{"id":512626,"date":"2010-04-03T23:35:22","date_gmt":"2010-04-04T03:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=4472"},"modified":"2010-04-03T23:35:22","modified_gmt":"2010-04-04T03:35:22","slug":"the-disintegration-of-memory-cosmic-variance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/512626","title":{"rendered":"The disintegration of memory | Cosmic Variance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ZofiaGiven that it’s Easter Sunday, I thought it would be particularly appropriate to mention survivors of the Holocaust. Sean has been arguing (here<\/a> and here<\/a>) that science does not give us morality. And, as the Pope and the Catholic Church have resoundingly demonstrated<\/a>, God doesn’t seem to provide us with morality either. None of this means that we shouldn’t strive to make the world a better place. Nor that we can’t say that the Holocaust was evil.<\/p>\n

Maciek Nabrdalik<\/a> has been photographing survivors of the Nazi concentration camps.\u00a0Nabrdalik is quoted in a\u00a0New York Times blog<\/a>: \u201cI believe that by looking into their eyes, a sharper perspective will appear and perhaps help us understand the nature of the enormity of this atrocity a little bit better,\u201d Mr. Nabrdalik said. \u201cUnderstand it on a human scale, that is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The photographs show only shining faces, surrounded by an encroaching blackness. Perhaps the blackness represents the horrors they have experienced. Perhaps the blackness represents the fact that the number of survivors is dwindling, and soon there’ll be no one left to remind us of one of the worst examples of man’s inhumanity to man. All that will be left is darkness.<\/p>\n

Shema
\nby\u00a0Primo Levi<\/p>\n

You who live secure
\nIn your warm houses
\nWho return at evening to find
\nHot food and friendly faces:<\/p>\n

Consider whether this is a man,
\nWho labours in the mud
\nWho knows no peace
\nWho fights for a crust of bread
\nWho dies at a yes or a no.
\nConsider whether this is a woman,
\nWithout hair or name
\nWith no more strength to remember
\nEyes empty and womb cold
\nAs a frog in winter.<\/p>\n

Consider that this has been:
\nI commend these words to you.
\nEngrave them on your hearts
\nWhen you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
\nWhen you go to bed, when you rise.
\nRepeat them to your children.
\nOr may your house crumble,
\nDisease render you powerless,
\nYour offspring avert their faces from you.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given that it’s Easter Sunday, I thought it would be particularly appropriate to mention survivors of the Holocaust. Sean has been arguing (here and here) that science does not give us morality. And, as the Pope and the Catholic Church have resoundingly demonstrated, God doesn’t seem to provide us with morality either. None of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-512626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}