The Holocaust & Migrating People today.

What are the functions of social memory? In discussion with reference to the museums and counter_monuments in memorial of the Shoah/Holocaust.

I believe the function of social memory is intricate in personal or ‘collective’ meaning (Burton, (2015) p. 217).Considering the abstract academic term ‘living memory’ (Burton. (2015) p. 204) implies consciousness, I am writing narratively with personal pronouns in this essay. This is because ‘social memories are formed through storytelling’ (Halbwachs, (1980). Which makes this academic essay its own Shoah social memory.

 In the context of atrocities or ‘the catastrophe’ (Burton, (2015) p. 205), social memory functions to serves societies with wishing to not repeat painful experiences. By discussing these memories, people construct amended values challenging their inhumanity.

D.H Lawrence wrote in the poem, ‘Healing’ it is ‘the endless repetition of the mistake which mankind has chosen to sanctify’ which causes illness. It describes a person as ‘not a mechanism’ rather as having ‘a deep emotional self’ (PoetryTherapyNews, (2015)

Dialogue of past events creates a human connection to the experience within us. The social memories become living, helping us to consider what we wish to change.

We learn to distinguish what is ‘beautiful’ or ‘bad’ through cultural views. (Burton, (2015) p. 206) Yet by loving what is ‘not beautiful’, we explore understanding teaching us about humane beauty. For example, the ‘ugly’ (Burton, (2015) p. 206) Shoah memories are especially competent at surmising compassionate attitudes. Perhaps this is why so many of the memorials are aesthetically unappealing.     
  

 Shoah memories are aroused vividly seeing these museums and counter-monuments, as their architectural design appeals to our humanity. Typically their cold, blank and looming spaces demand our remembrance of love. Colours, warmth, feelings of beauty and affection are cried out for. If it is only us there, we become those friendly colours.

A different kind of memorial, the U.S ‘Tower of faces’ holds steep walls of familial photos of those who lived in Ejszyszki, Lithuania; When 29 of 4,000 Jews were left alive (Burton, (2015) p. 220). They stretch numerously, to impressionably remind us.

The Tower of Faces (The Yaffa Eliach Shtetl Collection) in the permanent exhibition at the United States Holocaust memorial museum, Washington, D.C photographed by Edward Owen. Photo: copyright USHMM, Washington.

 Other ‘transcendent’ media, such as music or films that ‘move’ people from every nation are also ‘emotive spaces’ (Burton, (2015) 206) where people can resonate with an emotional understanding.

Fairly, these monuments tend to harbour a tone of ‘absence’ (Burton, (2015) p. 203). If we respect the lives of those who perished, we can respect the lives of those who suffer today. Thus we fulfil an absent need, the call for our humanity. The space needs to be filled, the feeling of absence requires something of us, and what is that? our improved selves?

Difficult feelings about the Shoah can be expressed because the monuments are not hidden from view. Rather they are evident all across the world, inviting retrospection and consideration.

Visiting Italy with a group of friends, a war installation functioned so that we silently appreciated our human presence, amongst this ‘collective memory’ (Burton, (2015) p. 208)

 A long dark tunnel with light at the end, war sounds bellowed as we navigated to the light via tanks, bombs, uniforms and guns. The sensory stimulation provoked social memories.

The space felt overwhelming. Watching my friends saunter, respectfully through the museum, I sat down…

 I was reminded of my Polish ancestry, my grandfather I had never met. My mind raced with the stories my grandmother had told me. I could feel the way that she touched my hand whilst I soaked it in. She told me with joy, how they escaped. To ‘Rome! London! Cities! I love them! All the people!’ She told me her happy memories of Poland too.

Sitting there, experiencing these memories alone, I imagined what they must have felt when the bombs were going off. It was terrifying.

But the way she told me wasn’t frightening, it was powerful, it was a memory of our family overcoming this disaster.

In the museum, the dark tunnel reminded me of the low, swinging lights in my grandmother’s house in London; the curious basement. I thought of the exposed pipes, and the furiously loud hissing of a boiling kettle which crescendo’ed with a punishing scream.

I could feel the way she flung herself into the living room to see us, beaming with tears of joy twinkling in her eyes. She would laugh and cry. She got upset, and she got happy. A day with her was colourful, unpredictable, noisy, emotional, and full of stories of foreign lands. Social memory here sparked my imagination and respect for emotional life. It was okay to feel deeply, it was good to be alive! It was great to be together.

Most memorable was her loud delight at our presence. Her emotional responses, squealing, clapping of hands, kisses, gushing incomprehensible polish to my father.

‘Ohh, you are here!’ her spectacular greetings have emotional fanfare. It was like bells and trumpets were singing somewhere, fireworks were cascading in the sky…‘It’s so WONderful to seee you!’ And the intonations are real. She means it.

These memories comforted me. I felt like a child of this human experience. I felt so grateful I did not directly experience this atrocity. I imagined that my family had wished that their children would live in a better world.

So the function of social memory educated me, in an emotional way, to establish better values than that of racial terrorism. Social memory functions to remind me of the good efforts of education, story-telling, or narratives spoken and received in commemoration of past experiences.

