Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin depicted history as it would be seen from a divine perspective. The picture is not harmonious or pleasant. He imagined an angel standing before every war and catastrophe. The angel would like to make the destruction whole again, but a wind propels him unwillingly into the future, and the horrors of the past pile skyward.
Benjamin’s angel is a vision of our historical consciousness. Our cultural memory is about ten years; long enough for Karla Homolka’s upcoming parole to provoke anger, but distressingly too short to remember much about our most significant human disaster.
Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp where millions were systematically exterminated, was liberated by the Russians sixty years ago today. The dehumanizing vision of the camps supposedly compelled the world never to forget.
But on its anniversary, despite a glut of movies, plays, books, etcetera on the topic, we remain in a shocking state of stupidity. Polls taken across our tolerant and progressive nation revealed nothing short of a mnemonic abyss: 30 per cent of Canadians could not identify Jews as the principal victims of the Holocaust; nine per cent thought that Jews had partly or mostly caused it; a larger percentage did not answer. In Europe, a number of anti-Semitic gestures have surprised world leaders. And in Darfur and innumerable other places, genocide and xenophobic hatred mocks us.
When will we be outraged, saddened, and disgusted enough to implement a program of Holocaust education in every high school? The world rushes headlong into the future, leaving a gathering pile of ashes. We cannot change the past, but we insult it by our willful ignorance.
