ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of genocide, we are faced with a massive erasure of life and its traces in artifacts and memory. Yet for those who survived the experience, its memory is both an unbearable, unrelenting presence, and a remnant of a ruined past that must be cherished and guarded from oblivion. Conversely, for the perpetrators and their apologists, the incomplete erasure of their deeds must be followed by a redefinition of their meaning, lest the memory of the victims monopolize the narrative of the past. As for us who were not there and for the post-Holocaust societies we inhabit, there is the need to listen to the voices from a universe we cannot penetrate, even if we will never understand; to reject the apologists for murder, even as we recognize that time will make the horror seems less acute and the apologies more reasonable; and to insist on justice and punishment, even as we realize that justice is always relative and punishment often misdirected and disproportionate.
