I was at the State Observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony at the Library today. The whole event was quite moving from beginning to end. That this was held at the library, and not, say, standing room only at the Delta Center or Rice Eccles, gives me worry about the collective memory in regard to history and its importance and relevance to modern day human living.
Rabbi Joshua Aaronson, who closed the ceremony, made a statement, (I’m paraphrasing here) about not living in the past, but because of the past, the responsibility is on our shoulders to change the world.
This was a great statement. It tied the whole event together in a way that relieved just enough of the suffocating weight of why we were there, and what had brought us there, off of my shoulders enough to allow me to get up from my seat and leave the auditorium.
But it reminded me of how easy it is to turn away from history, especially if it stirs uncomfortable emotions and immeasurable grief. It reminded me that those subjects we shy away from, in an attempt to spare ourselves the enormity of it all are the very things we need remember, in stark and naked contrast, to remind us that colossal historical events like the holocaust can happen at any time, in any place, to any people. It is for these reasons that we need to remember, that we are obligated to remember and why we, as a human people, owe it to our children to pass on the history of our darker and evil behavior.
It is only through the study of our own misdeeds that we can avoid, identity and stop or prevent this from ever happening again, and when you consider Rwanda and Darfur, Bosnia and Sarajevo, Cambodia and Tibet, that you see that we are already failing in our trust to remember and learn.
My 13 year old son just finished up three weeks of studying WWII at school and when I mentioned the Holocaust said: “What’s a holocaust?” (He’s not sleeping in class, either, I called the school and it’s not in the curriculum) I said something about genocide and Hitler’s “final solution,” gearing up to deliver one of my historical lectures that he loves ever so much, and he again interrupted and asked: “What’s genocide?”
How is it possible that a young man, entering middle school with superb grades has to ask these questions? What kind of an example does this set? At the very, very least, he knows now.
