When I was registering for my current courses during Spring semester of last year, one course in particular caught my eye. I knew that in order to fulfill the requirements for my English major, I needed to work toward completing the literature prerequisite. What better way to do that than register for the course, “Literature of the Holocaust?”

Unfortunately, I was not the only one with that idea. The course was full and I was not surprised. The subject matter, despite being heavy, attracts many people and everyone that I have mentioned it to was intrigued. I had taken a history class during my senior year of high school entitled “Holocaust & Genocide.” The class had a profound impact on me and how I view one of the darkest points of history. Therefore, I knew that I had to find a way to get into what would now become my most important class.

I knew entering the class that I would have to have thick skin when reading and watching the material that we would cover. My professor warned me of that fact as well. When we conversed over email last semester, she explicitly told me that there would be sensitive topics and asked if I was prepared to handle such material.

I was certain going in that I would be able to handle the sensitive topics, and said as much, but I did not know the profound impact that the class would have on me. Oftentimes, when we study the Holocaust and other genocides around the world, we are doing so through a historical lens. We often get distracted by the statistics and forget that the events happened to real people who had lives before, and some after, the systematic persecution.

The most important knowledge that I have received from the class thus far is that there is no “why?” to the Holocaust. Although some people try to understand the exact reasoning behind the Nazis' actions, there is no way to do so without somehow justifying their cruelty.

It is incredibly important that everyone studies the Holocaust through personal accounts rather than historical ones. Recently, I watched “Schindler’s List” and “Paragraph 175,” two extremely different movies that focused on Jewish and homosexual persecutions during the war, respectively. I have also read several memoirs, such as Art Spiegelman’s, Maus and Viktor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning that highlighted the experiences of Jewish victims and their families.

Although knowing the facts are important, watching and reading the individual stories provides a much greater perspective than a history book. Once a person reads or witnesses the horrors that someone experienced, the pain and suffering that the victim feels becomes more real.

I highly recommend taking a course about the Holocaust at any level of education. As ISIS continues to terrorize nations and genocides around the world persist, I am reminded that we must be aware of our past so that we can prevent further destruction.