The Holocaust from the eyes of a German

When I was researching what about the Holocaust I wanted to blog about, I was thinking about my Grandma who grew up in Germany during the time. I came up with a question, should she have to take the blame for what her country did? I think that even since she lived there, she should take the blame because of what some of the people in her country did. She was not involved and did not want anything to do with it. But usually when people say they are German the first thing that comes to mind is the Holocaust. How can these people take the blame if they had nothing to do with it. However the actions that Hitler took to exterminate the Jews was to a certain extent of being endlessly cruel and not needed. When talking to my grandma about this she said that the time during the Holocaust was so sad and depressing she didn't know how to go on living normally. She said all the test they did to find out if the people were jewish or not was unnecessary and horrible. One time they measured her nose, but her blond hair and blue eyes meant she was a dominate German(I think they checked her records too). To this day she has the horrible image of the Jews being taken away to camps and then hearing about what they did. However she still is proud of the fact that she is German but wished the Holocaust never occurred.

The Guillotine. Should they have used it or not?

Is the Guillotine the right way to kill a person who has done a bad deed? Do they deserve to die because of it? I think the Guillotine, the device used to execute men and woman, was something too harsh to use. In the middle of 1932, the government decided that the guillotine was "allegedly scandalous" for the public eye. Instead of having this act be done in public they were going to move it to be somewhere more private. This place was called the prison courtyard, somewhere inside where the killings could not be seen. A guillotine was started to be used because it was a quick and easy way to kill a person. It was a tall figure that slammed down to slice the person in half. In addition, the guillotine should have only been used when it was dealing with people who had done something horrible, like murder. But the guillotine was used for all different types of punishments. Thank god they stopped using it around 35 years after they made it go into private.

French Rev

To me, the thing that stands out most in the French Revolution is the brutality and amount of violence from the general public. Although they were poor, powerless and starving, the intensity of the riot (storming of Bastille) was uncalled for and animalistic.

You can conclude that during this period, beneath the luxuries and beauties of Versailles the French were in fact savage killers. For example, Marquis Bernard De Launay was stabbed, beaten, killed and decapitated. His head was then paraded through the city. Although it is unfair to say that all French people were savages, during this period in time, actions like these clearly display the barbarous nature of the peasants of France.

Social Contract Theory and Presentation Feedback

Hi,

Tomorrow in class (or as soon as time opens up in the class schedule), I will be giving a presentation on Social Contract Theory (as advocated for by Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke). I know we've already moved onto the French Revolution, but I haven't gotten a chance to talk about these philosophers yet, and since I didn't get a chance to do my previous presentation until Friday, this presentation ended up getting pushed up to this week.

Also, I wanted to get some feedback from you guys about my presentations. Do you think it is excessive for me to be doing 1-2 presentations per week in class? Do you find them interesting? Would you rather have the class time be spent with Ms. Xia discussing more directly relevant material (such as things that will be on the test)? Should I post video blogs on Youtube instead of in-class presentations? How can I improve my presentations as a whole? Feel free just to leave a comment on this blog post. I won't be offended if you think my presentations are boring, or a waste of time, but at least if you are going to comment then take the time to put some thought into what you have to say.

Thanks,

-Cy