Remembrance And Forgiveness

An enquiry into the social science of remembrance and forgiveness in global episodes of genocide and mass violence during the post-Holocaust era, this volume explores the ways in which remembrance and forgiveness have changed over time and how they have been used in more recent cases of genocide and mass violence. With case studies from Rwanda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, South Africa, Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Israel, Palestine, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, the United States, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Chechnya, the volume avoids a purely legal perspective to open the interpretation of post-genocidal societies, communities, and individuals to global and interdisciplinary perspectives that consider not only forgiveness and thus social harmony, but remembrance and disharmony. This volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in memory studies, genocide, remembrance, and forgiveness.

The theme of Forgiveness and Remembrance is the complex moral psychology of forgiving and remembering in both personal and political contexts. It offers an original account of the moral psychology of interpersonal forgiveness and explores its role in transitional societies. The book also examines the symbolic moral significance of memorialization in these societies and reflects on its relationship to forgiveness.

An enquiry into the social science of remembrance and forgiveness in global episodes of genocide and mass violence during the post-Holocaust era, this volume explores the ways in which remembrance and forgiveness have changed over time and how they have been used in more recent cases of genocide and mass violence. With case studies from Rwanda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, South Africa, Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Israel, Palestine, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, the United States, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Chechnya, the volume avoids a purely legal perspective to open the interpretation of post-genocidal societies, communities, and individuals to global and interdisciplinary perspectives that consider not only forgiveness and thus social harmony, but remembrance and disharmony. This volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in memory studies, genocide, remembrance, and forgiveness.

Forgiveness and Remembrance examines the complex moral psychology of forgiving, remembering, and forgetting in personal and political contexts. It challenges a number of entrenched ideas that pervade standard philosophical approaches to interpersonal forgiveness and offers an original account of its moral psychology and the emotions involved in it. The volume also uses this account to illuminate the relationship of forgiveness to political reconciliation and restorative political practices in post-conflict societies. Memory is another central concern that flows from this, since forgiveness is tied to memory and to emotions associated with the memory of injury and injustice. In its political function, memory of wrongdoing -- and of its victims -- is embodied in processes of memorialization, such as the creation of monuments, commemorative ceremonies, and museums. The book casts light on the underexplored relationship of memorialization to transitional justice and politically consequential interpersonal forgiveness. It examines the symbolism and the symbolic moral significance of memorialization as a political practice, reflects on its relationship to forgiveness, and, finally, argues that there are moral responsibilities associated with memorialization that belong to international actors as well as to states.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle •Chicago Tribune • The Christian Science Monitor • Publishers Weekly In Strength in What Remains, Tracy Kidder gives us the story of one man’s inspiring American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him, providing brilliant testament to the power of second chances. Deo arrives in the United States from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life and shows us what it means to be fully human. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Named one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of the year by Time • Named one of the year’s “10 Terrific Reads” by O: The Oprah Magazine “Extraordinarily stirring . . . a miracle of human courage.”—The Washington Post “Absorbing . . . a story about survival, about perseverance and sometimes uncanny luck in the face of hell on earth. . . . It is just as notably about profound human kindness.”—The New York Times “Important and beautiful . . . This book is one you won’t forget.”—Portland Oregonian

Winner of the Christianity Today Book Award in Christianity and Culture How should we remember atrocities? Should we ever forgive abusers? Can we not hope for final reconciliation, even if it means redeemed victims and perpetrators spending eternity together? We live in an age that insists that past wrongs—genocides, terrorist attacks, bald personal injustices—should never be forgotten. But Miroslav Volf here proposes the radical idea that letting go of such memories—after a certain point and under certain conditions—may actually be a gift of grace we should embrace. Volf’s personal stories of persecution and interrogation frame his search for theological resources to make memories a wellspring of healing rather than a source of deepening pain and animosity. Controversial, thoughtful, and incisively reasoned, The End of Memory begins a conversation that we avoid to our great detriment. This second edition includes an appendix on the memories of perpetrators as well as victims, a response to critics, and a James K. A. Smith interview with Volf about the nature and function of memory in the Christian life.

