How will we remember history? 

This Nov. 11 will mark the 105th Veterans Day. While the holiday was initially designed to honor the end of World War I, it also serves as a reminder to pause and recognize all veterans who have served in the United States military. To honor living veterans, we, as University of Michigan students, can visit a local memorial park and wear a red poppy to remember those who passed away in combat.

Speaking with veterans is another way to commemorate this day. But with no World War I veterans and few World War II veterans alive today, we are losing that form of remembrance for conflicts that occurred 100 years ago. As we become distanced from the World Wars, our historical memory and capacity to recognize the magnitude of the conflicts fade. 

Though it is difficult, prioritizing remembrance for the world wars enables us to lead with empathy when building collective memory, while also helping us fully acknowledge the impact of armed warfare. Most of all, understanding the past helps us process the present and reminds us of the consequences of making the same mistakes again. 

Memory is not a static, factual recollection of the past. Rather, we create memories based on our imagination and imbue what we remember with meaning. The same is true for historical memory. From nationalists to negationist revisionists, everyone interprets the past in different ways; what and how we remember are perpetually in flux, making it difficult to properly remember the past. 

Events from our not-so-distant past, like World War I, test our historical memory. Beyond the absence of living veterans, this war is difficult to situate in our collective memory because of its lack of clear legacies. For example, scholars debate whether the war would have been prevented if countries committed themselves to internationalism, or whether the war was necessary to defend liberal values globally. 

When we cannot pinpoint an event’s significance to us, we struggle to understand why we should remember it. But we shouldn’t oversimplify historical periods; rather, we should see the connections between past centuries to the present day and understand World War I’s dueling legacies as context for our current era of nationalism. 

Another challenge to remembering past conflicts is deciding whose experiences and perspectives we seek out to ingrain in our historical memory. For example, World War I caused widespread psychological trauma and physical injuries among combatants. While the conflict lasted only four years, its impacts on veterans and their families span generations. Among other effects, the children of soldiers face a heightened risk for secondary trauma, which manifests psychologically as behavioral issues or physiologically as increased cortisol levels. 

On the other hand, the experiences of civilians are often overshadowed by stories from the front lines. In narratives of warfare, we often generalize civilians solely as victims, overlooking their agency in assisting and resisting war effort.

Furthermore, similar to soldiers, civilians also faced traumatic events from this conflict. World War I is considered the world’s first “total war,” and citizens on the home front directly contributed to the country’s effort and became war targets as a result. Air raids and widespread hunger from resource scarcity made the conflict especially shocking since — for the first time in history — civilians witnessed the horrors of war firsthand.

The generational trauma from the civilian experience and subsequent decades of reconstruction are as central to our recollection as the war itself. Listening to these stories is important for us to view the fraught day to day during a past time period and empathize with a past generation that experienced these tragedies firsthand. 

The minimal exposure to combat zones pre-WWI draws a sharp contrast with the oversaturation of violence in the media today. With 24-hour news cycles and social media posts covering every conflict around the world, we have become desensitized to stories and war and violence abroad. Our acclimation to today’s international wars generates apathy, and we thus lose our capacity to remember. 

When we think about the act of remembrance, we grapple with the tension between desensitization and active reflection. While it may seem like exposing ourselves to the violence of the past and present leaves us numb to these events, recognizing the magnitude of war’s human cost should be central to our collective understanding. 

Despite the importance of remembering history, properly respecting the past can be quite challenging. Confronting the horrific parts of our collective past and discussing tragic events in our own family history are hard, but it is necessary.

To prevent ourselves from repeating past mistakes, we can humanize these conflicts to understand the far-reaching consequences of forgetting history. Our polished high school textbooks gloss over the personal stories and paint historical events as mere points on a linear timeline. Therefore, instead of memorizing dates and places, we can search for individual stories to paint a fuller picture and remember a past time period more accurately. 

Fortunately, the University provides invaluable opportunities to personally engage with history and gain a human perspective of the past. For example, during Veterans Week, we can attend various panels and speaker events to hear first hand stories of military service and process difficult parts of history with our community. We are also privileged to have world-class faculty at this university, and taking history classes can help us process these difficult events. Remembering history is difficult, yet we cannot forget the tragedies of the past. If we do, we are bound to repeat them. 

But honoring veterans is only one aspect of remembering war history. To fully recognize the impact of total war across the past century, we can speak with civilians and other participants on the home front, such as our grandparents or professors on campus. Memoirs also provide a timeless firsthand perspective, especially for historical events with no living survivors. 

We can also turn to credible pieces of popular history to supplement our understanding of the time period. For example, “Oppenheimer” tells a thought-provoking story about the decision calculus in making the atomic bomb during World War II — incorporating both human cost and strategic value — and “The Pianist” provides a generally accurate perspective of a Polish Jewish pianist’s experiences during the Holocaust. 

Movies and TV shows help promote historical discussion in our cultural conversation. Nonetheless, we can be mindful about the drawbacks of this form of media, such as a director’s creative license and tendency to dramatize, and recognize the importance of gaining an accurate understanding of historical war periods. 

But remembering history expands beyond merely educating ourselves about past events. As students, we must pay attention to events that will shape our generation and understand how historical circumstances inform present conflicts. Staying updated on current events, regardless of how far we are from combat zones, helps us understand the local impacts of such violence and recognize the magnitude of civilian suffering. We cannot be apathetic to the events that shape our world today, or else we lose these important perspectives to history. 

Similar to studying history, keeping up with current events is also challenging. We can develop bad news fatigue, and we often feel helpless in the face of decades-long global issues. To address this fatigue, we can take breaks from the news or look into the positive stories of history, finding the balance between seeking a variety of perspectives and not becoming overwhelmed or desensitized to these stories. 

As we commemorate this year’s Veterans Day, our responsibility to remember requires more than just walking past a park or reading an article. We are not passive observers of an objective history. Rather, we make history through the way that we convey the past and make sense of the present. Let’s shape this narrative with the stories that we have been told and the stories that we will tell. 

Sarah Zhang is an Opinion Analyst who writes about history, gender and campus culture. She can be reached at sarzhang@umich.edu.

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