How do we remember history? - Yorgos Tzedopoulos

Personal memory
Memory is what we remember. But what do we remember? We don’t remember everything that we saw or heard or felt. We remember a part of it. Memory is selective. Our minds choose what to remember and what to forget. This is not done consciously; we do not decide what to remember and what to forget. There are things every one of us would like to forget, but can’t. Unpleasant memories, things we wish had not happened to us, memories that make us sad or shameful. And there are also happy times that we have forgotten and suddenly something reminds us of them and we say to ourselves: "How could I forget such a thing!". It is true that we do not decide consciously what to forget and what to remember. But there is something inside us that makes this selection. This psychological process is very, very complex and varies from one person to another, but there are some important common characteristics:

We remember things that were important to us when they happened; we remember things that were emotionally powerful, that made us feel acute sadness, pride, hate, joy, fear or compassion; we remember things that were somehow different from the everyday routine, exceptional; and we remember things that were relevant not only to us, but to others as well.

Collective memory
Memory is not only about ourselves, but also about groups of other people, from our family and our friends to the whole world. The birth of our little brother or sister was something that we share as a memory with the rest of our family; a particularly succesful party is a memory we share with our friends; the gold medal at the Olympic Games of an athlete from our country, or from the part of the country we live, or from our own ethnic community, appeals to a wider collectivity. Lastly, the terrorist attack in New York on September 11, 2001, is a memory we share with millions of other people worldwide. From these "collective moments", however "small" or "big", is collective memory built. It is a memory that we share with others, a memory that is shaped not only by us, but from the others as well. What we remember is not only our personal reaction to what happened, but also the reactions of the others. In those cases our memory is less personal and more open to influences.

Collective memory - historical memory
In 1973 Greece was under a miltary dictatorship. Political rights, human rights, personal rights were suspended and democracy was abolished. In November 1973 the students of the Technical University of Athens striked and occupied the building of the University demanding the end of the dictatorship. The dictators mobilized the army. On November 17 in the evening I was at home listening with my parents to the radio. The students had built an illegal radio station and they broadcasted calling the citizens to help them and rise against the dictators. I was eight years old and I still remember very well our living room, the faces of my parents, the tension, the fear and the feeling of helplessness. Some hours later a tank broke the gate of the University. Soldiers and policemen stormed the building. Some students were killed and more were arrested, beaten and tortured. Less than a year later, the dictatorship collapsed.

You see that not all of my memory is "personal". Most of the things I’ve mentioned were not known to me at that time. And yet this is the way I remember the scene. I cannot go back and "live" it again as it was at that time. I remember it, I see it through the distance of the years that have passed and with the knowledge I gained in the meantime. I see it through my personal engagement, through the eyes and the views I have today. That means that memories are not stable and immovable. They acquire meanings they had not at the beginning; they are constantly changing, according to ourselves and the society where we live. Since they belong to us, individuals and societies, they change as we change, they change as history changes.

Historical memory is always collective memory. It is the way our societies remember things of the past. Some of these things, these situations and events, are within living memory. Some other memories are not "lived", but "mediated" memories. My son has not lived the uprising, but I will tell him about it when he grows up and thus my memory will be "translated" into a "mediated" memory of his. He will remember an "historical fact" through my memory. But not only through my memory. Today the uprising of the Technical School is a national holiday. Every year on November 17 Greece commemorates, "remembers" collectively the uprising. Teachers talk to their pupils about it; the press and the TV deals with it; politicians make speeches. A lot of books have been written about the time of the dictatorship, a lot of films have been made. My son, as every child, will take this memory not only through me, but mainly through society. Historical memory is transmitted through society and through its institutions: schools and universities, museums, mass media, literature, cinema, theatre etc.

Historical memory, personal memory
Historical memory belongs to all of us, but it is not the same for every one. The way we remember the Olympic Games for example varies from country to country. For the Greeks it is mainly the Summer Olympic Games, for Austria mainly the Winter Olympic Games, for Italy both. The historical memory of the Second World War is different for Greeks, Italians and Austrians. All have suffered, but in a different way. Yet there is an agreement about the event, there is something that binds us all together, and this is the belief that this must not happen again, that the darkness of oppression and brutality must never again reign anymore in our societies. The European Community and the European Union were born on the basis of this agreement. This agreement was possible because historical memory does not concern only the past. The way we remember the past is the way we want to shape our future. If we see in the past only moments of pride and shame, it means we suffer from something that is not very different from a psychological complex. It also means that we are obsessed by ourselves, that we are not open to cooperation with the others. If we see history as an open discussion, as a rich field of human experience from which we can learn and gain, it means we are open to share and to communicate. Exactly as the individuals, the free societies can and must be in a constant dialogue with the past. Memory changes, as we have seen, and history changes with it. But how can we enter in a discussion with the past? Since historical memory is largely shaped from impersonal institutions, how can we as individuals take a part in this process?

I think that the best way is to leave for a while the so-called "big" history, the impersonal history, and turn again to personal memory. Let us begin by asking our grandparents what they remember from, let's say, the time after the Second World War, when the whole of Europe tried to recover form the blows. What did they feel, how did they see their world, what did they think about the future? What were their fears, their hopes? How did they feel the change from the years immediately after the war to the relative prosperity of the sixties? There are thousand things we can ask them, things about their everyday life, things about their food, the clothes they wore, the music they used to hear, and through these thousand things we can learn a lot. We can also ask ourselves if they felt at that time exactly as they feel now as they are talking about these things, and we can try to imagine ourselves in their place. And then we can come back to the present and picture our children and grandchildren asking us about the past, say about this visit to Athens. It is my opinion that every one of us must find a way to "live" history, to take somebody's part in history, not in order to escape from the present, but in order to understand the way people live together. Because history is exactly this: the way people live history. In a sense, we are history.

Visit to the exhibition "Tales of the Olympic Games: A unique exhibition"
The exhibition is structured in six levels. First, there is the introductory video about world history in the times of the Olympic Games, but I want you to leave this for the end. Then, there is a section about Olympic Games in Antiquity. The rest of the exhibition is about modern together. And, since we live in this world, we have a part in Olympics. The third "station" is made out of individual athletes’ tales, which you can listen to through the earphones. I would like you to listen to the personal tales, the personal memories of the athletes, particularly to the memories of the Dutch athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen, and think about our discussion. Try to find out which of her personal memories applied probably not only to her, but also to other people. Think also about her experience as a woman athlete and remember that the difficulties and the objections she had to face were the norm also for other women at that time. The fourth "station" of the exhibition is the relation between the Olympics and the city that hosts them, while the fifth "station" is about the rituals of the Olympics and the way the states that take part in the Olympics promote national pride and make national propaganda through the athletes' victories. The sixth and last level is about the global dimension of the Olympics. The last exhibit is about the torch relay that takes place before the beginning of an Olympiad. I would like you to play with the computer (most exhibits are computerized), follow the routes of the torch relays and see the films and photographs that "memorize" the torch relays. Lastly, I would like you to see the introductory video and think about how the new technologies of photography, film, video and, more recently, multimedia, shape our memories in a different way than before, when memory was transmitted and "remembered" mostly orally, from mouth to ear.