Image: The crisis of knowledge and the blurring of truth can wage a war within for witnesses of past warfare.
Witnesses to war can often attest to the notion that when reflecting back on their memories, they’re left with gaps in their recollections and their comprehension of all that took place during the horrid past. This is precisely one of the most crippling facets of war—it forever leaves its victims with an incomplete comprehension of the details of that war. Ruth Kluger, in her novel, Still Alive, exhibits how the brutal systematic killing of Jews during the Holocaust continued to affect her from a young child living under Nazi regime to an accomplished adult free from the world of warfare.
Kluger’s war experience left her with gaps in her memories and understanding of the past. The chaos of warfare with all its inexplicable violence and injustice, rob the victims from being able to holistically piece together their memories and understandings of the war. Throughout her life, the events of the Holocaust induced Kluger to be stuck in a crisis of knowledge despite having witnessed so much of the atrocities with her own eyes. She was deprived of the truth about her father’s death and her brother Schorschi’s whereabouts. She begins to wonder if her father died an inhumane death in the gas chambers. She continuously questioned how her beloved brother was and if he was alive. She hence lived a life trying to recall as much as she could but was never able to completely piece together facets of her past since the nature of the war did not allow it. Perhaps the people around her, especially her mother whom she shared a very rocky, complex relationship, wanted to protect her by depriving her of the truth behind her questions. But in regards to Kluger’s crisis of knowledge, some may argue that much of it was due to this complicated equation she shared with her mother. But it is vital to note that perhaps the Holocaust they lived through was the force that complicated their relationship. Like in all events of war, the Holocaust was filled with excruciating atrocities inflicted upon its victims and knowing of the truth of these atrocities might have been unbearable for those who lived at the time. Thus, witnesses to war are stuck in a crisis in which they can either be faced with the facts that may be unendurable to them or they can be forced to live a life wondering and struggling to uncover the undisclosed truths of their past. This is the unfortunate reality of war.
Image: As the ancient Greek playwright, Aeschylus, said, “The first casualty of war is truth”— a statement that many victims of war can attest to.
However, sometimes witnesses to war are left with gaps in their memories not because the truth was not told to them, but because in the event of the war, they could not process the truth before them. In “How to Tell a True War Story”, Tim O’Brien delineates how the very experience of war can complicate the storytelling about the war after it concludes. While one can wish to search for some morals and bits of heroism and courage in a real war story, O’Brien makes it clear that a true war story is one of obscenity and evil and brutality—because that is the nature of war. It is this atrocious nature of war that can leave even the people who directly fought in it confused about what exactly occurred during the warfare. See when bullets are being shot around a witness and bombs are being exploded in every corner and their comrades are being savagely murdered in front of their eyes, their primary focus is not to absorb all the happenings in front of them, but it is rather, simply, to survive. Thus, after the horrid bloodshed ceases and they look back on what happened, they are often left unsure themselves because in the moment, the only truth that really mattered to them was that their lives were at great risk. Therefore, as discussed in Dr. Morse’s Humanities Core section, witnesses may recall that certain things “seemed” to have occurred instead of being able to say with full conviction that they happened. This is yet again the very cause of war’s nature. The truth is often blurry and interpreted differently by different witnesses because no war experience is the same.
War can leave a person with gaps in their memories as was the case with Ruth Kluger and inevitably innumerable other victims of war. The horrid events of annihilation, destruction, separation that embody warfare can leave not just physical wounds but invisible wounds on its witnesses.Mental scars in the form of PTSD for example may forever affect the lives of some witnesses. For others, the continuous battle trying to recall the unknown truths serves as an invisible scar. The truths of their past can be obscured and the already burdensome task of remembering the war becomes more difficult as a result. Thus, warfare can cultivate an internal war for witnesses and that is the war from the crisis of knowledge and memory that they are left with every day.
Image: PTSD, one of the gravest mental consequences of war, is one of the invisible battles inflicted on war victims.
War: Through the Eyes of Humans 