Reference no: EM133382595

Question: One thing that is heavily overlooked when it comes to education on the Holocaust is the lack of recognition for those who acted in resistance and rebellion against the Nazi regime. We learn about the rise of the Nazis, the horrors and execution methods they employed, and the survivor's stories. Serafinski's Blessed is the Flame, brings up this idea, writing, "Inside of the Nazi concentration camps, places meticulously designed to subjugate and exterminate human beings, people organized, conspired, sabotaged, and reflexively fought back against their oppressors" (Serafinski, 2016, pg 6). I truly could not recall learning about the people who were enduring the unthinkable and were still able to fight back. This is not an isolated problem; it had me thinking back to the week we covered Nat Turner, a rebel hidden from history due to the violent nature of his rebellion against racism. History's suppressors have a habit of hiding details about the groups they oppress, whether it be by obscuring people's suffering or excluding the trailblazers who fought back from recognition.

Another point made by Serafinski is quite depressing but provokes many questions. They write that, "We have become thoroughly integrated into 'a system that crushes us on a daily basis', that ‘controls our thoughts and our desires through screens' and ‘teaches us how to be happy slaves' while letting us ‘consider ourselves free because we can vote and consume'" (Serafinski, 2016, pg 7). Similar to history, the systems in power today monitor us to extreme levels as a method of control. We often hear that we are living in a surveillance society and similar to the discussion last week on climate change, I think this is just another truth that is too uncomfortable to think about on a daily basis.

I appreciated how different each source was in terms of their subjects, but they were all connected by this week's themes. Tying it all in, in Decolonizing Anarchism, Maia Ramnath pulls from personal experience, expressing that "Sub-and countercultures as well as oppositional movements only have meaning when embedded in and against their respective hegemonic mainstreams, which are in turn deeply embedded in history, geography, and global political economy" (Ramnath, 2011, pg 2). Do you think how history is taught worldwide purposefully omits certain aspects of history that highlight rebellions, anarchy, and resistance against the powerful?