The journey that Ballet Austin has taken with Light: The Holocaust and Humanity Project has made me think about a lot of issues on the topic of victims. In undertaking creating a ballet about the Holocaust, Stephen Mills risked misrepresenting, insulting or trivializing the experience of the victims. We all like to say "we cannot know what the survivors experienced, much less the dead." It's true. We can't. Even the survivors will have trouble remembering completely. We have trouble remembering pain, especially physical pain. Because to really remember would be to re-experience. And psychological pain is so brutal sometimes that we actively try to forget.

We are told we must not forget. Victims are encouraged to come forward, to speak of the horrors. We rue the death of the last witness of a group of victims.

But what I realized was that victims should not be responsible for remembering nor for speaking out. Victims have been or are weakened. Especially against their own plight.

Rather being a victim should prepare us to remember, to speak out, to try to stop another victimization. Former slaves should be prepared to speak for Holocaust victims. Holocaust victims for teenagers who are victims of gay-bashing. Gay teenagers for Rwandan genocide victims. Do you consider yourself a victim? Because of the color of your skin, your religion, your sex, your lack of wealth? We can all embrace victimhood. But all it can and should buy us is to speak for those who didn't prevail and to look for the next victim and to speak out for them. [In re the former: I have a math degree but I'll tell you right now that many females were artificially left behind on math and science. In re the latter: I have come to realize that my own support of gay rights and respect for the magnitude of the Holocaust (which also consumed gays) is not a co-opting of causes but the very thing that people should do, whether their own victim status is minor or major.]

And a special revenge should be called out for deniers. Because only with truth can we go forward. We should all look with wonder at South Africa, Nelson Mandela and the Truth and Reconciliation Movement. When Nelson Mandela dies, now there is a man who showed something special to the world. I hope all the people who are going to see the pope off remember him appropriately. And also remember how many victims Catholism and other religions have created as well as comforted.