Remembrance Day | “Bringing back to the heart”
On Memorial Day, spazio + spadoni remembers the victims of the Holocaust, today’s forgotten wars, and the witnesses of mercy
Remembering comes from the Latin re-cordari (from cor, cordis). It means “to bring back to the heart”. Remembrance, therefore, is a matter of mercy as well as justice.
January 27 is an important date, one that-rather than marking on the calendar-has left marks and wounds. On the skin and in the lives of the deported men, women and children. In the eyes of those who saw hell and had to acknowledge it.
It has been 80 years since the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camps were torn down by the 60th Army of the Soviet Army.
The liberation of 1945, however, was above all a revelation: the unveiling of the horror that had been perpetrated amidst the din of war, the manifestation to the whole world of how inhumane one can become.
There were 9,000 left in that prison and 6 million had been killed, two-thirds of the Jews of Europe. There was also an attempt to cover up the evidence, just as today some continue to deny or minimize what happened.
Honoring the victims of the Shoah means, therefore, “bringing back to the heart” an entire people who had to endure the atrocity and madness of those who thought themselves superior.
It means giving new possibilities to a tomorrow that values history and people, because, as Luis Sepúlveda wrote, “a people without memory is a people without a future.”
Celebrating the Day of Remembrance is not just about commemorating. Major events-public, formal, institutional-must go hand in hand with an intimate and individual awareness, especially among the new generations.
Indeed, it is necessary to become informed and take note of what is happening in the world, to avoid making mistakes again, to see what is still unknown to most.
Like the forgotten wars that have been going on for years in the poorest countries without making headlines.
Like the other genocides that have affected the Armenians, the Roma and Sinti of Europe, the Tutsis in Rwanda, etc.
Like any manifestation of hatred and intolerance.
Moreover, if we must remember Evil (so as not to repeat it), it is equally important to remember the Good that, in every age, has managed to make its way through people and their works.
To put it in the words of Pope Francis in the encyclical Brothers All: “I am not referring only to the memory of horrors, but also to the memory of those who, in the midst of a poisoned and corrupt context, have been able to recover dignity and with small or large gestures have chosen solidarity, forgiveness, and fraternity”.
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- Image digitally created by spazio + spadoni