The Importance of Remembering
- Candace McKibben
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Perhaps, like me, you get more unsolicited news notifications on your phone or computer “than Carter has little pills,” a folksy way of saying way too many. A news notification that caught my heart this week involved World AIDS Day, commemorated annually on December 1 by the United States since its inception by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1988.
The goal of the day is two-fold: to remember the millions of people who have died of AIDS-related illnesses, and to recommit to fighting the pandemic that has claimed the lives of 44.1 million people to date, with an estimated 1.3 million people acquiring HIV in 2024, according to WHO statistics.
For a number of years, the Canopy Connection, an interfaith organization connected to Big Bend Cares, founded in 1985 by volunteers as “Tallahassee Aids Support Services,” has offered a service of remembrance on World AIDS Day. Persons in our community infected and affected by HIV and AIDS faithfully attended, along with those in our community who loved and cared about them. In those annual services, I remember when a minister who was living with HIV and AIDS courageously shared his story, and when a lovely ballerina from my own church did a beautiful liturgical dance with a long red scarf, symbolic of the AIDS red ribbon. I recall readings by people of many different faiths encouraging compassion, and healing songs of great meaning that were beautifully sung or played. I remember when a panel of the HIV/AIDS memorial quilt was on display and the profound impact it had on all of us who viewed it.
Learning, as I did through the news alert on Saturday past, that the US would not be joining the rest of the world in observing World AIDS Day this year, felt both disappointing and sad to me. I read that the reason behind this decision, according to the State Department, is “an awareness day is not a strategy.” But according to WHO and the United Nations, the day goes beyond awareness to encourage reaching strategic goals in containing the virus and maintaining the health of those who live with it.
This first week of December we have two global days that ask us to remember, and more. World AIDS Day and Pearl Harbor Day. Each year on December 7, Pearl Harbor survivors, veterans, and visitors from all over the world come together to honor and remember the 2,403 service members and civilians who were killed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, along with 1,178 people who were injured in the attack.
While I knew of this day without a news alert prompt, one came all the same, along with an announcement about “a new book that tells a story you have likely never heard about Pearl Harbor.” I was intrigued and clicked on the link to learn more.
In 1994, journalist Christine Kuehn received a letter from a screenwriter who was researching WWII. In the letter he asked what her father, Eberhard Kuehn, remembered about his own father’s life as a Nazi spy. While she was certain that there was some sort of mistaken connection, she called her father and asked him if he knew anything about this. He assured her that he did not. She told him that she was going to do some research and would let him know what she found out. But, within fifteen minutes, he called her back sobbing, and told her the story was true.
In the thirty-years since, she has started and stopped the researching and writing of the family history that had been hidden for more than fifty years, learning what she calls “secret after disturbing secret.” It is difficult to imagine the trauma she has endured in courageously facing the truth of her family’s story. Only her husband knew that she was working on the manuscript of a book that she has now published.
In a book review for Jewish Book Council by Linda F. Burghardt, a New York based journalist who also serves as Scholar-in-Residence at the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County, she writes: “The Kuehns were prominent members of Berlin society when the Nazis took hold of the country, and their daughter, secretly half-Jewish, became romantically involved with the Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels. When Goebbels found out the truth, he sent the entire family away — not to a concentration camp, as they had feared, but to someplace worse: an establishment in Hawaii from which they were forced to spy and pass secrets to the Japanese, secrets that led to the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor.”
Christine Kuehn’s father, age fifteen at the time, was the only one of the family not to be arrested, and ultimately returned to Germany after Pearl Harbor. He was allowed to stay in the US in foster care and, though underaged, enlisted to fight with the US against those upon whom his family had spied. He was among the troops that fought in the Battle of Okinawa. Christine’s grandfather, however, was the only one ever convicted for the bombing.
At the end of a recent interview on NPR between host Peter O’Dowd and Christine Kuehen, the author of the book, “Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor,” she was asked about life lessons. She mentioned awareness of how quickly things can change and the importance of remembering what happened in history so that it does not happen again.
Beyond World AIDS Day and Pearl Harbor Day, a third remembrance season began this week for liturgical Christians who celebrate Advent. Starting annually on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, this year on November 30, Advent is a time of waiting and preparing our hearts to celebrate the first coming of Jesus as a baby in the manger, and in anticipation of his promised second coming. In Advent, as on World AIDS Day and Pearl Harbor Day, the remembrance is not static, but dynamic and strategic, calling us to care and to take action for deepening our understanding of the world and how we can make it a better place.
It is my prayer that we will find ways to intentionally remember significant events that will create a better us, and a better we.
Rev. Candace McKibben
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