[I thought I’d post this here too in case it got taken down elsewhere for being too political or controversial]
I have grandparents and greatgrandparents who were part of the first world war and my wife’s family has five relatives who were part of the Second World War. Both of us have people who are buried overseas from both wars. Those loses and even the returning veterans had a deep effect onboth our families for generations.
Whenever Remembrance Day commemorations take place, it bothers me that the remembrance almost always centers around ‘remembering heros’, ‘remembering the dead’, ‘remember soldiers’ … and in many ways an almost glorification or celebration of war, great battles and heroic duties and events. I am all for commemorating the memory of soldiers and especially the dead but it should be much more than that.
We should do our very best to remember WHY these wars took place and the origins of these conflicts in the first place. And I’m no talking about just fighting evil fascism and dictators like Hitler or Mussolini … but to think about how, where and why these circumstances happen in the first place. Dictatorships, authoritarianism, fascism doesn’t just spontaneously happen … they happen because an entire community of people, professionals and wealthy backers support it, create it, build it and maintain it … and if these conditions fester long enough and build enough power and authority, it consumes a country to the point of affecting entire global regions and leading to world wars.
So whenever I think about Remembrance Day … I don’t just think about remembering the fallen dead or the wounded returning veterans … I think about why these world wide events happen in the first place and what we could do to prevent them from leading to terrible global tragedies in the first place.
We need to remember the past critically and honestly so that we don’t repeat those same pitfalls in the future.
A coworker wanted to have a workplace moment of silence for Rememberance Day. Several of our middle eastern engineers had no idea what it was about. “What event is this to remember?” people awkwardly explained its about Canadian troops who died during wars fighting for freedom. One of them said “Over 1 million Iraqis were killed during the war. Are they remembered too?”
We didn’t have the moment of silence.
Imo that’s the point of Remembrance Day.
I went to the Canadian war museum around Remembrance Day when they had a Nazi Holocaust exhibition. People had placed their poppies in a cradle that had been used in one of the extermination camp precursors. It seemed fitting.
Yeah, but if we do that part too, it’s political! Why do you want to be a political, controversial person? Isn’t it so much easier to go through the motions, and collect the civic piety, but in a way that requires no commitment or social cost?
What do you mean, that’s exactly what the day tells us not to do? /s