ownership
from "the new york times" on september 16, 2006:
"Who owns memory? Or, perhaps more pertinently, who selects memory? History, it was once said, is what countries try to remember and try to forget. But for humnity that is hardly an adequate formula. The horrors that people would like to forget...are often those that they should remember. for many individual memory is easier than collective memory. And Pierre Levi's suitcase? Well, in a sense, by fighting to secure his own memory, Mr. Levi-Leleu has reinforced the collective memory. He wants to recover his father's suitcase but, in the process, he has also drawn attention to all other suitcases...whose owners will never be known."