The Last Days of the Big Lie

"It is her goal to educate children in order to rid the world of prejudice, intolerance, and indifference," says the blurb of her book. Is this not a noble aim, worth our full support, and does she not excel at attaining this goal? Can we, in the face of a rising tide of antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia, really risk to lose a successful warrior against this evil?

[…]
I går, en sommardag i Sverige, läste jag i en tidskrift om utrotningen av de litauiska judarna. På sex månader, räknat från den 22 juni 1941 utrotades enligt denna rapport omkring 170,000 judar av 220,000. Rapporten, som har trovärdighetens prägel och f.ö. verifieras av vad som har hänt i andra länder där judar utrotats, meddelar fakta utan särskilda kommentarer. »Det är inte överdrivet, emedan varje överdrift här är omöjlig», står det i ingressen.

Men om den mänska som försöker återuppleva detta i sin själ kan rycka ut en enda levande bild ur denna bödelsverklighets slutna block av lidande träder hela verkligheten fram för hans ögon: han kan se det, han kan återge det, han kan meddela det. Genom att dikta om verkligheten, förtäta den, kan han föra sanningen om den vidare. Andra, som stannat framför siffrornas blodångande skräck utan att kunna fatta att sådant hänt bara något tusental kilometer längre söderut på jordytan, kan genom denna diktens, omdiktningens förmedling få veta hur det egentligen var.

And do scholars not know that no survivor memoir is free from occasional exaggerations, from presenting rumors as reality, and even from historical inaccuracies? Has Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel not reminded us that "Some stories are true that never happened?" It is not easy to answer these questions. But let us remind that no serious scholar would dismiss a survivor's memoir that has a few factual flaws - with emphasis on "a few." And Elie Wiesel had in his mind stories that, though being fictional, contain a deeper truth and comply with certain logical and literary standards.

[...]in order to rid the world of prejudice, intolerance, and indifference[...]

Irene's friend and co-writer, Gail Ann Webb, calls Irene the fifth diamond because, she says, God left the world the fifth diamond, Irene, to tell a story of hope, love, courage…and of survival. A diamond is indestructible, and so is Irene Weisberg Zisblatt.

Mrs. Zisblatt certainly has survived the Holocaust, but her real life-story must be a different one. Which one, only she knows.
It is well possible that she personally believes what she tells, that her story is her "subjective truth." It becomes, however, problematic at the very moment when she goes public and her subjective truth, having become "objectivized" by the hallmark of "authenticity" as a survivor's alleged own experience, enters into conflict with common sense and the results of historical research.

[...]her real life-story must be a different one. Which one, only she knows.
It is well possible that she personally believes what she tells, that her story is her "subjective truth."

It will be seen that the control of the past depends above all on the training of memory. To make sure that all written records agree with the orthodoxy of the moment is merely a mechanical act. But it is also necessary to REMEMBER that events happened in the desired manner. And if it is necessary to rearrange one's memories or to tamper with written records, then it is necessary to FORGET that one has done so. The trick of doing this can be learned like any other mental technique. It is learned by the majority of Party members, and certainly by all who are intelligent as well as orthodox. In Oldspeak it is called, quite frankly, 'reality control'. In Newspeak it is called DOUBLETHINK, though DOUBLETHINK comprises much else as well.

[...]her real life-story must be a different one. Which one, only she knows.

And if it is necessary to rearrange one's memories or to tamper with written records, then it is necessary to FORGET that one has done so.

Ok, så Irena ljuger enl Joachim Neander.
Det kan säkerligen vara så att vissa saker i hennes berättelser inte stämmer, men jag tror det är samme Joachim som skrev denna text också:



/VV

It is well possible that she personally believes what she tells, that her story is her "subjective truth." It becomes, however, problematic at the very moment when she goes public and her subjective truth, having become "objectivized" by the hallmark of "authenticity" as a survivor's alleged own experience, enters into conflict with common sense and the results of historical research.

Ursprungligen postat av Joachim Neander
- who, by the way, decides what is “essential” and what not? -

Has Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel not reminded us that "Some stories are true that never happened?"

And if it is necessary to rearrange one's memories or to tamper with written records, then it is necessary to FORGET that one has done so.

