Looking Back

I’ve brought a box of old diaries to Maison KL, to clear these from the Mansion since we’re moving to smaller premises this month. These are simply my appointment diaries stretching back to 1988. I am none too sure why I’m keeping hold of them, actually. Most are showing signs of decay. But I’m finding it difficult to simply throw them out. A sort of clinging to the past, I suppose. I’m reminded of that peculiar genre of reality tv programmes dealing with people enduing cluttered houses due to their inability to part with objects of ‘sentimental value’.

This inability to let go of the past seems to me connected to the kind of wallowing in nostalgia I noted on British television at Christmas time (and possibly in general – I’m only ever there in December so that’s the only time I know.)

But I’m also reminded of another kind of programme I watched back in Manchester. On one channel devoted to the idea of looking back to the past (I forget the actual name of the channel, but it wasn’t the History Channel, though something along those lines) just after Christmas, I caught a series of documentaries one day being run back-to-back on the development of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, with a particular focus on Auschwitz. Needless to say it was uncomfortably devastating stuff. But what was particularly striking was the extraordinary detail given regarding the day-to-day nuts and bolts of the whole ghastly enterprise. Names were named, dates were given. At moments you were back in the meetings in which mass murder was under discussion by ordinary functionaries of the state, a lot like you and me.

This is worth looking back to. This is what we must remember.