Hirschfield and Kula - Brad Blog Nov 1, 2007

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Brad Blog Nov 1, 2007

Thursday, 01 November 2007

Memory Is A Choice
By Brad Hirschfield

Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” in which state sponsored mobs led by politicians and soldiers rampaged across Germany and Austria, terrorizing Jews and other “undesirables” sixty-nine years ago, will be recalled this week in ceremonies held throughout the world. But like all acts of memory, these ceremonies will do much more than recall the past. Like all acts of memory, they will tell us much about who we are today and just as much about the future we hope to create.

Memory is about choice. It’s true within families, its true among nations, and it’s especially true in the remembering of painful events. We always have a choice, if not about what occurred in the past, at least about how we recall them in the present.

We can choose to remember the past in ways that will stir our anger and evoke our rage, and in ways that stimulate sadness and provoke pain. And we can choose to remember in ways that challenge us to take from the past those lessons that we need right now in order to be what we most want to be, to create the world in which we most want to live.

While that choice is not unique to Kristallnacht in particular, or even to the Holocaust in general, however unique those events may be, each November ninth provides an invaluable opportunity to raise the challenge of how we remember a painful past. How we answer that question impacts every segment of our society where there is an endless competition for who will wear the prized status of most victimized community.

We live in a culture of complaint that valorizes victimization, one in which communities too often vie for the title of “most victimized” as the excuse for their own bad acts, or as the basis upon which they claim special privileges. How often have we heard a previously oppressed racial, ethnic, or religious group in this country justify its hostility to others based on the group’s previous experience of oppression? To be sure, at different times it has been especially difficult to be Jewish, Catholic, African-American, gay, a woman or many other things in this country. But dredging up the pain of the past as a way to make excuses for the present serves nobody well.

Throughout the world, and here at home, people struggle to maintain the status of victim because they assume that it guarantees them the moral high ground. In fact, it usually does the reverse. How often has the world seen one nation slaughter another because the current slaughterers claim to be redressing their own past hurts? The evidence is clear whether drawn from places such as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia to the ongoing conflicts in Israel/Palestine and Darfur, just to name a few _ we’ve seen all too well how this process unfolds.

Of course past abuses must be remembered, their lessons learned well, and improvements made in our treatment of vulnerable people both in America and throughout the world. But the victim parade and the constant competition for which group is entitled to wear the banner of most victimized must end _ mainly because the mantle of victimhood is the easiest excuse for the most heinous crimes. Pride in one group’s identity primarily as a victim too often becomes a tipping point toward becoming victimizers.

We should never forget the past, but it behooves each group, community, and nation to remember its greatest pains in ways that do more than empower yesterday’s victims to become tomorrow’s victimizers. We should recall that the broken glass of Kristallnacht, mirrors the glass traditionally broken at the end of the Jewish wedding ceremony in memory of the ancient temple in Jerusalem, twice built, and twice destroyed. Yes, the past is recalled, but it is done so in a way that promises a future ahead in which that which we create together in hope is far more enduring than identities built on perpetual victimhood.

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