‘Nevertheless, the message I take from Sebald’s works and his scrupulous posture in relation to the remembrance of the Holocaust’s victims, is that such events, far from ensuring a “Legacy of Hope” (the theme of this year’s [Holocaust Memorial] Day), shore up a conception of history, of humanity, and of civilization that depends on a view of the Holocaust as an exceptional and unprecedented mass murder. It is not just in terms of the Zionist eschatology that the Holocaust is deployed as a symbolic event; we also require it as a confirmation of our own righteousness in the democratic and industrialized West.’
— from Will Self's essay on W.G. Sebald, reprinted in The Times (London)
What we should remember on this day, January 27, the memorial of the Russian liberation of Auschwitz, is that genocides had happened before the Holocaust, and have happened since; that this is very much a part of human history, and very much within our capacity. We must learn to be better than our nature for it not to happen again. We must not deny that it is in every one of us.
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