Forgetfulness

By: Marcus Engel
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:41:51
Print this article | Tell a friend | For publisher |

Rating:

 

As I first started writing this newsletter, it was the morning of Sunday, September 10. NPR was on in the background, filled with the same talk as every other media outlet in the land: the five year anniversary of 9-11. For the three days leading up to the infamous date, every time I flipped on a TV or radio or read through a news story, there was a constant reminder of that tragedy.

Now, as I sit here on the morning of September 14th, just a few days past the anniversary that got all our attention, there’s not a word being said about it. And by the time you’re reading this next week, I bet the five year anniversary is all but forgotten – or at least it hasn’t been thought of since the 11th.

Unfortunately, we in America, myself included, seem to have all the attention span of a gnat. We’re constantly caught up in this instantaneous culture where new gadgets, slick advertisements and luxury items are always competing for our attention. Our priorities are often upside down. This is sad… but it’s also a fact of the world in which we live.

The Hispanic-American philosopher, George Santayana, made that famous quote in the early 20th century: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Frankly, this scares the ever-loving crap out of me. Why? Because there are so many historically important things about which my knowledge is close to nil.

Vietnam? Everything I know about the “police action” in Southeast Asia comes from a few high school and college classes, watching the History Channel and reading about a dozen autobiographies from soldiers. That isn’t even a drop in the bucket of knowledge – and we’re talking about nearly 60,000 Americans that died less than a decade before I entered the world. Go back in time even further and, as Santayana proposed, I feel even more doomed.

A few weeks ago, my favorite radio personality, Dave Glover, interviewed a holocaust survivor named Sara Moses. As I listened to Sara’s tale of survival of the German death camps, I stood in my kitchen and wept. Just wept. Her tale of horror, starvation and de-humanization at the hands of the Nazis, were some of the most gut-wrenching stories I’ve ever heard.

Now, most stories of the holocaust end with the release of the prisoners back into the outside world. Not Sara’s! The story for her didn’t end when the British troops liberated her from the camps – her story continues today. While Dave interviewed her, he gave her the platform to voice her current views on the Israeli conflict and all the current happenings in the Middle East. Sara used this opportunity to share how she uses her story, and her life, to help keep the past from repeating itself. Since the interview, I’ve had the privilege of becoming friends with this delightful woman and our conversations have impacted me deeply. We’re constantly bombarded with the talking heads, commentators and analysts on TV, but the best insight I’ve found on today’s troubles come from someone who lived through similar horrors more than half a century ago. To not only survive something so horrible, but to use that experience as a force to positively impact the future – wow. That is so powerful.

In our world of instant everything, it’s difficult to keep up with our own worldly happenings. Yet, keeping the knowledge of history alive must, must be a priority. Sara is doing this through her work with the Holocaust Museum, speaking out and not letting history be regulated to anonymous facts and figures. She has a fabulous testimony of human endurance, but more importantly, she uses that past to aid the future of humanity. We should all do the same.

Article source: Expert Articles