Sometime around the midpoint of a research project, I visited Lake Vättern for a day off. This lake, the second largest in Sweden, is about a two-hour drive from Stockholm. Historic cities such as Visingsö and Vadstena lay close by, along with notable sites such as old castles, so it seemed like a good area to visit and rest. I rented a lodge for the night close to the lake. The lake was quiet. Holiday houses lined the shore, but since it was not the holiday season, not many people were to be found there. Thus I could relax and listen to the lake’s calm waves in peace.

Taking a stroll around the lake, I chanced upon a church building. Even at a cursory glance, it seemed very old, with a striking exterior that seemed to combine several architectural styles. As I entered, a well-tended garden and a spacious graveyard opened up in my view. Among the neatly aligned gravestones I spotted some fresh flowers, presumably by recent visitors who had come to remember and mourn those who were buried here.
The gravestones held brief descriptions of the dead. Their names, their lifespan, a short phrase telling what kind of person they were. As I read the gravestones, I found that some marked the graves of couples who had died years apart, yet had been buried together. They had not wanted to be separated, even in death, with the person with whom they had shared their lives. I stood there a long while, contemplating the lives and deaths of these people. I let myself imagine the eras in which they lived, and also attempted to line up their past with my current present. I imagined the events that would have peppered their lives, and the ways in which death had come to find them.

Sometimes, at places related to the death of someone we know, one can feel the presence of that person being summoned. Although the person has died and is gone, memory brings the person back to life again. The person laughs and cries; speaks words of warmth, or of bitterness. In these memories, the person inhabits the place as if alive. In this way, a place can become the conduit for summoning someone who has died. The memorial is a representative example of a public space that plays this role. Through the memorial, we remember and commemorate events or people that must not be forgotten, and mourn and honor the dead.

Last year, I visited the Jeju 4·3 Peace Park, a space built to commemorate the lives sacrificed in the tragic event that was the “Jeju 4·3 Incident.” ¹
Behind the memorial, there was a commemoration space called “Tombstone Park for the Missing.” In a wide sweeping expanse at the foot of Hallasan, gravestones stood holding the names, birthdates, and hometowns of 3,976 victims whose bodies had not been recovered. What distinguished this place from ordinary burial grounds was that, because these were graves for the missing, they did not hold actual bodies of the dead.
In the center of the park, there was a separate memorial space. This space held sculptures commemorating the victims, and a stone slab with quotes originally penned by the victims. Most of these quotes were words of lament, or of longing for loved ones. Although these were but short phrases, they lucidly communicated the pain and grief of the period during which they were written.

According to the “Jeju 4·3 Incident Follow-up Investigations Report,” the victims of the 4·3 Incident number between 25,000 and 30,000. In terms of sheer loss of life, this tragedy is second only to the Korean War in modern Korean history. What is more devastating is that in some cases, not even the bodies of these victims could be found. As of 2019, the number of missing victims is 3,610, and taking unreported cases into account, the actual numbers are thought to be greater than 5,000. Most of these people were forcefully deported and imprisoned all over the country without a fair trial. Much of the records regarding their whereabouts have been lost, mostly due to the tumult of the Korean War. For example, Jeonju Prison held around 1,900 inmates at the time, and records show that most of them were massacred by soldiers immediately after the onset of the Korean War. ² This means that we have also lost any clues about the perpetrators of the 4·3 Incident who had been held there.

The memorial has taught us who these victims are—what their names were, who their families were, when and where they lived. They also have shown us that these people loved and were loved, as can be expected of ordinary neighbors of ours.

We do not know death. We have never experienced it. We cannot know death itself, but we can contemplate the deaths that come upon others, and the meanings of such deaths. The memorial is a space that can mediate such questions and experiences. In such spaces, we muse deeply on the deaths of others, and step closer to the meaning of death.

During my stay in Berlin, I often visited a place called “Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas” (Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe), also known as the Holocaust Memorial. The space was created to commemorate the Jewish people who tragically lost their lives through the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. Designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman, the aboveground space holds a memorial in the form of an abstract graveyard of stone slabs, and underground is an information center that holds records of the events. The information center, along with historical evidence, exhibits the names and stories of those who were murdered, along with the testimonies of those who remember them. In one part of the space, a letter written by a young girl to her family immediately before her death is on display. With the lights dimmed, the image of the child’s handwritten letter is projected onto the floor, and the space is constructed so that the viewer can concentrate on the content of the letter in a quiet environment. The letter expresses, in writing, the glaring contrast between the safety and warmth provided by the family and the oppression and violence seen through the innocent eyes of a child. Through this reading experience, the viewer is brought to realize the extent of the acts of inhumanity that humans can perpetrate.

Walter Benjamin, while fleeing Nazi pursuit in 1932, resolves to commit suicide. In the same period, he begins recording his memories of his youthful days in Berlin. It seems that he was attempting a kind of self-inoculation for his suffering psyche by summoning memories of his youth.

“The images of my metropolitan childhood perhaps are capable, at their core, of preforming later historical experience.” ³

Susan Buck-Morss remarks that Benjamin’s personal memories could “become part of a common, sociohistorical past” by being “associated with … public spaces.” ⁴ That is, through his records of his youth in Berlin, Benjamin was aspiring to give shape to the atrocities of Nazi Germany, including the Holocaust, as a historical experience that goes beyond the memories of personal history.

The Holocaust is surely one of the most tragic memories that humanity holds. Remembering is one way of continuing a relation. It is a technique of summoning a particular past into the present, and creates a meaningful connection beyond life and death. Just as Benjamin testified to the tragic present and attained a measure of immunity toward the future through his memories of youth, I believe that the connection of past and present forged through tragic memories can provide a foundation for creating a better society.

In this way, the memorial, by training us to accept the deaths of others and to sympathize with them, allows us to gain the energy to live through the present and to prepare for the approaching future. Furthermore, it reminds us of the tragic memories of humanity and shares with us the experiences of its victims, acting as a mirror for the present age.

“I moved my steps to walk along the lake-shore again, and headed toward my lodgings. […] In a space within that little church that was receding behind my shoulder, their memories remain alive, reaching out to talk to me. The quietness makes their voices even sharper” (excerpt from travelogue).

By a graveside in a foreign land, I thought of death and memories. The graveyard was quiet. The bodies that live out a certain time and age return to earth, and their beings recede into the depths of history, each holding their individual stories. All the same, their histories will meet the coming age again and again through their memory.