Chapter 11 Analysis and Reflection

1. In what ways did the events of World War II and the Holocaust shape institutions, laws, and attitudes in the years that followed? What has been accomplished? How have these institutions, laws, and attitudes failed? What challenges remain?

2. Are there “lessons” that we can learn from the history of the Holocaust? What do the readings in this chapter suggest? What do you think?

3. Elie Wiesel has said, “[I]f anything can, it is memory that will save humanity. For me, hope without memory is like memory without hope.”96 Why does he say that memory will save humanity? What might happen if we don’t remember and confront a violent past? Why is it important to have both memory and hope as we try to solve the problems in our world?

4. Ha Jin, a Chinese American poet, wrote this poem, titled “The Past.”

I have supposed my past is part of myself.

As my shadow appears whenever I’m in the sun

the past cannot be thrown off and its weight

must be borne, or I will become another man.

But I saw someone wall his past into a garden

whose produce is always in fashion.

If you enter his property without permission

he will welcome you with a watchdog or a gun.

I saw someone set up his past as a harbor.

Wherever it sails, his boat is safe—

If a storm comes, he can always head for home.

His voyage is the adventure of a kite.

I saw someone drop his past like trash.

He buried it and shed it altogether.

He has shown me that without the past

one can also move ahead and get somewhere.

Like a shroud my past surrounds me

but I will cut it and stitch it,

to make good shoes with it,

shoes that fit my feet.97

What lines and phrases from the poem echo ideas and events in this chapter?

What does the poem suggest about the connection between history and identity? What do the readings in this chapter suggest about the connection between history and identity?

What does the last stanza suggest about how Ha Jin sees the relationship between the past and the future?

96 Elie Wiesel, “Nobel Lecture: ‘Hope, Despair and Memory,’” Nobelprize.org, accessed June 3, 2016, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-lecture.html.

97 Ha Jin, Facing Shadows (Brooklyn, NY: Hanging Loose Press, 1996), 63.