http://www.romirowsky.com/24530/why-the-erasure-of-history-matters
At a time when statues and monuments are being destroyed in an attempt to rewrite history and create new narratives, it is critical to understand the importance of history and historiography. It is the only method by which to understand how we got to our current period. The late historian Yosef Yerushalmi, in his seminal study Zakhor (literary Hebrew for “to remember”), wrote,EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: History and historiography matter. As Winston Churchill astutely said, “Everyone can recognize history when it happens. Everyone can recognize history after it has happened; but only the wise man knows at the moment what is vital and permanent, what is lasting and memorable.” Today, such sensitivity to the value of history is evaporating from the public consciousness. The willful blindness to the instructional value of the past is manifesting itself in attempts to erase history rather than reckon with it responsibly.
The historian does not simply come in to replenish the gaps of memory; he constantly challenges even those memories that have survived intact. Moreover, in common with historians in all fields of inquiry, he seeks ultimately to recover a total past—in this case the entire Jewish past—even if he is directly concerned with only a segment of it. No subject is potentially unworthy of his interest, no document or artifact beneath his attention.
Radicals who are uncomfortable with history do not follow Yerushalmi’s guidelines or, indeed, any other historical norms. Today’s protesters are not interested in facts but in feelings and opinions, which afford them a greater sense of both comfort and control.
If one is to understand the present, one has to document the historical periods that preceded it. Samuel Kassow’s critical book, incisively titled Who Will Write Our History?, tells the story of historian Emanuel Ringelblum and the creation of the Oyneg Shabes Archive. Under desperate circumstances, Ringelblum documented Jewish life in Warsaw as the Final Solution was being implemented and captured a picture of a Jewish community on the verge of destruction. Ringelblum was committed to ensuring that the events that unfolded in Nazi-occupied Europe would have a Jewish observer and that future generations would have Jewish documents to study rather than solely Polish ones. As Kassow explained, Ringelblum’s mission was to use history to defend Jewish honor and combat antisemitism. As Kassow put it in the conclusion to his study, Ringelblum’s message was that a fuller and better documented history would demonstrate to posterity that “Jews were not just victims; they were people and part of a living resilient nation.”
