Note to future students

If I could give future students any advice for this class it would be not to procrastinate. The portfolios are not hard to do but they are very time-consuming. I feel that in order to do well on the assignments the students should really set aside time to focus just on the assignment. The assignments really challenge the student’s rhetoric thinking and argumentative thinking. I would also advise them to do the required blogs because they really help with the thought process for each portfolio.

Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWVKaYtxlns&feature=related

I chose this video because it pertains to my argument about the experimentation that occurred during the Holocaust. I like the way they showed pictures and also gave descriptions of what experiment was being shown.

My movie

I’m pretty excited for this portfolio. I’ve never had to make a movies for an English class. Since I love my topic, I feel that this will be an easy assignment. I plan to find a lot of pictures of the concentration camps and the prisoners from the Holocaust. I’m not sure what song I will use; I’m debating if I should find Jewish music or a song in English that depicts what happened during the Holocaust.

Storyboards

I’ve never had to make a storyboard before. I think my topic will be easy to make a storyboard about because it pertains to the Holocaust. Since I can barely draw stick figures, I’m going to probably find pictures to depict the message I want to get across to people who doubt that the Holocaust happened.

Using the internet in an unethical way

When I was younger I used to download music from music sharing programs. Back then I didn’t know that it was illegal. I thought since I had access to it that it was ok to use it. I don’t think that the current copyright laws work well at all. It’s still possible to get access to these music sharing websites regardless if it’s illegal. When I used to do projects in middle and high school that used pictures off the internet I would just copy and paste. Teachers never taught us about plagiarism. I feel that these music sharing websites need to be removed immediately from the internet. Also, stricter laws need to be made so that people’s original work can’t be stolen or used for un-educational purposes.

Second Annotation

“Blacks during the Holocaust.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Web. 23 Oct. 2011

Summary:

There are many misconceptions about the targets of the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, Jews were the main target of the Nazi regime. However, blacks were also one of the main targets. Hitler felt that they were unfit for the German community and were ruining the “white race”. There were many African colonies in Germany prior to WWII. At the start of the Holocaust, Hitler stripped Germany of the colonies; many of the people from those colonies were subjected to “isolation, persecution, sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality, and murder”. Unlike the Jews, the blacks from the colonies did not have a “set systematic program for their elimination”. Although some were forced to work at concentration camps, they were not sent there to die. The Jews were obviously deemed more unfit than the black community. Mixed marriages were soon outlawed in Germany, which began the racism towards blacks. Many children that were mixed with African and German were isolated in their community. They were not allowed to attend school, get jobs, or join the military. As the Nazis rose to power Hitler was smart to disguise their regime by “allowing” 18 African-American to compete in the Olympics in 1936. Many of the famous African-Americans that lived in Germany were imprisoned until the Nazi regime came to an end. And many of the POWs (prisoners of war) were worked to death on construction projects. They were also subjects to many unethical medical experiments that resulted in death. 

Assessment:

I think this source is very useful in my research. This source is different from my other sources because it focuses on a different race that was targeted during the Holocaust. Many people have a misconception that Jews were the only people that were killed in the Holocaust but in all actuality the black communities in Germany were greatly targeted. I think I this source proves that the black community in Germany may also be more reluctant to participate in experiments now because of the horrendous unethical experiments that were done during the Holocaust. 

Reflection:

I wasn’t as surprised by this source as I was by my other sources. I knew that African-Americans were also targeted by the Nazis but I thought they were also sent to concentration camps. This source does change how I view my topic because I can now broaden it from how Jews in Germany are more reluctant to participate in experiments, to Jews and African-Americans in Germany. Even though there wasn’t a lot of information on the types of experiments done on African-Americans I can now do more research to find out which experiments were done and what affect they now have on African-Americans in Germany.

Annotated Bib

“Nazi Human Experimentation.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 25 Oct. 2011

Summary:          

In this article, the author breaks down the different types of unethical experiments that were done by Nazi doctors during the Holocaust. The experiments were carried out by licensed doctors and psychologists. The experimented were Jewish prisoners that were being held against their will in concentration camps.  The experiments were done on sets of twins to determine the similarities and differences among their genes. The leader of the experiments done on twins was Josef Mengele, whom in one year did experiments on 1,500 sets of twins. Out of the 1,500 sets of twins that were experimented on, only 100 survived.

Other experiments were carried out during the holocaust. They ranged from bone, muscle, and nerve transplantation experiments; where pieces of a prisoner’s bone was extracted and put into another prisoner’s body without the use of anesthesia, to head injury experiments; where a prisoner was strapped to a chair and a mechanized hammer fell upon his head every few seconds. The prisoner therefore went insane from the torture. Prisoners also endured freezing experiments where their bodies were immersed in freezing ice water so the experimenter could study the effects of hypothermia. The prisoners were also subjects to Malaria experiments where they were injected with Malaria to investigate a treatment for the disease, they were exposed to Mustard Gas to study they treatment of the wounds, and they were also subjects of a sterilization experiment where they were injected with poisons and had numerous surgeries done to find a way to sterilize millions of people in a short amount of time. All of the prisoners that endured these experiments died, and those that survived were executed. After the Holocaust ended, the doctors that were involved in the experiments went on trial, USA vs. Karl Brandt et al.  The doctors that were on trial tried to argue that an informed consent was not required in the German law, therefore they were not at fault. As a result of the trial Drs. Leo Alexander and Andrew Conway Ivy created the Nuremberg Code however; it was never adopted into German law.

Assessment:

This article was very informative. It gave a lot of details about the experiments that took place during part of the Holocaust. Every experiment that was listed explained the purpose for every experiment and the outcomes. The dates of the experiment were given as well as the experimenter, which will make doing more research on them easier.

Reflection:

I was completely shocked when I read this article. I knew that horrible experiments took place during the Holocaust, but I didn’t know they were so gruesome. I think this article gave me a good starting point for my research because it listed some of the major experiments that took place during the Holocaust. I can now do research to see how the Jewish community is more reluctant to participate in experiments because of the Holocaust.

New research idea

So after starting to research the topic of heart disease, I found that it was boring! I decided to change my research proposal to something that has always interested me. Ever since I can remember I’ve always wanted to learn more about Nazi Germany. I feel that researching how the Nazis did unethical experiments on the Jewish community during that time would tie into community wellness of the Jewish community. I’m going to do research to see if Jews are more reluctant to participate in experiments now because of the results of the Holocaust.

This Research Process

This portfolio is much more work than I expected. Finding good sources for the annotated bib is harder than I thought. I’ve found a few good sources from the internet but I’m going to further my research at the library to find sources from books that will turn out to be more reliable.

Proposal idea #2

I had another topic that I wanted to research. I wanted to learn more about why Hispanic women are more likely to develop diabetes. This topic would relate more to myself because I am a Hispanic woman. My doctor told me that I’ already at risk and it makes me want to learn more about it. It really bothers me that out of all races Hispanics are more likely to develop the disease. Is it because of the type of food we eat or is it a more biological reason??