They [Allies] forged a coherent memory of the War. It is the memory of the Good War which we have lived with for fifty years. But in the process the victors buried those fragments that didn’t fit. The Living Dead I: On the Desperate Edge of Now, BBC 1995
The Allies selected certain memories: they used them to build the official version of the Good War. ibid.
The Nazis’ project was far more than a simple reawakening of history. Their aim was to use the power of the past to transform those they governed into new and better people. ibid.
We live, said one, on the desperate edge of now. ibid.
The Allies forged a simple, powerful story. But the memories and experiences that didn’t fit the story were quietly discarded and forgotten. ibid.
The Germans called it Zero Hour: the destruction of all belief in the past. ibid.
What frightened Jackson [prosecutor] was the link between the political ideas that Goering was explaining to the court and the terrible crimes the Nazis had committed. ibid.
What was buried at Nuremberg was any idea of examining why Nazism had happened in the first place. What the social and political forces were that had led ordinary people to such savagery. ibid.
The students were convinced that what they had uncovered was a hidden continuity with the Third Reich. Beneath the facade of a liberal democratic country the fascist state had continued, run by the very same men and women who had run Hitler’s regime. ibid.
They were known as the Red Army faction. The Red Army faction embarked on a series of bombings and shoot-outs with the police. Their strategy was to use violence to provoke the state into exposing its true identity. But as the violence escalated, some of the terrorist leaders began to have doubts. ibid.
The Cold War – it is about a group of scientists who believed that they had found for the first time ever a way of controlling the human mind. They were convinced they had discovered how to change human memory. Adam Curtis, The Living Dead II: You Have Used Me As A Fish Long Enough, BBC 1995
Their certainty and optimism turned to paranoia. They found themselves in a strange world in which nothing could be trusted, not even their own memories. ibid.
Penfield invited a psychiatrist called Ewen Cameron to come and join him in Montreal. Cameron was fascinated by Penfield’s work. He believed that if it was possible to change memories, one could produce better, more rational human beings. ibid.
In a Gothic mansion overlooking Montreal: it was both a psychiatric clinic and a centre for research. His [Cameron’s] aim was to find ways of changing the memories in the minds of his mentally ill patients. ibid.
Memory became a weapon in a confrontation between Russia and America. ibid.
Cameron had begun a series of experiments to try and brainwash the memories in his patients. He called it psychic driving. ibid.
He [Cameron] had published a paper about his work called Brainwashing Canadian Style. ibid.
The CIA decided to fund Cameron’s experiments. They wanted to find a way of controlling human beings by reprogramming their memories. ibid.
Cameron’s experiments weren’t working out quite as he expected … He couldn’t find a way of replacing them with new memories. His patients were completely free of their past and of all the emotions that went with it. ibid.
The CIA were terrified that the Russians might also be working to produce a programmed assassin. They decided to continue funding Dr Cameron; whether he was creating healthy human beings or not was now irrelevant. The perfect assassin would be programmed for one simple task, and the fewer memories and emotions involved the better. ibid.
I am able to remember every day as if it were yesterday. Incredible Medicine: Dr Weston’s Casebook III, Tracey Fitzgerald, BBC 2017
I’m just back from Hokkaido, the northern island. Rich and hurried Japanese take the plane. Others take the ferry. Waiting, immobility, snatches of sleep: curiously, it all makes me think of some past or future war: night trains, air raids, fall-out shelters, small fragments of war enshrined in everyday life. Sans Soleil, 1983
After circling the globe only banality still interests me. ibid.
We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten. ibid.
It’s not good for you to make fun of someone’s handicap. Memento 2000 starring Guy Pearce & Carrie-Anne Moss & Joe Pantoliano & Mark Boone Junior & Stephen Tobolowsky & Harriet Sansom Harris & Callum Keith Rennie & Larry Holden & Jorja Fox et al, director Christopher Nolan, opening scene
You know who you are. And you know kind of all about yourself. But just for day to day stuff notes are really useful. ibid.
