Books, memory and the Holocaust

Last Friday I visited the Montreal Holocaust Museum along with my partner-in-life M, and our neighbour J. I've wanted to go for years, since the boys went with their school, and we eventually committed to a date over back-garden drinks with J and her husband. They're a jewish couple, something which is incidental to our usual conversations, but it came up this time after they recounted receiving anti-semitic insults from Trump supporters at their holiday apartment in Florida. They've decided to sell it.

Of course the museum is a terribly moving experience, but it's also a brilliantly educational one. What are the first warning signs of an impending genocide? The museum tells of several, and the one that struck me most were the huge book burnings in Germany in the early 30's. We saw a video of smiling people running to toss piles of books into the towering flames, watching on by celebrating crowds. Books in Hebrew. Books written by jews like Proust and Einstein. Books written by 'degenerates' like Hemmingway. Hatred with smiles, a communal experience in front of a roaring fire, a loosening of repressions, an opening of terrible possibilities. 

It seems to me that writers have a special responsibility to memory. What else is writing other than the ultimate act of remembering? And books have a special symbolism, representing memory and culture, a voice kept alive long after death. 

It's easy to be critical of the modern state of Israel. There's a many good things about it, but its treatment of the Palestinians is so obviously wrong. Criticism of that is just. And needed.

Sally Rooney is a fine writer. She clearly loves books and, well-educated in modern Ireland, she undoubtedly knows the history of the 20th century. She has refused to have her latest book published in Hebrew because the publisher operates in Israel, her way of expressing solidarity with the Palestinians. Frankly, the symbolism of that decision is horrific. And liable to be jumped upon by some of the most unsavoury elements in Irish society, anti-semites who lurk in the so-called republican movement. 

So although I don't always agree with Anne Harris, I'm in complete agreement with her article in today's Irish Times. The rabid reaction of some of the people commentating on it shows why.