The title of this essay had me thinking for quite a while, when I finally got the idea to let you know about a personal experience I had in connection with the topic. A few years ago I got my hands on the Diary of Anne Frank, reading the diary has changed my understanding of the events of the Holocaust.
As you are probably aware, the book is not fiction. It tells the story of one of the most shocking events in human history. What makes it even more shocking, in my opinion, is that it depicts the perspective of Anne, a little girl living through those terrible days of history. She describes in her diary how she and her family were hiding from the Nazis and how miserable their living standards were. some of the most heartbreaking events mentioned are the recordings of receiving the news of their friends being captured by the Gestapo.
I believe that by reading this book I learned much more about this era than I had before from history books. I am utterly convinced that processing history through diaries and recordings of people living in the discussed era is extremely useful compared to learning factual history. Most diaries mention the events that we are supposed to learn, but, in addition, we can get an understanding of how those affected the lives of ordinary people. To get an overview of the era, it might be practical to read more that one diaries, thus examining both sides of the coin. Personally, I think reading about a current or historical problem not in a documentarist way is very important. By reading novels, diaries or correspondences based on a specific dilemma causes people to develop sympathy towards the characters, fictional or real, thus they pay more attention to what is actually going on in the story they are reading.
To sum up my thoughts, I feel like reading about historical problems should be a common practice in people’s lives for all the benefits mentioned above.
Anon
Tutor: Professor Eszter-Szabó Gilinger
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