Quotes about Collective memory

Paul Tillich once defined forgiveness as remembering the past in order that it might be forgotten—a principle that applies to nations as well as individuals.

History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

Even if I wrote on nothing else, it would never be enough, even if all the survivors did nothing but write about their experiences, it would still not be enough. *Response when asked how much longer is he going to write about the Holocaust.

Remember what the Amalekites did to you along your way from Egypt,

We cannot separate the history of a nation from the people of that nation.

A nation that forgets its past has no future

For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.

To forget a holocaust is to kill twice.

Properly speaking, a culture does not have a tradition; it is a tradition.

A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present.