I've written before about the power of memory.  In reading about a soon to be released movie called "Mr. Jones," I've had occasion to ponder it again.  In a manner reminiscent of Jozef Czapski's Inhuman Land, his account of how he was asked to track members of the Polish Army who had perished in the infamous Katyn forest massacre on orders from Stalin, "Mr. Jones" describes the life of a man who tries to document similar "disappearances" in pre-World War II Ukraine.  It speaks profoundly to the importance of remembering.

     

     Had Czapski not gathered the names of the Polish soldiers who were slaughtered in that cold forest, no one would know about them.  Their loved ones would remember them, yes, but the world would never have known about the tragedy:  these soldiers would never have been recognized as part of the larger human race.  Similarly, had not the protagonist of "Mr. Jones" documented Stalinistic atrocities in Ukraine, no one would know of their lives.  No one would know of the thousands and millions of people of whom Stalin once noted, "One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic."

     Humanity is incomplete without the memory of all of its members.

     And the memory of God.