I have a strong memory. Although it is nowhere near as powerful as someone who has a "photographic memory," it is visual, and I can replay moments in my head from events past, or sometimes even remember facts not because I remember the fact but the image of seeing the text in the book. This comes in useful. Although, on occasions, it is painful. When the appropriate mental triggers arise, I replay bad moments as much as the good, and with compulsive tendencies to repeat the images once recalled, this can be an unpleasant experience. Nonetheless, it matters to me because those bad decisions and stupid mistakes I've made are those that haunt me and make me want to be a better person. I'd like to thing those bad things are what actually do make me a better person, a better human.

This is why it always baffles me when others try to lie about the past. The recent "summit" in Iran is a horrible, but apt example, where once again people have tried to deny the Holocaust occurred. I don't care that it happened in the Middle East, or that this event was hosted by Muslims. Europeans and Americans were there, as were Christians and even Jews. Nor is it really relevant that the most common depiction of Holocaust victims were of the Jews, because many others suffered as well, including gypsies, communists, gays, and others. The point is not that one or another group was targeted, but that they could be targeted. The point is this: the Holocaust is the absolute low point in human existence; it should strive as that one darkest moment never to be forgotten by any human, lest we revert to the same tendencies that made that moment possible.

World War I was supposed to be "The War to End All Wars." It wasn't. World War II should have been. Instead, it turned out only to be the War to End Overt World Wars. Little, localized wars were still okay. This still means people don't get it. Trying to forget the Holocaust, though, is like saying Hiroshima was pro-Japanese propaganda, and that if India and Pakistan want to have a nuclear war over Kashmir, it won't be that big of a deal. That, of course, is ludicrous. History is important. The truth is important. World War II was that by-gone era when the Holocaust occurred. Those alive at that time, those who saw or lived through the Nazi death camps cannot forget; but they will soon be gone.

With their absence, it becomes incumbent upon all successive generations to outright condemn any attempts to claim this historical fact was anything but true. Freedom of Speech is one thing. Freedom to deny humanity's darkest moment is another. We none of us must forget how quickly evil can spread, how pervasive its reach can be, and how easy it disappears waiting to arise again in a new guise.