This is because they encourage appreciation of life. As a teenager, Babcia clutched my hand again and said, ‘that’s what life is about, it is about appreciating beauty!’ and we were connected so perfectly in that moment.

Seeing the Danube Promenade memorial where 10,000 Jews were murdered, shoes bronzed upon the edge of the riverside; surely we are connected to this? Does it remind us of traditions that do work, so we may preserve them? Values of equality, fair economy, resourcefulness, creativity, education and reverence for humanity?

 Gyula Pauer and Can Togay, ‘Shoes on the Danube promenade’, Budapest, 2005.Photographed by Travel ink. Photo: Getty Images.

I realise that being of split-national heritage gave me an early ‘emotional understanding’ (Burton, (2015) p. 252) of the ‘pedagogic’, or ‘teaching’ (Dictionary.com, (2015) of Shoah museums.

As a child I experienced my family from different historical perspectives; I was imbued with the realisation that people are just individual people, of individual natures, regardless of their heritage;  A person is only ever who they are on the inside. And atrocities are atrocities, wherever or to whomever they occur. This is how the Shoah museums function.

 I was also made aware that painful memories can be forced into being ‘forgotten’. Because the desire is simply to move on, (Burton, (2015) p. 252) to start a new life and believe in something better.

This is a way that social memory has collectivised to avoid the pain of recognising Shoah traumas;

However, this function of ‘hiding’ (Burton, (2015) p. 252) the atrocities was not realistic for me or my brother who this year visited Warsaw together.

We wished to embrace the stories we were told by our grandparents, British war children, afraid of foreign lands that seemed to drop bombs. And the story of Warsaw. Memories of Trauma, relocation, beauty, love, loss and philosophical musings all combined.

Together we commemorated and integrated these aspects of our youth, attempts at understanding our family, piecing together their stories. We visited churches, memorials, graves, parks, café’s, music nights, museums and shops. We constructed a social memory between us, of our independent identities. A strong function of this social memory.

We were sort of lost there, but we both found something new, that social memory of the Shoah can be complex, especially in its ‘absence’ as a memory which can hold tensions. (Burton, (2015) p. 252)For example it has always confused me that our family home which we visited, now a restaurant and expensive flats, was the ‘family seat’ for generations.

Yet the Shoah caused so much diaspora how can we ascertain who really owns it now? The rightful family who relocated? or the new occupiers who patiently restored Warsaw?  At other times it appears simple, we are all connected to this event in some way.

As a function, however emotionally painful it can be, social memory can be ultimately ‘healing’ (Medical-dictionary, (2015) defined  as the process by which neuroses and psychoses are resolved to restore a fulfilling existence’ 

 I believe that the intention of Shoah memorials and counter-monuments are not to create further blame or shameful pain, but rather to serve this healing purpose, which is a unique journey for each individual and similarly collective in its nature.

Social memory functioned to educate me about what happened. I have been emotionally understood by the memorials, and my story is an important piece of a very large puzzle of humanity. This essay has become a living memory of the Shoah.

Thus, I genuinely feel the deep hopes and fears that many migrating people feel today, for acceptance, finding work, and a place where your children will live amongst educated values, These are the same experiences and as real as ever.

When we returned from Poland a document of nationality waved me in. Yet I can look on any news channel today (The Migration Observatory, (2015) and see mothers or fathers with children, fleeing catastrophe’s, hoping for civility.

Can we really claim England is this place? If it is so defined by nationalistic boundaries that informed humanity and ‘emotional understanding’ (Burton, (2015) p. 207) is not fairly represented? Is this not the same murderous attitude of the Nazi’s?

These people are experiencing the same pain as those who fled the Shoah; which is spoken of as abhorrent.

These questions are functions of social memory as an uncompromising, educated reflection upon current ‘press inhumanity’ towards migrating people (The Migration Observatory, (2015).

Reflecting upon this essay has caused me a deep sorrow and resurrection of kinds. In this way the Shoah monuments have functioned to give my family emotional, intellectual and ‘cultural healing’ (Medical-dictionary, (2015). 

With a resolve to question and intelligibly challenge the world I currently live in. For this I am grateful, empowered, and restored of hope.

Translation, Babcia, Polish, Grandma

Bibliography.

Dictionary.com (Internet) Available from dictionary.reference.com/browse/pedagogic Accessed 25/08/2015.

Halbwachs, M. (1980) The Collective memory (trans. L.A Coser), New York/London, Harper & Row: originally published in French in 1950.

The Historical War Museum, Trento, Italy.

Loftus, D and Paul-Francois, T. (2015) ‘Shoes on the Danube promenade’ Contexts, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

Loftus, D and Paul-Francois, T. (2015) ‘The Tower of Faces’ Contexts, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

Medical-dictionary. (Internet) Available from http://medicaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/healing Accessed 26/08/2015

The Migration Observatory, (Online) Available from www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/reports/migration-news. Accessed 26/08/2015

Poetrytherpaynews (n.d) Healing, D. H Lawrence (Online) Available at poetrytherpaynews.com/tag/dh-lawrence Accessed 28/08/2015

Tim, B. (2015), Exhibiting Absence: museums and memorials of the Shoah, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

Wikipedia (internet) Available from Wikpedia.com Accessed 24/08/2015