Remembering and Forgetting

It has been a week -- a really crazy one -- since my wonderful Zahorany Easter! The memories of a particular smile, an unexpected treat, the playful fluffiness of a new puppy, the privilege of connecting again with family have all been added to memories of other wonderful times in Zahorany. The pleasures keep piling up. And what a wonderful gift it is that we can treasure people, events, joys, and yes, sorrows of other times. It is easy to understand why Alzheimer's is such a feared diagnosis: the memories we choose to keep and cherish (or which we seem unable to forget) create who we are within ourselves and with others.

It has been more than seventeen years since my first trip over the road going north out of Prague, winding its way through Litomerice, on up to Usti nad Labem, and on through Germany. And it's been seventeen years that I have carried the memory of my first trip past Terezin, one of the infamous Nazi concentration and death camps. And it's been a week in which I cannot shake the impressions and thoughts of yet another trip around the bends in the road right through the middle of Terezin.

Terezin, just around the bend from Litomerice, was built in the late 18th century as a "perfect fortress" for that time, at least. It's never been tested in combat. Part of the town, however, became a prison a century later, and then "earned" a place on the larger canvas of history when the whole town was turned into a Jewish ghetto in early WWII. Not only did "The Little Fortress" become a death camp, the whole town became a transfer station for Jews on their way to death camps all around Europe. Terezin is now just another interesting Bohemian town, this one with more history than most. The camp is now "restored" -- certainly sanitized enough that visitors can bear the awful weight of its history -- and there are indeed markers and memorials to those who lost their lives. It is a large site, still the mounds of dirt covering the rooms beneath, still the appalling difference between the paths for guards and the ditches for the condemned, still signs of the tracks carrying the freight cars. Several times I've wondered if the overwhelming sadness I feel each time I pass is just fanciful. I think not. Surely such horror and anguish must remain as a reminder somehow, somewhere.

Because I was on a bus without the distraction of good conversation, or perhaps because it had become time for me to notice yet another layer of this horror, I became acutely aware of surrounding churches. One only a block or so away, several others near enough that seeing the nicely landscaped site would have been unavoidable. I know that for the most part the churches were emptied, used for other purposes. They were not places of worship and faith. I've listened to stories as recently as this past week of life during the past 60-70 years. I've heard about the various ways religion was replaced with "state." And yes, I've read the works of and the stories about clergy, theologians, philosophers, and ordinary / extraordinary people such as Elie Wiesel so that I've gained even a small understanding of some of the enormity of their choices, the incredible manner in which their beliefs held fast.

Someone taught me a few years ago that the power is in the question. There are enormous questions remaining in this for me. One is the ability of world leaders to forget so quickly the lessons of the past or to believe so arrogantly that what was wrong and evil for others is necessary and/or excused for them. Another is the rise of those who would simply revise history, either because they cannot or will not allow themselves to admit even a small portion of connection to the horrors of the past or the possibility of repetition.

That's all the big stuff. I am still dealing with the small stuff. What would I have done? Who would I be, living in such terrible circumstances? How would I act and react, for myself, for those I love, and for others I do not even know. What do I really believe? Who am I?

It is said that someone asked Eleanor Roosevelt at a particularly trying time in her life if she believed a person should "forgive and forget". Her response was this: Of course we should forgive. We should not forget. It is our memories that shape us and make us who we are.

I'm old enough to remember parts of this history, protected enough that it is not personal, and hopeful enough that somehow, sometime we can incorporate memory into our planning, we can raise our standard of acceptability, not repeat the past we appear to have forgotten.