Process Paper Venturing into history fair, we had no idea of what to do for our topic.

Being freshman in the IB program, we were required to take Inquiry Skills and our teacher was a Holocaust historian of-sorts. In learning about the Holocaust conducted by Hitler, we were inspired to do a holocaust that was less well-known as it is intriguing and relevant to the theme. While researching holocausts of the past, Leena read the book Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys and was enthralled by the topic of the book, the 'forgotten' holocaust in the USSR. After everyone read the book we all agreed that this topic would be interesting and include enough sources to be an ideal history fair topic. Conducting our research was the most extensive part of the project, and therefore we knew would be the most chaotic. In order to simplify the research process, we first looked up five secondary sources and expanded our research to include primary sources. We then compiled a list of links, pictures, books, and videos and portioned the sources evenly. Each person was responsible for cutting their assigned videos into sections, typing notes on the sources and saving pictures. Afterwards, we emailed them to group members assigned for different things: Chandni for images and videos, Leena for rights information and Taylor for responsibility information. In dividing the research, we effectively organized and apportioned the work. After researching adequate information to start our actual project, we had to choose the category to compete in. We contemplated creating a documentary on Stalin's GULAGs, but subsequently realized that there wasn't enough image or video sources that would effectively convey all the information we wanted to include. Additionally, we decided not to do a display or performance as it did not suit our abilities. Thus, we chose website because it could include a variety of sources, such as videos and pictures, as well as a quantity of words and interactive documents that would communicate the message in a meaningful and effective way. Lastly, we related our topic to the NHD theme, Rights and Responsibilities in History, in a multitude of ways. Primarily, the GULAG system effectively deprived the rights of the people who were held prisoner there in almost every aspect of their life. To demonstrate this, we utilized the UN Declaration of Human Rights to analyze the rights an average prisoner was deprived of. After this analysis, we asked ourselves who was responsible for the removal of rights from these people. Although the first answer was obvious, Stalin, we dove deeper into responsibility by extension. We posed questions such as what were the responsibilities of bystanders and

prisoners? This led to us to draw conclusions on the responsibilities of human beings to other human beings. In all, this topic related to the theme of Rights and Responsibilities better than anticipated. Through corroboration and a variety of sources, we, as a group, discovered the rights were directly connected to the responsibilities of others.