Brown Daily Squeal (satire), NY
Jan 27 2005

Remembrance and Celebration
Posted by Benjamin Bright-Fishbein

Auschwitz was liberated 60 years ago today. A host of international
leaders will be gathering in Poland today to commemmorate the event
and remember the victims of genocide.

If you have the time, listen to this piece on the Holocaust. One
survivor talks about her forgiveness of the Nazis. Hate is baggage,
she says, that can only be lifted by forgiveness. Forgiveness is not
a gift to your oppressor; it is for your own healing, so that memory
is no longer overpowering. I’ve always had trouble fathoming how
anyone could ever forgive their oppressors. From my perspective, if
to forgive is to forget (or even alleviate), then I choose hatred. My
baggage is my identity, and to lighten the load would be the gravest
wrong. I wouldn’t touch inner peace with a ten-foot pole. The
Armenian Genocide suffers from being generally forgotten and
neglected by the world. In essence, the Armenians suffer from the
opposite problem: they don’t have enough memory. Their baggage is too
light. To forget is to kill a people twice.

But today is a day of celebration, a day to commemmorate liberation
from the most abject tyrrany. Yesterday, the first reparation checks
were paid out to the families of victims of the Armenian Genocide.
Today is Mozart’s birthday. All in all, a good day in history.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress