Interpretive Communities/Communities of Memory

When Moe Fishman traveled to East Germany in 1961, he went as a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. He was also a printer, a husband, a father, and an activist, but it was his identity as a Spanish Civil War veteran that brought him to the reunion and charged his experiences. When Bill Susman started to weep sitting on a bench in Spain in 1977, or when Nick Pappas cried as he was flying over a battlefield, it was their history as antifascist volunteers in Spain that brought on the emotion.

In a similar way, the strong responses of Hannah and Martha Olson in Italy, or those of the individuals who attend commemorative events in the United States year after year, all arise in relationship to a specific history, or specific interpretations of that history. The vast majority of those attending recent commemorative events were not volunteers, nor were most of them even alive during the Spanish Civil War, but their ability to assign value to that moment, for innumerable possible reasons, brings them into the room and shapes their responses. “We choose the history that we celebrate,” Peter Carroll told me. “There's a lot of histories. We could be celebrating Roosevelt who didn't intervene. […] That's a history. That's a valid history for some people. It's not our valid history because we’re radicals. We’re already out there.” Peter's “we” was referring to those who have organized and staged the modern commemorative process, but it could as easily refer to the commemorative audience in general.