As We Commemorate Holocaust Remembrance, Let’s Remember the Memory Workers

The term 'memory worker' is not one you are likely to know, but memory workers are all around you. They are voluntary representatives of those victimized by violence or persecution.

This week is International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the ‘memory workers’ are hard at work. The term ‘memory worker’ is not one you are likely to know, but memory workers are all around you. They are voluntary representatives of those victimized by violence or persecution. They take on the burden of conveying the pain, even though it is not their trauma to carry...

Over the last thirty years Kim Simon has been a fighter for Holocaust memory. Like many memory workers her contribution has been quiet but profound. She was a leader at USC Shoah Foundation for over two decades. On any given day you would find her at the United Nations, UNESCO, in Rwanda or China, fighting for memory and truth. It takes strength to be a bearer of memory.

As I write this I am sitting with Kim, who at 52 is intubated and wired to every device imaginable at Cedars Sinai ICU. She taps slowly on her iPad to tell me that just last week she was wrongly pronounced dead. For the last five years she has lived with Multiple System Atrophy, a little known neurological degenerative disease.

We hold hands as the monitors quietly beep. Kim has fought for memory until her dying day.??I ask her if it is OK for me to continue her work to reveal more about how genocide effects those who touch it.??She puts up her thumb.

We hold hands as the monitors quietly beep. Kim has fought for memory until her dying day.??I ask her if it is OK for me to continue her work to reveal more about how genocide effects those who touch it.??She puts up her thumb. Her words haunt me – it’s toxic. I wonder whether she is paying the ultimate price that memory can exact.

Stephen D. Smith?is CEO of StoryFile and Executive Director Emeritus at USC Shoah Foundation.

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/355416/as-we-commemorate-holocaust-remembrance-lets-remember-the-memory-workers/