The Importance of Documenting

I met Ben Barkow of the Weiner Library. We talked about the importance of the collection of documents the library houses. He told me a plan to extend this work to the documentation of other genocides.

I recall how a former ambassador of the Sudan, who resigned in protest against the actions of his own government, came to my house and looked at the collection of books on Jewish history and said "My people don't have records like this, we need to know how to record our history otherwise the next generations will be ignorant of our sufferings". His words made me think of how the Torah tells us even before the Children of Israel leave Egypt that one day our children will ask, and we have to tell them, and to tell them we have to know.