OUTLOOK
It seems clear that the first example suggests
History will
liberate
he understands that the bridge of the Nibelungen in
that memory is selective and the fact of physical Linz was built from the stone which came from the
proximity doesn’t provide foundations for an stone quarry in which the prisoners of concentration
eyewitness account. It is also possibly an example of camps of Mauthausen and Gussen were enslaved.
denial and - in long term of forgetting. The visitor has to search in the back of the car park
Forgetting seems to be the main element of the
in the Czech town of Tabor to realise that this is
second story as well – hero of resistance forgotten where once a Jewish synagogue stood before it was
in his own country. But it seems to be more than pulled down in 1978. And sometimes there are now
that. The metaphor of the “foreign visitor” could signposts at all such as in the case of mass grave of
be well applied to the individual and possibly also Roma killed during the Second World War in Ukraine
collective link to historical memory. When entering or Belarus in the fruit garden of now an old lady.
the territory of memory the choice is between that Then the visitor comes to the conclusion that in the
of selecting the “evidence” for one’s interpretation land of memory the signposts mark no end of the
Pavel Tychtl of the past and excluding the bits which would journey.
Representative of the contradict that interpretation. The other choice is European Commission of acting as a foreign visitor who enters with the interested in history. In the countries which in the
“Veil of Ignorance” open to re-negotiating his or past were situated east of the Iron Curtain some
her relationship to the past and as a result ready found interest in history as they thought it would
to re-negotiating his or her very own identity and liberate them from the bleak realities of their
accepting that the identities can be contradictory. situation of “captive nations”. Their history was the
The former is the story of a living room window history of the oppressed. Once the Iron Curtain fell,
here are two stories that illustrate well the many complex issues connected with facing the concentration camp; the latter is an the former captive nations entered a new world but
memory. Both of them are linked to one place with a very specific role in the memory experience of forgetting but also of transformation soon felt marginal and history has become a means
of the 20th century. The place is the concentration camp of Buchenwald and the first and change. of compensating for their perceived peripheral status
T
story is from the book by Jorge Semprún who came to Buchenwald because of his activities in
the French resistance movement. Shortly after the liberation, Semprún goes to a house which with the feelings of an impartial observer, detached
stands close to the concentration camp, close enough so that the inhabitants of the house from the local and the specific, even if not free of all
were likely to witness what has been going on in the concentration camp before the liberation. feeling. Human universality is his main compass .
He comes to the house and meets with its only inhabitant, a scarred lady who doesn’t resist
When travelling in the land of memory, the
and the shortcomings of the present. It was the
history of the marginalised and disappointed.
The second story, is a story of return to the
familiar and yet unknown. We explore the nature
of memory with eyes of a foreign visitor to be
when he invites himself in. Semprún walks through the house and a certain point reaches the foreign visitor comes across signposts which surprised and to be transformed at the end. As a
living room with the window which provides an unobstructed view of the concentration camp. promise to help him to find the right direction. But result we come from the history of the oppressed
Semprún now understands that the lady must have seen from her living room everything that when taking a closer look at these signposts the and marginalised to the history and memory of free
was taking place in the camp but doesn’t seem to be troubled by it. Instead she points at the visitor finds out that the signposts do not have one people. Finally, history will liberate.
photograph of her sons who have fallen in the war. Her memory and her morality do not stretch clear and single meaning. When one of the heroines beyond the point of her living room and that of her family. of the German television series “Heimat” comes to
The second story is that of the “Blind hero of French resistance” as he was referred
Observing Memories
The foreign visitor enters the land of memory
There are many reasons why people become
the town close to the concentration camp Dachau
to in somewhat Hollywood style in the United States where he moved after the end of the where supposedly her Jewish mother had been taken
World War II. It is the story of Jacques Lusseyran who lost his eyesight when eight years old during the war, she finds out that the town square is
and who at the age of seventeen created a resistance network Les volontaires de la Liberté. called the Square of the Resistance. How is this to be
He was betrayed, interrogated by Gestapo and finally sent to the concentration camp of understood? Is the name of the square to be seen as a
Buchenwald. He was one of the thirty who out of two thousand originally deported survived tribute to the very few who resisted the Nazi regime
until liberation. After the end of the war he moved to the United States and taught literature or is it to be seen as a façade, a smokescreen to hide
at the University of Hawaii. In 1971 when together with his wife he visited France he died the less glorious past? Along the way more signposts
in a car accident in the very region where he spent his childhood. The local French press with similar ambiguity appear – the foreign visitor
referred to the victims of the accident as “two foreign visitors from Hawaii”. has to trace and read three memorial plaques before
ISSUE 1
36
Observing Memories
ISSUE 1
Liberation of the Nazi camp of Buchenwald, April 16, 1945. Jules Rouard -
Luc Viatour
37