Ralph Stern

WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO LEARN?

Those who don't know their history are condemned to repeat it. I do really believe this, things are the way they are for often for very complex reasons. People may have different opinions about what is more important than what is less important in bringing about a specific circumstance, but human events don't just fall out of the sky. They're here because of histories and, and tracing these histories, being sensitive to these histories is both a professional and a personal fascination. But, overall, I believe that it's a moral obligation. What we are seeing today is perhaps what happens when people turn their back on history and live in a kind of odd moment of the immediacy of internet immersion, a suspension of history. I find this to be very dangerous…

I'm always shocked and appalled right at the callousness of the world. The child separation policies of the previous American administration on the U.S.-Mexican border are incomprehensible, incomprehensible that someone can think that this is at all approaching a reasonable idea. I hope that people will become more empathetic. Unfortunately, we seem to be living in a period marked by the demise of empathy…

I have a story, the story is a continuation of other stories, and if my story may help people to make sense of their stories a little bit more, then I'm willing to share that story…

I have no idea who my grandfather, who is memorialized in a Stolperstein in Cologne, actually was. He seems to have been a responsible man. He seems to have been a very brave man. He is a man who certainly cared for his family as best as he possibly could under the most difficult of circumstances. I hope that what I've shared here is fair to him and does his memory justice. My conflict, which I do believe is attributable to National Socialism and the legacy of the Holocaust, is that I hope that what I've said about my father is something that his father would be able to come to terms with, at least under these circumstances. In this regard, I do feel a personal responsibility to my own family, collectively. I hope that what I've said is also fair to that legacy…