There is a common phrase, history repeats itself. It is true to a point, but it is something we should avoid at all cost in most cases. I would, however, like to repeat the rock n’ roll era, as well as the classical music era, maybe even the 90s! However, I would not like to repeat such incidences as what happened in WWII, or WWI or any war really. The reason that many people feel that history repeats itself is because we forget. A generation without war means the next will find glory in war. Even in their grandfathers and mothers try to explain they often are not able to. How can you explain something like murder?

I have noticed that my generation, the millennial are not who I exactly fear for not remember tragic events. Not only has this generation lived through a recession but ‘police action’, and what we now know as 9/11. What I am worried about is what we are seeing the schools not only in state schools but in Universities too, where this generation is currently at. This is the idea that we are over such things as racism and sexism and etc.

Now before you shut me out I want to listen what I have heard from any adult my parent's age and older. In my schools from middle school on we always had a time where they had us watch about the Holocaust. Films of what happened, truly terrible things that I may not want my kids to ever see, but I think they might need to see it. That is what my favorite teachers thought, my mom thought, my grandmother thought. They never truly wanted be to see such horrors, but they all remembered why they had to.

They all lived through a time where people did not believe it.

They knew people who outright said that it was not true, when the government denied the event, and when trails and footage of death camps went public. The same footage that I saw in school. Which schools and Universities are starting to move out of their curriculums. Where kids are asking, ' why are we watching this again? We know about this.' Yet, there are still people today, who do not believe that the Holocaust happened. The most public genocide the world has ever witnessed. With survivors telling their stories, evidence of death camps and graves; and for a long time, many people did not believe.

So when I do not want to hear or believe about something, I just remember others who did not want to believe. It may not be the same situation, but it does not mean that the difference changes the fact that we need to listen. For things such discrimination, for history that might repeat itself if we are not listening.

This year there were many protests on my campus, UCSC. I did not think to listen, but while walking I heard so many people voicing their opinions and one woman said, if she had experienced the same issues as her mother did in college, then the fight is not over, it has not changed. I had to take her word for truth because I thought if no one believed her how would we not make the same mistake as we did with her mother? Perhaps we already have.

I almost did not listen, in fact, it wasn't until after I started thinking about that footage and why they showed those horrible images to us did I truly listen. We have to see those images. Otherwise, it is just a story, that might have been exaggerated by the person, other the years, until we eventually forget what truly happened.

Do not forget or history will repeat itself.