The Banality of Memory
How the Holocaust became a moral lens—and what was lost when it did
When I was young, my mother told me about a deceased uncle I never met. Loud noises gave him wartime flashbacks. A backfiring car or a plane flying low could send him diving behind the couch, aiming an imaginary rifle.
She didn’t talk about her uncle much. She hadn’t known him well, and he died when she was still a girl. Thou…