Forgiveness has traditionally been associated with a duty to remember in order for reconciliation to be possible. Human failure, evil, and atrocities could thus only be forgiven on the basis of a saving memory. Forgetting, by contrast, had to be excluded in the interest of a truthful and genuinely new beginning. Historical experience, it seemed, supported this account. The essays collected in this volume seek to challenge this traditional picture - by elaborating on the notion of forgetting, by reappreciating its constructive or even necessary impact on our lives, by paying heed to the potential obstacles for reconciliation due to an unforgiving remembrance, by clarifying the relationship between remembrance and forgetting, which is not necessarily complementary, and by finding new ways of relating forgiveness to forgetting ultimately leading to the precarious question of whether even God forgets when he forgives. Contributors: Aleida Assmann, Agata Bielik-Robson, Brigitte Boothe, Paul Fiddes, George Pattison, Simon D. Podmore, Hartmut von Sass, Lydia Schumacher, Philipp Stoellger, Bradford Vivian, Johannes Zachhuber

Eva Mozes Kor forges a path of reconciliation and healing as a Holocaust survivor, sharing her life-changing message that forgiveness frees us from the pain of the past. Eva Mozes Kor was just ten years old when she was sent to Auschwitz. While her parents and two older sisters were murdered there, she and her twin sister Miriam were subjected to medical experiments at the hands of Dr. Joseph Mengele. Later on, when Miriam fell ill due to the long-term effects of the experiments, Eva embarked on a search for their torturers. But what she discovered was the remedy for her troubled soul; she was able to forgive them. Told through anecdotes and in response to letters and questions at her public appearances, she imparts a powerful lesson for all survivors. Forgiveness of our tormentors and ourselves is a pathway to a deeper healing. This kind of forgiveness is not an act of self-denial. It actively releases people from trauma, allowing them to escape from the grip of persecution, cast off the role of victim, and begin the struggle against forgetting in earnest.

A Holocaust survivor's surprising and thought-provoking study of forgiveness, justice, compassion, and human responsibility, featuring contributions from the Dalai Lama, Harry Wu, Cynthia Ozick, Primo Levi, and more. You are a prisoner in a concentration camp. A dying Nazi soldier asks for your forgiveness. What would you do? While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal was taken one day from his work detail to the bedside of a dying member of the SS. Haunted by the crimes in which he had participated, the soldier wanted to confess to--and obtain absolution from--a Jew. Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing. But even years after the way had ended, he wondered: Had he done the right thing? What would you have done in his place? In this important book, fifty-three distinguished men and women respond to Wiesenthal's questions. They are theologians, political leaders, writers, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors, and victims of attempted genocides in Bosnia, Cambodia, China and Tibet. Their responses, as varied as their experiences of the world, remind us that Wiesenthal's questions are not limited to events of the past.

A leading contrarian thinker explores the ethical paradox at the heart of history's wounds The conventional wisdom about historical memory is summed up in George Santayana's celebrated phrase, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Today, the consensus that it is moral to remember, immoral to forget, is nearly absolute. And yet is this right? David Rieff, an independent writer who has reported on bloody conflicts in Africa, the Balkans, and Central Asia, insists that things are not so simple. He poses hard questions about whether remembrance ever truly has, or indeed ever could, "inoculate" the present against repeating the crimes of the past. He argues that rubbing raw historical wounds--whether self-inflicted or imposed by outside forces--neither remedies injustice nor confers reconciliation. If he is right, then historical memory is not a moral imperative but rather a moral option--sometimes called for, sometimes not. Collective remembrance can be toxic. Sometimes, Rieff concludes, it may be more moral to forget. Ranging widely across some of the defining conflicts of modern times--the Irish Troubles and the Easter Uprising of 1916, the white settlement of Australia, the American Civil War, the Balkan wars, the Holocaust, and 9/11--Rieff presents a pellucid examination of the uses and abuses of historical memory. His contentious, brilliant, and elegant essay is an indispensable work of moral philosophy.