The Death of Memory

How much do we remember?
If we forget (or never learn) the lessons of our past, does that negate our memory of what happened as well?

In other words, it is one thing to remember the past and to honour the past, but it is another thing altogether to remember the lessons from the past and to live accordingly.

I am a Jew and my memory is the Jewish memory, my history is the history of the Jewish people. As a Jew whose direct descendants came from Europe in the 20th century, the Holocaust is central to my memory and my history. My Father's people were fortunate enough to be unfortunate enough to have to leave Europe (for the most part) by the First World War, giving them a head start at a Jewish, North American life, and a semi-ignorant bliss of the horrors of Nazism. My Mother's people, on the other hand, did not yearn West (or any other direction) until it was, for too many of them, too late. From the carnage, my grandparents escaped through Russia to Uzbekistan where they married, began the next generation of Jews and eventually wound their way to Israel, close to the start of a new Jewish existence.

Now we have moved on to the second and third generation of post-Holocaust Jewish life in Israel, America, and even Europe (not to mention the other continents). Even now, our books, our movies our teachers, parents and grandparents remind us to never forget what happened to us 63-70 years ago. Never forget the murder of six million Jews. Jews of all ages, sizes, sexes, professions. But for being Jewish, they were just like everyone else around them. But for being Jewish, they would have lived out their natural lives in relative peace. For being Jewish they were persecuted and the died. For their being Jewish, the memories of the next generations are still scarred.

And so we say to "Never Forget."

So what does it mean for the Jews to never forget the hatred and the events that led to murder on such a grand scale? Is it merely a plea for to remember those six million? To catalogue their names, dates of birth and dates of expiry? To turn crematoria into memorabilia?

What more could there be?

Ultimately, genocide is bigger word used less often for events of infinitely less magnitude. According to the Oxford Dictionary of current English, "Genocide" is, : "the deliberate killing of a very large number of people from a particular ethnic group or nation."

We can argue over the meaning of "a very large number of people", but I am happy to concede that any number with at least 4 zeroes should be considered as very large. Americans remembering September 11, 2001 might argue that 3 zeroes should suffice. In another example, the massacre of 700-3500 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982 was called a genocide by none other than the United Nations General Assembly.

In as much as Jews are taught to never forget the Holocaust. Never to forget so as to never happen again.

Yet it happens. Over and over again, it happens. Taken from the Wikipedia entry for "Genocides in History", only since the Holocaust, have we seen acts of genocide against the Australian Aboriginal peoples (1900-1969), Guatemala (1968-1996), Bangladesh (1971), Burundi (1972 and 1993 - separate events), Equatorial Guinea (1968-1979), Cambodia (1975-1979), East Timor (1975-1999), the aforementioned Sabra-Shatila, Lebanon massacre (September 1982), Afghanistan (by the Soviets, 1979-1982), Ethiopia (1977-1978), the Kurds of Iraq (1986-1988), Tibet (1950-1959), the Tikuna's of Brazil (1988), West Papua/West New Guinea (1963), Zanzibar (1964).

Since the dawn of the new millennium (this is in the 21st century!), we have borne witness to the genocidal deaths of well over one million (that's 6 zeroes) people in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995), Rwanda (1994) and Sudan (2003-right now).

Every time a human being suffers due to the simple belonging to an individual ethnic group or nation, our memory of the Holocaust is dimmed. The lessons are not being applied.

We have screamed "Never Again!" for over 60 years, even while it still happens. Even Israel, a nation founded in part on a commitment to the memory and the lessons of the Holocaust, has ironically refused asylum on a significant number of refugees from the Darfur genocide in the Sudan.

Is this the death blow to our memory?

I cannot forget.