History is the problem always. It attaches itself to us, sucks our lives, yet it continually fades; we despise it, fear it, yet cannot do without it; and we continually worry it, like dogs with a dead rat. The artist's job, or one of them, is to keep history alive and in some way make it serve us. For William Heyen the history to be kept alive is what happened in the German death camps.

           From Belsen a crate of gold teeth,
           from Dachau a mountain of shoes,
           from Auschwitz a skin lampshade.
           Who killed the Jews?

So Heyen asks. And of course the answer is evident, what we have all understood for years. Yet have we? Perhaps it isn't as simple as it appears. Only through constant, intent remembering, Heyen says, do we "begin to know." (p. 97)

That, at least, is one way of looking at it...