The Weight of Memory

LAWRENCE L. LANGER: From the beginning, I had a fixed principle. When you watch testimonies, no matter how boring they seem to be, some of them are four or five or six hours long. You watch them from beginning to end because you never know when something turns up that is of major importance. Survivors not only talk about their experience-- they think about their experience. They reflect on their experience.

JACOB K: In the past, the German behavior towards us, the torturous days and nights-- it's something that we have. It's in our mind. You can't forget that. 6 million people, just women and children. I can tell you everything in an interview. I couldn't even tell you describe one day in the ghetto. I don't want to live with that pain. But it's there. It's there. It formed its own entity and its surface whenever it wants to.

I go on a train, and I will cry. I will read something, and I'll be right back there where I came from. And I can't erase it. I'm not asking for it. It comes by itself. It has formulated something in me. I'm a scarred human being among human beings.

LAWRENCE L. LANGER: A number of survivors say this quite explicitly. What I endured then is still part of my being now.

I was hearing two stories in the testimonies. One was a life story-- the story of survival. Begins I was born, I grew up in. The Germans came, I was sent to this camp or that camp-- ghetto, wherever. And when the war ended, I was still alive. That seems to be a happy, successful story. But I discovered there's a subterranean narrative, too. And that's the death story. Although I survived, I died. Although I died, I'm still alive.

The Weight of Memory FH2228836.html Displaying The Weight of Memory FH2228836.html.