Applying to pursue a Bachelor’s Degree in History is for me the culmination of many years of work and study, as well as personal growth. My interest in History began at an early age, in the form of storytelling: I grew up listening to my Polish grandmother recount her experiences during World War II. I understood as a child that my grandmother found solace in knowing that her experiences would not be forgotten. As a listener and witness to her experiences, I could help her to remember and honour the people she had loved and lost. Through her stories, the two of us were involved in an act of private commemoration that would form the basis of my interest in History and memory on a broader political scale. In high school, a guided trip to Auschwitz with my Social Studies class sparked an interest in Holocaust Studies. I have since taken as many courses as my school offered on World War II in the European Theater, in order to enrich my knowledge of this subject. Outside of school, I have also volunteered for the past two years at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre on a weekly basis. As a docent at the Centre, I guide elementary school children on tours of exhibits, and in so doing I have taken on the role of educator and storyteller that my grandmother once embodied for me. I see this volunteer role as a chance to continue her legacy and to share education and commemoration of our collective past with my community. My time at the Centre has given me insight into the process of transforming research into educational material, and the challenges involved in creating a coherent historical narrative while spotlighting the many voices of witnesses and survivors. My understanding of the complexities involved in creating historical narratives would serve me well as a student of History: I am mindful of the need to think critically about any coherent narrative with which one is presented. I also strive to question and be critical of the historical narratives that I produce myself as a writer and educator, in order to acknowledge that there are many subjective truths of history alongside facts. This past year I began to work at the Centre transcribing recorded testimonies of Holocaust survivors. The opportunity to help collect primary sources has been formative for me as a historian-in-the-making. As part of my job involved fact-checking survivors’ testimony, I learned to conduct rigorous scholarly and analytical work even on highly emotional material. I understand that History requires a diligent and fastidious level of attention to detail, and a commitment to balancing individual voices and subjective narratives with thoroughly researched, evidence-based material. My ability to attend to details and to conduct rigorous analysis while being sensitive to emotional trauma would, I believe, allow me to thrive as a History student at the university level. My work experience in gathering testimony, as well as a childhood spent listening to my grandmother’s personal and historical tales, has helped me to hone my scholarly interests. I intend to study questions of memory and narrative in relation to historical events. I wish to gain a deeper understanding of the myriad factors that contributed to World War II, as well as the ripple effects of the war on subsequent generations. I intend to study the ways in which individuals, organizations, and nations choose to narrate and remember political and personal traumas. The opportunity to study with international scholars -- who can provide insight into various ways cultures grapple with and respond to historical tragedies – would be enormously enriching, allowing me to understand the Holocaust itself in further detail, as well as the ways in which it relates to the many other genocides that have taken place before and since around the world. I strive to balance my passion for History and memory with a sense of responsibility and commitment to rigorous scholarship.