Even if you get revenge you’re not going to remember it. You’re not even going to know that it happened. ibid. Natalie
You must listen to me. You have lost your memory. Something went wrong. Your memory was erased. Dark City 1998 starring Rufus Sewell & William Hurt & Kiefer Sutherland & Jennifer Connelly & Richard O’Brien & Ian Richardson & Bruce Spence & Colin Friels & John Bluthal et al, director Alex Proyas, doctor’s phone call
We’re going to give his mind a little jolt. Jump-start his memory. Ray Donovan s7e5: An Irish Lullaby, Micky, Sky Atlantic 2019
You have been in an accident. Can you tell me your name? … You were the only passenger. The taxi you were in went into the river. Your heart stopped for several minutes. It’s Thursday, November 24th. You have been in a coma for four days. Unknown 2011 starring Liam Neeson & Diane Kruger & January Jones & Aidan Quinn & Frank Langella & Bruno Ganz & Sebastian Koch & Stipe Erceg & Olivier Schneider & Rainer Bock et al, director Jaume Collet-Sera, doctor
The case of Eddie Rice, aged 33 … a victim of amnesia. The Crooked Way 1949 starring John Payne & Sonny Tufts & Ellen Drew & Rhys Williams & Percy Helton & John Doucette & Charles Evans & Greta Granstedt et al, director Robert Florey, opening commentary
What you come back for, Eddie? ibid. her to him
‘No-one can give you a time-frame for how long you’ve got.’ Dementia & Us I, sufferer, BBC 2021
They are all dealing with different types of dementia: a set of diseases that will attack their brain-cells and get worse over time. ibid.
Dementia is an umbrella term for many different conditions with no cure. Alzheimer’s is the most common and typically starts by damaging the parts of the brain that processes recent memories. ibid.
What am I supposed to do? I live on my own and I don’t understand it all. All I know is that I can’t see my grandchildren, I can’t see my daughter and son in law, I can’t see my friends. Dementia & Us II
Marion’s dementia is called … PCA: it started at the back of her brain affecting her vision, but as it spreads it’s impacting other areas too. ibid.
In the late ’90s 16 children were removed from their parents and never came back. There ensued 16 years of controversial trials also known to the press as ‘the Devils of Lower Modena’. Veleno: The Town of Lost Children, captions, Sky Documentaries 2022
A paedophile ring organised parties and took pictures. ibid. television news
In 2015 journalist Pablo Trincia stumbled on the case and after years of investigations, he produces the podcast Veleno. ibid. caption
Satanic rituals inside graveyards: the adults were sentenced to dozens of years of jail and never saw their children again. ibid.
‘I was blindfolded when they did those things. They had masks. They wore the mask of a devil and the robe of a monk.’ Veleno: The Town of Lost Children II, girl
It was really strange that a little girl in another department with another colleague was telling and describing similar scenarios. ibid. therapist
Following the seven convictions in the first trial in early 1998 social services were informed of new allegations of child sexual abuse. ibid. commentary
If social workers could do what they wanted, then the threat to your children felt like the breath on your neck of a ferocious beast chasing you. ibid. mother
In the following months, investigations continued at full speed. In a protected place and without the knowledge of their families the children participated in a series of filmed meetings with the therapists appointed by the judge for the preliminary investigation. ibid. commentary
There was confidence in the community that this was a judicial error. So this community voiced its conviction. ibid.
What pained me most was to know they were in the hands of scum. Those people were scum. Veleno: The Town of Lost Children III, mother
According to the prosecution, Don Giorgio is the leading figure of the group of alleged paedophiles. ibid.
I don’t know why they are accusing me. I do not even know the children. ibid. Don Giorgio
I felt the therapists were more powerful than the magistrates. Can this be a fair trial? I would say no. ibid. woman
The police never noticed anything. In this process there was talk of ritual murders. No child’s body was ever found, not a trace of blood. There was talk of unearthed caskets. Not a square centimetre of unearthed soil was ever found. ibid. Don Giorgio’s lawyer
All the defendants were convicted including for the charges of ritual cemetery abuse. ibid.