Many still believe that the best way to get rid of the burden of the atrocities of the past is to agree not to remember them. But the trauma never goes away. It can remain unconscious and be passed on to the next generations. Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we publish an interview with historian Aleida Assman about what it means for society to remember the crimes of the past and their victims.
Psychologies: Why again and again refer to events that are connected in the minds of people with suffering and humiliation?
Aleida Assman: Philosopher Karl Jaspers said: “Only animals are able to forget and live from scratch every day. People cannot live honestly if they do not take into account what has been done.”
Cruelty and injustice committed by one part of society in relation to another give rise to a common trauma. Many still believe that the best way to get rid of the burden of the atrocities of the past is to agree not to remember them. But this only makes sense when it comes to the relationship between winners and losers. In the “morning after the war” situation, when you need to rebuild relationships, memories of mutual claims and grievances will only complicate the path to peace. But when there are perpetrators and victims, the picture changes.
At the level of non-verbal communication, children still understood: the most important part of their life happened not in their life, not with them.
The criminal (if the fact of the crime is established) is burdened by his role and seeks salvation in oblivion. For the victim, the memory of the experience of violence is the only thing she has left. Oblivion for her is tantamount to the triumph of those who sought to destroy her physically. The difficulty is that the victims themselves are often unable to talk about the violence they have experienced. Traumatic experience contradicts the person’s positive idea of himself, and it is forced out of consciousness.
Immediately after the Second World War and the Holocaust, a situation developed in German society that contributed to silence: not only the Nazis, but also their victims did not want to remember what happened. But the trauma cannot disappear without a trace, it becomes unconscious and is passed on to the next generations.
Do the children and grandchildren of the victims of repression continue to feel this?
Yes. In many families where there were victims of the Holocaust, there is a conspiracy of silence. This is especially true for the second generation – the children of those who went through the death camps (in Israel they are called 2-G). In such families, they tried not to touch on painful topics. But at the level of non-verbal communication, the children still understood that something was wrong with them.
They are somewhat different from their peers. In the life of each of them there is a secret that they cannot explain and which cannot be shared. As if the most important part of their life happened not in their life, not with them. And they can’t do anything about it. Nor can they separate their life from the life of their parents. They are not free to define their identity.
It often happens that children themselves begin to edit the history of the family, to fantasize as best they can. There is a book by David Grossman “See. article: Love “(Text, 2007). Her hero was born into a family of Jewish Holocaust survivors. Parents hardly tell him about what happened to them. But the child from time to time hears them say something about the “Nazi monster”. And he begins to imagine that this is a real monster that lives in the basement. In his own way, he tries to tame him. In fact, this is also work with trauma. But often it is the descendants who manage to break the conspiracy of silence, create conditions for talking about the past, preserving the memory of it.
How so?
Memories appear, works of art that rediscover the horror experienced for people, make the memory of the victims the property of the whole society. The form itself can be indirect, allegorical, as in the case of Art Spiegelman’s Maus. But thanks to her, the author manages to express what he does not dare to speak out loud.
Due to the fact that events lose their emotional load, a frank conversation about the past becomes possible.
Gradually, the memory of the victims is included in the general cultural memory of the nation, and this becomes a guarantee that they will not be forgotten. Rituals of memory (commemorative dates, memorials) create conditions so that the crime is not forgotten and does not happen again.
Will talking about the crimes of the past lead to a new split in society?
The split occurs due to injury. Memory rituals are just a symbolic way of healing. A society that chooses to ignore the violence that has been committed against its members commits new violence – this time on the memory of them.
Do we want our sense of community to be based on violence, that is the question. In this sense, commemorative rituals look to the future, not to the past. They give a chance to rethink the previous experience and conclude a fairer social contract, create a new system of values.
Is the new generation, who grew up in different conditions, able to understand what their grandfathers and great-grandfathers experienced?
The problem of emotional attitude is one of the most difficult to preserve the memory of the past. Already those who were born in the 1960s, speaking about the Holocaust, admit: “We don’t feel anything.” On the other hand, it is precisely due to the fact that events lose their emotional load that a frank conversation about the past becomes possible. During the third or fourth generation, the wall of silence breaks down: young people are ready to listen, and older people are ready to speak.
About the expert:
Aleida Assman – German historian, culturologist, specialist in the field of cultural memory. Her book The Long Shadow of the Past (New Literary Review) was published in Russian in 2014.