Remembrance can be frightening. The Holocaust traps us forever, rightly so. This "extermination label" stains any aspiration to look ahead as if the past can be "disregarded".
We are all salauds, in the terminology of Sartre, Camus, Wiesel or Lanzmann. The past is part of our DNA and denying it is "something rotten", to quote Shakespeare. Seeing these surviving older men and women having the strength to return to hell and face again the humiliations inflicted upon them makes one humble. Universal history is forever broken, like a repeated Kristallnacht. Tragically, certain windows remain beyond repair, after all those years.
The January 27, 2015 commemoration of the Holocaust is more indicative of where the global existential sorrow lies, than for the ones who choose to ignore it, since destruction is their cause. The trauma looms larger than the moment. Only civilization can grasp the lasting meaning thereof.
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