The Mark of History

     There are some things that are just impossible to comprehend second-hand. No matter how it's represented, nothing that survivors can convey about the Holocaust will allow us to truly understand what it was that they experienced. No matter how many stories we read, or documentaries we watch, or even memorials we visit will allow us to feel what they felt. Because the emotions- the real, raw, human emotions- cannot be conveyed. Jim Powell observes that any representation of the Holocaust "should continue to haunt us with its inability to represent the unrepresentable, to say the unsayable," because there is power in absence. Just as the empty space of memorials for lost soldiers impacts visitors in ways no monument ever could, our inability to grasp the full weight of the Holocaust contains a weight of its own. Our struggle does not make it insignificant, but rather serves as a symbol. Part of beginning to understand is the recognition that we can never fully understand. 

     While we cannot understand, it is important that we listen. The Holocaust cannot be remembered in all of its entirety, but it is important that we don't forget. Survivors of history all have different ways of dealing with the pain and the mark that something so tragic leaves behind. In his retelling of his father's story, Maus, Art Spiegelman allows his father to sift through his memories of the wartime. Tim O'Brien turns to his writing as an outlet for his memories of a different war in Vietnam. There's a certain similarity to such memories, despite all their differences, in that no representation does them justice. It's impossible for us to understand. But in knowing that we can't, it's important that we try.