“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905
I have a theory.
Vaccines are a contentious topic nowadays. There are many parents who are refusing to vaccinate their child based on . . . well, not much. One bogus study 20 years ago blew a hole in preventive immunity, and horrific diseases that were dying out are making a comeback.
During covid, there was an article in The Wall Street Journal about an outbreak of virulent flu in 1957. A vaccine was developed in a couple of weeks, the military's resources was hauled in to New York City to disseminate it, and the virus was stopped in its tracks. The author was wondering what changed to today.
My theory? The Spanish Flu killed millions. That had been only 40 years prior. The population remembered all too well the loved ones that had died, the suffering it caused.
The same premise holds for the rise of antisemitism today. Some complain that it's synonymous with the antisemitism of 1930s Berlin, but Alan Dershowitz amends that to say it's like the antisemitism of 1930s America. I've read novels that take place in 1900s New York City, and just because someone was white didn't mean he wasn't discriminated against. All forms of racism was rampant, against Italians, the Irish, anyone of color, and yes, Jews.
Yet what why did that antisemitism ease? The Holocaust. Many in the world were horrified by what the Nazis did, even if they were antisemitic. And we, by extension, became complacent. We forgot how it once was, how baked into the general psyche antisemitism can be. Then time passed. Survivors died out. People forgot.
Han says the same thing regarding terror attacks. It breaks my brain a little to realize there are voting adults who were born after September 11. They didn't even exist at the time of that national trauma. They don't know what life was like before terror came to America. They just think the TSA is a pain in the ass.
That's why it's important to remember the past. Yes, I happen to have a fascination with history, and it provides me with a framework to roll my eyes whenever I hear lines like "The world is burning." Babe, you've got air conditioning. Your great-great-grandma did not have a climate controlled living space or indoor plumbing or basic hygiene or a guarantee all her babies would, well, live.
When we say, "Never again," we are also saying, "Never forget." Because history is important. All of it.
