A Believer Aside

My latest trip down film lane led me to The Believer, a film about a young, Jewish, anti-semitist who was hell-bent on killing all the Jews. He spends the movie trying to reconcile his beliefs with his heritage. It's one of those movies that forces one to examine his or her own conflicting behaviors. Thinking, "I can't believe that guy wants to kill his own people," thinking it makes sense that Blacks end up in jail since I'm preconditioned to think that my own people are no more than less-than.

The film forced me to think about how I am going to teach the atrocities of the Holocaust to my students who have no frame of reference. Shindler's List wouldn't do it. People are so desensitized by film anymore.

What always gets me, and there was a character who said this, is when people say that the Holocaust didn't happen. That there weren''t as many people discovered buried in mass graves in the concentration camps as actually claimed. I've been to the museum in Washington, D.C. On the outside of the building is this poster. I think about it a lot. Maybe because I've got my own string of "other-ness" that is discriminated against. I don't know. Since I saw this movie and since I'm starting Anne Frank next week.

I have to encourage all you (non-existant) readers out there to, "The next time you see injustice... the next time you witness hatred... the next time you hear about genocide... Think about what you saw."