I've just listened to the BBC documentary Voices from the Ghetto, in which Polish Jews describe their daily lives in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. It's a sad account of what people can do to other people, but also a striking example of the strength of the human desire to be heard: to know that others know that you exist.
The texts read by actors in the documentary are a tiny fraction of the systematic records left by Jews of ghetto: recorded by individuals, copied in triplicate by a typing pool and periodically buried in metal cans to (hopefully) be found by posterity. Such committment to the telling of their story!
In a funny way, it reminds me of Facebook.* Why else do people record the minutiae of their lives (or, indeed, post increasingly outrageous pictures of themselves) if not from a longing to be seen and heard? They may not have such a terrible or important story to tell but still, I hear echoes between the two in that common desire to be seen, heard and known.
* or, at least, Facebook as stereotypically used by teenagers...
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