We need to begin by understanding the importance of memory. Memory isn't history or dead memorabilia. By defining the past memory creates the present. Repression of memory creates mental disease. Health comes from memory's recovery.
Dictators consolidate power by altering memory.
Stalin airbrushed Trotsky and Bukharin out of photographs. Revisionists deny the Holocaust ever happened. Man is memory. People who suffer memory loss through illness or accident don't just misplace their keys. They lose their selves.