ABSTRACT
This chapter is intended to be a reminder for readers that only by keeping memory alive can we constructively build on past foundations and become more inclusive citizens in the present. As Liliana Segre affirms, “Racist violence is now a river without banks, the product of a collective madness wisely fed by hate sowers. Young people need to know what really happened: it is the only way to restrain present and future violence.” Through an analysis of excerpts from her book La memoria rende liberi, readers will learn how to understand and value the lesson of a dramatic moment in the 20th century, namely the years of the Holocaust. It is our responsibility to use language in a constant practice of historical memory in order to resist what Hannah Arendt has defined as the “banality of evil”: the blind obedience of orders, the terrible normalization of inhuman bureaucratic acts, the inability to think independently. As long as we continue to remember, history will survive, and memory will set us free.
