“Lest we forget”, a term originally from the Rudyard Kipling poem Recessional used to remember the sacrifices of soldiers of WWI, has now become a phrase equally associated with remembering the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust, along with the term “Never Again”, from the 1927 poem Masada by Yitzhak Lamdan.

“Lest we forget” was the title of a 2021 UNESCO exhibition in Paris of photographic portraits of Holocaust survivors. Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, the French minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, said the exhibition “illustrates the very tangible dimension of Nazi barbarity, which was not executed abstractly but targeted men, women and children, each with their own story and singularity.”

Ironically, the fear associated with that trauma, which every Jew is encouraged to remember, is used to justify the actions we see in Gaza today, which also targets “men, women and children, each with their own story and singularity.”

It raises the question of how we should remember the past and what of it should we remember? More importantly, how can we forget and move forward into a more positive world of co-existence. Japan’s response to the horror of atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in which at least 200,000 died instantly and many more from the continued after-effects of radiation, has been a call to ban nuclear weapons. South Africa responded to decades of apartheid massacres with a Truth and Reconciliation Committee, and today both white and native South Africans work side by side.

The act of remembering history should generate mutual understanding and foster coexistence instead of opening old wounds

There are countless examples of wars and genocides throughout history, most of which do not remain in the collective memory beyond a couple of generations. Are these memories erased over time or was there a conscious decision to tap into social resilience for a better future?

The opposing sides of the French Revolution, the American Civil War and WWII found some common ground to set aside their differences, leading to prosperous societies that have developed mechanisms to deal with any new challenges that arise. Reconciliation is easier when there are shared values and more complex when the opposing sides differ greatly, especially over religion, race and language.

The rigid demarcations of the modern nation state not only split communities but also created justifications for exclusion or inclusion of social groups, current examples of which are India and Israel. The argument of historical rights is problematic and clearly has no place in a world where people are constantly on the move.

Would it be acceptable for the Aborigines who arrived in Australia 65,000 years ago to expel all Europeans? Should the Picts of Britain deny the Angles, the Saxons, the Normans and the Jutes the right to call themselves British because they lived there before? The further back in history we travel, the more nomadic is the nature of human society.

In his article How to Forget the Unforgettable?, philosophy professor Ciano Aydin explains Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of “active forgetting” — not the fading away of memories but, instead, a positive and active force to separate past trauma in order to step into a positive future.

Nietzsche says, “Without forgetting, it is quite impossible to live at all.” Aydin says, “A culture can become stronger and flourish or it can become weaker and disintegrate. A necessary requirement for it to flourish seems to be the power of active forgetting.”

Not sublimating collective trauma locks people in the past. Sometimes it is perpetuated by leaders, as we see with Benjamin Netanyahu and Narendra Modi, to keep the resentment alive, inevitably perpetuating the cycle of cruelty against others.

In the words of Nelson Mandala, “In the end, reconciliation is a spiritual process, which requires more than just a legal framework. It has to happen in the hearts and minds of people,” and, “I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”

History should be remembered, not to keep wounds open, but to generate mutual understanding and to carry forward collective knowledge. The future of human society is intertwined as never before, whether for economic prosperity, tackling climate issues, health, education, or the exchange of cultures.

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist. She may be reached at durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, December 24th, 2023