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solidarity in families and in society. The third argument holds that remembering is necessary in order to prevent us from repeating the past.
    The first argument is the darkest. Remembering as the secret of redemption is a wisdom contained in the Jewish tradition, and rightly so within that tradition; without the will to remember the Jewish people would have lost their identity in captivity, diaspora and exile. But wherein lies the wisdom for those who didn’t have to save their identity while being dispersed into the world? What does the wisdom teach beyond a collective’s need to keep its collective memory alive?
    Because of these questions, the wisdom is modified in the debates surrounding other past histories. The state of redemption is interpreted as opposite to a state of apathy. Apathy is regarded as dangerous because it is the opposite of hope, belief, and love. It makes people numb to what happens in the world, and especially to the injustice that goes on in it. Finally it allows people to lapse into complicity. Active remembrance could disrupt apathy, it could raise consciousness for the roots as well as the consequences of injustice; in a state of redemption humanity would not allow injustice to occur. Remembering becomes a prerequisite for not allowing what has happened, or something similar, to repeat itself – thus the first argument melds into the third, which I’ll come to in a minute.
    There are various considerations contained within the second argument, which states that remembering is necessary for successful familial, social and political relations. Psychologically, forgetting and repressing a traumatic past can serve to further aggravate its effects. Parents who keep their traumatic experiences a secret – be they perpetrators, guilty bystanders or victims – cannot express their individuality and offer their children openness and trust. Without learning openness and trust, their children cannot develop a resilient individuality that knows when to be steadfast and when to compromise. Second, there is the presumption that a generation that does not acquire openness, trust, and individuality in the family will founder in its attempts to achieve such qualities in society. These are not just relational qualities but skills upon which democracy depends. A democracy replacing a dictatorship would endanger its credibility, particularly among the victims of the dictatorship, if it did not punish the perpetrators and legally prevent them from retaining their positions and further pursuing their careers. Here the goal of punishment and other legal sanctions would serve to strengthen civic virtues and, again, prevent the past from repeating itself.
    The third argument directly addresses the goal of preventing the past from repeating itself. It takes punishment as a deterrent that aims to prevent criminal events from being repeated by influencing individual perpetrators or even the society as a whole – if all of its members had been involved in the crimes of the past then all have to be deterred from committing them again. But applied in cases of atrocious political systems the theory of preventive punishment is rather weak. The conformist who committed crimes that were within the legal bounds of a past political system will still be a conformist under the new system and does not need to be deterred from what does not conform to the new system. Also, he or she does not need to be re-socialised; in the former political system the conformist comported themselves in accordance with the strictures of society and will do so again in the new society. When national socialist crimes were being prosecuted and sentenced, the perpetrators were regularly found to be leading normal lives after 1945 and could exhibit great neighbourly, collegial friendliness, reliability, and good will. Thus, in a society where an old political system has failed and a new political system has taken hold its people do not really