Memory
HOW THE MIND FORGETS
AND REMEMBERS
DANIEL L. SCHACTER

[...]
Consider the story of Binjimin Wilkomirski, whose 1996 Holocaust memoir, Fragments, won worldwide acclaim for portraying life in a concentration camp from the perspective of a child.Wilkomirski presented readers with raw, vivid recollections of the unspeakable terrors he witnessed as a young boy. His prose achieved such power and eloquence that one reviewer proclaimed that Fragments is "so morally important and so free from literary artifice of any kind at all that I wonder if I even have the right to try to offer praise." Even more remarkable, Wilkomirski had spent much of his adult life unaware of these traumatic childhood memories, coming to terms with them only in therapy.

Because his story and memories inspired countless others, Wilkomirksi became a sought-after international figure and a hero to Holocaust survivors.
[....]
Whatever the basis for his traumatic "memories" of Nazi horrors, they did not come from childhood experiences in a concentration camp. Is Benjamin Wilkomirksi simply a liar? Probably not : he still strongly believes that his recollections are real.

We're all capable of distorting our pasts.[...]

We're all capable of distorting our pasts.

The prospect of someone falsely recollecting that he endured one of the greatest horrors
imaginable seems so bizarre that one is tempted to write off Wilkomirski as
an inexplicable, one-time aberration. But if misattribution and suggestibility,
the likely culprits in Wilkomirski's delusions, are truly evolutionary
spandrels, then Wilkomirksi should not be an isolated case. And he is not.
Women and men who once believed that they had recovered memories of
terrible childhood traumas, only to later retract them after ending psychotherapy,
remind us that Wilkomirski's experience is far from unique. So,
too, do the legions of self-proclaimed alien abductees, who vividly remember
impossible events such as sexual abuse at the hands of demonic - and
elusive - alien captors. Suggestive procedures such as hypnosis are frequently
implicated in such cases.
These types of false memories are nothing new.

I propose that memory's malfunctions can be divided into seven fundamental transgressions or "sins," which I call transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. Just like the ancient seven deadly sins, the memory sins occur frequently in everyday life and can have serious consequences for all of us.

[....]misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence are all sins of commission: some form of memory is present, but it is either incorrect or unwanted. The sin of misattribution involves assigning a memory to the wrong source: mistaking fantasy for reality, or incorrectly remembering that a friend told you a bit of trivia that you actually read about in a newspaper. Misattribution is far more common than most people realize, and has potentially profound implications in legal settings.

The related sin of suggestibility refers to memories that are implanted as a result of leading questions, comments, or suggestions when a person is trying to call up a past experience. Like misattribution, suggestibility is especially relevant to and sometimes can wreak havoc within - the legal system.

The sin of bias reflects the powerful influences of our current knowledge and beliefs on how we remember our pasts. We often edit or entirely rewrite our previous experiences - unknowingly and unconsciously - in light of what we now know or believe. The result can be a skewed rendering of a specific incident, or even of an extended period in our lives, which says more about how we feel now than about what happened then.
[...]

Is memory flawed in a way that has placed our species at unnecessary risk? I don't think so. To the contrary, I contend that each of the seven sins is a by-product of otherwise desirable and adaptive features of the human mind.

Consider by analogy the ancient seven deadly sins. Pride, anger, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, and sloth have great potential to get us into trouble. Yet each of the deadly sins can be seen as an exaggeration of traits that are useful and sometimes necessary for survivaL Gluttony may make us sick, but our health depends on consuming sufficient amounts of food. Lust can cost a straying husband his wife's affections, but a sex drive is crucial for perpetuating genes. Anger might result in dangerous elevations of blood pressure, but also assures that we defend ourselves vigorously when threatened.

And so forth.

I argue for a similar approach to the memory sins. Rather than portraying them as inherent weaknesses or flaws in system design, I suggest that they provide a window on the adaptive strengths of memory. The seven sins allow us to appreciate why memory works as well as it does most of the time, and why it evolved the design that it has.

Allt färre personer med egna upplevelser från koncentrations- och förintelseläger finns kvar. Om ytterligare tio eller femton år finns ytterst få som kan berätta och med egen personlig trovärdighet vittna om vad
som hände. Den mytbildning som de första decennierna efter kriget endast odlades i små grupper av övervintrande nazister lanseras nu alltmer aggressivt i hela världen.