Inherited Guilt

La Voz de Galicia – October 11, 2024 →

Cristina PatoI believe I was about twenty years old when I went to see the play “Nacidos culpables” (Born Guilty) at the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona, a production by Moma Teatre based on the book of the same name by Peter Sichrovsky. The book collects the testimonies of the children and grandchildren of Nazis “who inherited a guilt that is not their own and that will accompany them for the rest of their lives”. At the time, the play had a profound impact on me, because of its documentary nature, its significance, and the fact that, at twenty years old, I had never asked myself anything about inherited guilt. And that’s exactly what came to mind when I read the latest novel by the great Juan Tallón, because the main character of “El mejor del mundo” (The Best in the World), an ambitious businessman in the funeral industry, is named Antonio Hitler, and while he has no connection to the Holocaust’s Hitler, his last name weighs heavily on him, and in a way, he inherits the evil and ambition that come with carrying that surname.

It’s curious, as we are not always aware of all the intangible things we inherit without realizing it. How we inherit or carry the poverty or wealth of our ancestors, how we inherit the hate or love for certain things, places, or states… Because, whether we like it or not, our existence is always tied both to the circumstances that surround us and to those that surrounded our ancestors.

And reading the news these days, I feel a sense of vertigo thinking about the things future generations will inherit from our current society. And I try to imagine a reality where they build a world in which it’s impossible to inherit either wars or pettiness…

How beautiful it would be, even if only for a second, to regain hope in the human condition and not feel the guilt of what awaits them…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.