It has suddenly become fashionable to sneer at the memory of the Second World War. The national press has been home to editorials and opinion columns archly condemning the anniversary as so much media junketing, as one long yawn. It is true that a great many people have jumped late and unceremoniously on the bandwagon, trivialising the past, capitalising cheaply on recollection. Yet the war is, for all that, a conflict we should never forget. It stands as an almost unbearable monument to human folly and wickedness. Fifty years on pundits can sound pious; remembrance becomes tacky and opaque; but we do have to take stock. Otherwise the war we pass on to the next generation (if it is recalled at all) will be war sanitised and domesticated, nostalgic, cute; war seen from René's deplorable café, not from Auschwitz.

LRB 12 October 1989 | PDF Download