After watching the clip from the movie Sophie's Choice, it made me really sad. It made me sad to see that someone could give their daughter away knowing what was going to happen to her. It also made me sick that the solider made her choose one kid. At first it made me see Sophie as a selfish person, because if I were in her position I would have given my own life. If the solider told me to choose someone from my own family, I would choose myself. As the movie went on I realized that she didn't have the option to choose herself and she was forced to make a decision that she did not want to, which was very common back then. Im glad that I saw this scene because it gave me a better understanding of the lack of choices that these people were given back then. When viewing the Auschwitz album, everything became more realistic. The movies make the Holocaust very realistic to me, but to see actual evidence and real pictures made everything even realer. The photos were heartbreaking, especially the ones with the children walking to gas chambers. The innocence and the child not knowing what is about to happen is what makes these photos so sad. These people thought they were here for a better life, and it is sad to see them walking to their deaths and not knowing what is about to happen to them. These pictures made me angry at the people who believe that the Holocaust never happened and it was a realization that this was a real event that happened in history.
The scene that we watched from sophies choice was very sad but also very realistic to what the camps were actually like. I could never imagine having to choose between two of my children like Meryl Streep's character had to. The photographs were even more powerful to me though because they were actual snapshots of important history that not many people have ever seen. The most powerful image i saw was the one of the SS gaurds living it up right down the road from the concentration camps. That just shows to me how they've been indoctrined with these ideas of racial purity. And for what? What good did that do for them as a country? Nothing. If anything the after effects put Germany further back from where they started after world war I was over
I think that the scene from Sophie's Choice that we watched really showed how terrible the Nazi SS guards actually were. Here was a guard, clearly infatuated with Sophie, yet forced this "beautiful woman" into making an impossible decision. The guards had been completely desensitized to any feelings of sadness towards the Jews. The pictures from the Auschwitz Album really got to me. Watching the little kids trot off, thinking they're going to get some food or a shower, made me sick. The prisoners had no chance to fight for their lives because they were simply being lied to the whole entire time.
After watching Sophie's Choice i was very confused. i didnt know if she chose to give her daughter away from being rushed in the moment or what but it was sad to hear the screams of the little girl as she was being taken away. And after looking at the photos i felt like i was the person taking the pictures because they were so up close and i just felt like i was actually there with them inside the photos. i wanted to talk to the people and tell them not to go but i had to realize they were just pictures....
The pictures viewed in class were extermely moving. No person should ever be treated that way, as though they were livestock. The worst picture however may have been the German soldiers photo where they were happy and joyful.
It made me sick, and probably more annoyed and frustrated than anything because they were oblivious blind to the Nazi and they were souless.
The clip from Sohpie's choice was interesting, the woman had to make a choice of whether to send her daughter or son to death. I wondered why she chose her daughter. But the whole scene is very sad as the woman breaksdown and repeats "you can't make me choose". Probably the worst situation for a mother to be in, choose the death of one of your children. The Nazis were ruthless and heartless, there was always death.
Having to watch a woman choose between her two kids was a very hard to scene to watch because it is literally an impossible choice to make as a parent. The pain she felt as she told the guard to take her daughter must have been unmeasurable, and it made me feel terrible to have to watch that.
As for the photos of the death camps, I had really never seen anything like them. Going through them and seeing the real people who had to live through that horror, it made me realize the strength that the Jewish people had. The jewish people had to endure so much pain that no one will fully understand and it shows in their faces
This isn't for a grade, but I am just posting my opinion regardless. I thought that Sophie's Choice was an amazingly well put together scene. I felt like I was literally watching this woman have her children torn away from her, and it really gave me a greater insight into these camps. It wasn't mothers and children dying in each other's clutches, it was all of them dying lonely and scared, wishing just to hold on to that one glimmer of happiness that was their family. When I viewed the pictures from the Auschwitz album I was amazed to look into the eyes of real people who were murdered so brutally. Seeing pictures of the senior Nazi party members made me shudder, because I felt like I could literally feel their evilness emanating off of the photos. The atrocities committed by the Nazis weren't taken and over exaggerated to look good for Hollywood, they were put out and tried to be made completely real so that people wouldn't be able to forget and move on, leaving this horrible, evil decade in the past.
I wasnt in class to see the segment fromm Sophie's Choice, but I thought it was interesting to see real pictures that were taken during the Holocaust. It was sad to see children and their familes walking towards their death not knowing what to expect. I'm glad I got to see those pictures because I know not a lot of people have. Watching the movies we saw in class made me sick to my stomach and really upset but seeing real live pictures that were taken of actual people who were there, was more difficult to look at. I couldnt imagine going into what they went through, and it scares me just to think about it.
I was disgusted with the scene from Sophie's Choice. The Nazi's did such horrible things on a day to day basis and didn't think twice about it. They stripped this women's children from her. I also was thinking about how the Nazi said he'd like to have her in bed. If the Nazi's viewed Jewish people so low, as animals than how could he say something like that. This fully forms the monstrous image of an officer like that. He can at one moment tell a women he would like to sleep with her and than strip her children from her. What kind of sick person could do such things. I felt so bad for her losing her kids. The photos from the Auschwitz album are images that will stay with me for a very long time. They were such real images and such horrifying pictures. The made everything the Nazi's did even more real. The disgusting acts documented, given a face. The peoples faces was one of the worst things because these were real people you could see them, not actors or just pictures of reenactments. I won't ever forget this event and it shouldn't ever be forgotten.
I feel very uncomfortable and so sad after watching "Sophie's Choice". I was upset that Sophie gave her little daughter away to the officer because she didn't want to die. Screaming from little daughter was so sad and that made me angry. I couldn't believe that her selfish choice. The photos of Auschwitz album made me feel real Holocaust. I could not say anything. I could read feeling and mind of people in the photos. The saddest photo was grandchildren with grandmother are going to gas chamber together. That made me really sad. After seeing these photos, I realized the Holocaust is the most terrible history event so this cannot be forgotten in the Earth.
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