"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."George Santayana, 1905
The truth of Santayana's words were brought sharply into focus for me when I read the following two paragraphs located at the beginning of the excellent book "The Road from Home" by David Kherdian:
September 16, 1916 - To the Government of Aleppo.It was at first communicated to you that the government, by order of the Jemiet, had decided to destroy completely all the Armenians living in Turkey...An end must be put to their existence, however criminal the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex nor to conscientious scruples.Minister of the Interior TALAAT PASHA
August 22, 1939 - I have given orders to my Death Units to exterminate without mercy or pity men, women and children belonging to the Polish-speaking race. It is only in this manner that we can acquire the vital territory which we need. After all, who remembers today the extermination of the Armenians?ADOLF HITLER
The chilling brutality so casually mentioned in those two paragraphs is shocking in and of itself, but Hitler's reliance on the selective human memory to excuse his genocidal order is truly frightening because he was so very right. After all, do you remember the extermination of the Armenians?
It's not enough to simply remember the mistakes of the past. We must also teach them to our children in a way that accurately portrays the true scope of the horror, suffering and loss that they caused so that future generations aren't condemned to repeat the genocidal atrocities that Hitler repeated and that some fanatical groups would just as eagerly carry out today. We must not be persuaded to let evil acts like the slaughter of the Armenians, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 fade out of memory by people who suggest that the kindest thing that we can do for the survivors is keep all reminders of the tragedy out of the public eye or by those who prefer to rationalize or justify these events or by those who believe that the only productive way to move forward is to leave the past behind without reference to it ever again.
If ever we needed an incentive to be faithful teachers of history, surely Adolf Hitler gave it to us on August 22, 1939.
