Week Summary: H Block

This week has been a informative and productive one. Our focus this week was on the Hitler Youth, and more widely, groups in general. We started the week off with a talk by Ralph, a survivor of the Nazi genocide who escaped Germany on the Kindertransport and lived the remainder of the war with a English-Jewish family who adopted him. We then watched a movie narrated by a man roughly the same age as Ralph who recounted his experiences in the Hitler Youth
He said that he had wanted to be a member of the Hitler Youth from a very young age, ever since he had seen them marching through his town; he had wanted to belong to something bigger than himself. He, and millions of others, had wanted to belong so badly that they had allowed themselves to become completely indoctrinated into the movement's ideology. The video raised some important questions: are youth more influencable than adults? Are the members of the Hitler Youth responsible for genocide? Can they be considered innocent?
We ended our week with a still on-going discussion about groups at lick. We talked about what factors go into forming a group, weather or not exclusion is always bad, and what might make someone want to join a group. We also discussed whether or not groups were a good or bad thing.
We even delved into the question of whether or not "human nature" exists. Is it natural for someone to want to belong to a group? Is that just a societal construction of human behavior It got interesting.