Joel (22 years old)
I came to Guernika without any reference to the subject of “remembrance.” It was thus surprising to me that remembrance is extremely important for certain people. Because I have a critical mind, and had a feeling that can be expressed something like this during the entire workshop: Remembrance of past, traumatic, tragic events is necessary, and that is all that can be said about remembrance.
People’s memories of their strategies for overcoming and forgiving would be much more exciting. I don’t think that I LEARN anything different from eyewitness reports than from previously reading about the bomb massacre in Wikipedia. In both cases, I can only think: terrible. (And it is naive to believe that if everyone would say that war is terrible that there would be no more war.) All parties who wage war are against war and for peace. Promoting good health and well being are much more important ways of preventing resentment and thus war. However, I am not a fan of eyewitness reports in general…
I also did not ask the really interesting questions due to (perhaps exaggerated) consideration. How do you manage not to hate the Spanish? What was it like in the 50s? You meet people who venerate Franco every day, how do you deal with this? And so on.
What I did learn and what thoroughly impressed me is the importance of remembrance in countries and communities where traumatic events occured. And the statement: In order to understand what we are, we have to look at what we or our forefathers were.
I have the feeling that this is a basic prerequisite. And that it will first become interesting to think about how our communities could be organized/lived best when there are no relevant holes of remembrance anymore. And, to fight so that there aren’t any more holes of remembrance seems to be useful to me, but as a Swiss who comes from a country without any really traumatic events, it is not exciting enough.
I learned a lot about Spain, at least I am much more aware of the tendencies of history and mentality that rule(d) in Spain. My picture of Spain is more differentiated than before. The participants were primarily German. And their differences to the Swiss are relatively small. Because of this, the element of personal exchange was the most interesting for me. I was thus more stimulated to think about my life than to think about my understanding of countries or Europe.