I knew I was going to be in over my head.

It was my junior year of high school. I’d be the only junior in a class full of seniors. This was a year-round course that wasn’t meant for the faint of heart.

Nevertheless, I wasn’t going to let such factors hold me back from learning about an important event that affected thousands of innocent people. I had read a few books, seen some films, I had even visited a museum in Washington D.C.

I needed to know more. I was ready to take a course on the Holocaust.

One of the earliest lessons I learned from this class is that we are all pretty much the same. As students who go to the same school, we all see the same things and feel the same emotions. It is the way in which we see things and feel emotions that makes us individuals.

But I digress. We’ve all witnessed a tragedy and we’ve all felt depressed. These phenomena are unbearable and overwhelming, as we all know.

The professor who taught this class knew that we as students did not want to feel overwhelmed or depressed coming into class each day, and it was this knowledge that shaped her lesson plan for the entire year. She knew her subject matter was difficult, but she also knew that we were merely teenagers who were on the verge of making our marks on the world. For this reason, she taught her classes in an easy and straightforward manner. All of our tests were open-note, but we were in charge of writing five-page essays at the end of each semester. All in all, my teacher taught my classmates and I roughly the same way. She did this because she understood the fact that we were all of the same species: human. And humans can handle only so much.

The second lesson I learned in this class is how powerful labels can be. Our first assignment of the year was to read a short story about a bear. The bear awakes from his annual hibernation to find that his beautiful forest has been replaced with a bustling metropolis. Rather than kick the bear out of the city, the residents attempt to transform him into one of their own. The bear is forced by the townspeople to change his appearance by cutting all his fur off, trading his cave for a modern apartment, and even take up a job he knows he will not be able to do properly. Throughout the bear’s transformation process, he repeatedly told people he was not a human, but a bear. Unfortunately, the end of the story finds him so brainwashed by the insistencies that he’s human that he has no other choice but to think that it must be true.

It was a short but sad story that delivered a strong moral. That moral is that if you tell a person the same information over and over again, they will eventually believe what you tell them and come to accept the label you have consequently bestowed upon them.

The next lesson I learned came not from my teacher nor from my textbook. Instead, it came from the 2004 winner for Best Picture, "Crash." Featuring an all-star cast that includes but is not limited to: Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, and Matt Dillon, this film shows how one night in Los Angeles can connect numerous people. It begins with a car crash and proceeds to events such as a fire, a trip to the hospital, and a senseless death. These dramatic turn of events are all the result of racism. Stereotypes, prejudices, and assumptions all stand in the way of solving the problems the people face.

Racism prevents people from hearing both sides of the argument, it causes people to make irrational decisions, and it also creates a lack of trust between people. The opportunity to make a friend is eliminated when you see everyone around you as enemies. In short, watching "Crash" showed me how unnecessary racism is when you encounter a setback in the road of life.

Watching movies was a regular part of our curriculum, so it should come as no surprise that at least 60 percent of what I learned in this class came from the silver screen. Two weeks before our spring break, our professor played "Schindler’s List" for us. Naturally, this is the kind of film that can’t be watched over the course of one class period, so we had to stop and start the film each class for the next few days. During the first two days of the screening, I thought I had seen quite enough: From what I had gathered, I wasn’t sure if this particular film was my cup of tea. The protagonist, Oskar Schindler, was a womanizing, alcohol-drinking Nazi who only did what he was told to do while thousands of innocent Jews were taken to concentration camps. I did not care for Schindler much at this point.

Of course, the more I saw, the more informed I became. Schindler eventually realized the consequences of his position as a Nazi, and he wanted to do all he could to set the Jewish population free.

As I wiped away my tears while the credits rolled, a thought occurred to me: in judging Oskar Schindler’s character before I learned his whole story, I realized I was no better than the ignorant people in "Crash." My knowledge of Nazis had led me to believe they were submissive pawns that Hitler moved around as he strived to become more powerful; therefore, I thought Schindler would be no better than the rest of them.

In summary, this film taught me that there’s more to life than meets the eye. Not all bad guys are bad; sometimes, they simply forget about their natural goodness.

The day before Spring Break, the entire senior class (and me) boarded a shuttle bus that would take us to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. It would be a day-long event that promised to be beautiful in weather and educational in location. This museum, I soon found out, was completely different from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in that explored not just one moment in Jewish history but rather the entire history of this religious population that makes up 0.2 percent of the world’s population.

We students learned everything about Judaism — from its origins to its weekly rituals, the Hebrew language, and traditional Kosher food. We even got a glimpse of what life was like after the Holocaust at the end of our tour when we entered an exhibit known as “Modern Life.”

Before we boarded the bus to go home, our teacher took us to the World Trade Center Memorial Site, where the new memorial and museum was being built. It was remarkable — the fountains in place where the original buildings once stood, the names of the victims embedded on the stone sidings.

But it was a small miracle of nature that tugged at my heartstrings. Along the outskirts of the memorial site, new trees were being planted. They were all in the middle of blooming, except for one tree that was noticeably taller and coated with leaves. A tour guide informed us that of all the things that were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks, this tree had been the one element to remain perfectly intact.

This day in New York City taught me that there will always be evil in the world, but it is how we rise above it that truly matters.

My junior year of high school had an unforgettable ending. It wasn’t because I was on the verge of getting my license; it wasn’t because I had made a list of colleges I was going to visit over the summer.

It was because I had the honor of attending a genocide survivor panel.

We had speakers from the Armenian Genocide, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, and one of the very few remaining survivors of the Holocaust. They spoke about their grandchildren, how well they remembered experiencing a genocide, and gave us some sound advice.

“Sometimes,” said the Holocaust survivor, “It helps to have a good sense of humor.”

These survivors taught me the sixth and most powerful lesson of all: everyone has a story that deserves to be shared.

When news of Elie Wiesel’s death broke on the night of July 2^nd, I was devastated. Here was a man who had survived three concentration camps, watched his entire family die right before his own eyes, and yet somehow mustered the courage to tell the whole world of his experience. His groundbreaking autobiography, Night, should be on everyone’s reading list. I leave you with a quote from Wiesel himself: “Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.”

Below is a link to Wiesel’s 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZvT3pX-AiU