Jadranka Brnčić:
As long as the memory of the “heroes” (and by rule those are “our heroes”) overshadows the memory of the victims regardless of their national or religious identity, memory will not reach history, and forgiveness will not reach reconciliation. On the contrary, history will move backwards from its full realization. As [Johann Baptist] Metz wrote: “Resurrection mediated by way of the memory of suffering means: The dead, those already vanquished and forgotten, have a meaning which is yet unrealised. The potential meaning of our history does not depend only on the survivors, the successful and those who make it.” A consideration of Metz’s mysticism of suffering unto God suggests that it is possible to face suffering without minimizing its negativity: “For an anamnestic reason, being attentive to God means hearing the silence of those who have disappeared.” […]
If there is no work to integrate the mourners into the political and religious body of society, mourners are recorded as collateral victims and missing persons as a number within statistics. But history’s remains are memory and mourning. There is no historical event as such, but only national and religious narrative identities in conflict and coming out of the conflict, both of which sometimes carry catastrophic consequences for the identity of a human being as imago Dei.