Daniela Schiller - Forgetting Fear

 

It's 10:00 AM. A siren is heard across the country. Everybody stops everything and stands in attention. The whole country is pausing for one minute of silence. It's a major violation of social rules if you don't. So, everybody does it. Men, women, children, everybody, except my dad. He just sits there, continues to read the newspaper and sips his morning coffee. He doesn't even try tone down the “Mm," he says. That's how I know Memorial Day for the Holocaust started. 

 

 This happens once a year. And it fell right on my yearly visit to Israel. The day before I take a walk in our industrial neighborhood, I see the corner where I had this horrible accident with my skateboard, but I didn't cry. I figured if my dad went through the Holocaust, surely, I can handle a little pain. 

 

One summer, my parents travel and they sent me up north to a kibbutz to stay until they're back. There, I meet a group of Germans who came to volunteer. It's the first time I see German people. The neighborhood kids used to beat me up for looking like a German. And indeed, I blend right in. The leader of the group is Johan. Every night, we hang out together after work. With eighth grade level English, I tell him about my hometown, Rishon LeZion, and he tells me about Berlin. 

 

One evening, Johan brings a book of poems. I think he's about to kiss me, but I keep my cool and say, “Cool, go ahead and read.” Suddenly, I hear this flood of words in German. [German language] It was a poem by Friedrich Schiller, who has my surname. That was a surprise. 

 

Johan goes on and on. These German words are pouring out of his mouth. I never heard it so closely before. It's terrifying. I start to see images of Nazis pushing Jews into trailers, skeletal humans behind barbed wires, smoke coming out of gas chambers, until I scream stop and I push Johan off me. Johan sits there all flustered. What am I going to say? That my entire life the only times I heard German was in Holocaust movies, that the Germans did something to my dad, but I don't know what because he never talks about it? 

 

Somehow, it doesn't feel like our after-work conversation. So, I just say, “it hurts, and I point to his foot that he's stepping on my toes. After this, I think there's something wrong with my memory. It's not my memory, it's my dad. Actually, it's not even his because he never mentioned any of his memories. Still, I have these vivid images of horrific pain and I feel intimate with death, which is very unfortunate, as I would much rather be intimate with Johan. [audience laughter] 

 

need to do something about it. Plan A, heart-to-heart conversation with my dad. I ask him, “Dad, what happened? Why don't you ever stand in attention during the siren?” He says, “Nothing” and leaves the room. Plan B, go to college. [audience laughter] Here, I take some classes about the psychoanalytic theory of Freud. I think my dad would be interested, especially because his name is also Sigmund. He listens quietly as I explain. When I'm done, he says, “Psychology is a serious load of crap.” [audience laughter] So, I decided to major in psychology. [audience laughter] 

 

However, people talking about their emotions could be time consuming. So, I decided to focus on a simpler form of human behavior. Mice. I like them. They never talk about emotions. Just like my dad, only small and furry. [audience laughter] Every day I watch their behavior, when they sense the smell of a predator, they freeze in the corner. When they hear the sound of a bell, they freeze in the other corner. I try to change their behavior, but they never forget what they're afraid of. 

 

In 2004, a new movie is out, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The main character wants to erase Clementine, his ex-girlfriend, from his memories. He goes to a doctor who has this innovative technique to erase memories. The state-of-the-art technology is a helmet you put on your head with some wires. [audience laughter] The helmet technology inspires me. I discovered that the movie is based on a true experiment. There's a real lab at NYU that did the actual experiment. I managed to get some government funding, pack my bags and move to New York. I show up at the very lab that did the experiment and ask for a job. 

 

These NYU scientists found a way to change memories. They say that just the act of remembering makes the memory vulnerable. So, you take your memory out of storage. It's floating there, defenseless. That's where they hit it with a drug. So, now, you can't put it back in storage. It's blocked by the drug. 

 

So, it looks like there's one way memory lane, which I think is genius. The only indication that this is true is in the form of a furry mouse that stopped freezing in the corner. So, they give me a job. My mission is to show that this actually works in real human beings. The way to do it is simple. I invite people to the lab and give them electric shocks. [audience laughter] Before each shock, I show them a blue square. After a few times, I don't need to give the shocks anymore. They're really afraid of the blue squares. [audience laughter] 

 

The next phase is to give the drug and get rid of the fear. One problem is I don't actually have the drug. Experiments in humans are complicated more than mice because of federal laws. [audience laughter] So, they're really strict about giving drugs to people, but pretty lenient about giving them electric shocks. [audience laughter] So, I can only do half the experiment. Consequently, until this day, there is a subset of New York population who is really afraid of blue squares. [audience laughter] 

 

As I try to overcome this minor setback, something happens. A bunch of mice in a nearby lab is doing something different. By mistake, they were doing something nice while reliving their bad memory. I think these mice are onto something. Maybe there's a way to rewrite the memory without the drug. The idea is, you take the memory out of storage and you link it with something nice, like the good feelings you have when you win a prize. Then you put it back in storage. But it's different. It has this new information. Your memory is only as good as your last retrieval of it. With this idea in mind, I test it on people and it works. 

At least as far as blue squares go, I can rewrite their memory and they're not afraid of them anymore. 

 

So, now, I'm back in Israel for my yearly visit. It's 10:00 AM, and the siren goes on to mark the openings of the Holocaust Memorial Day. Everybody stops and stands still to reminisce about the horrors of World War II. My dad sits there with his newspapers, sipping his morning coffee. I think I finally understand what's going on. The siren is his blue square. He is doing something pleasant while his memory is vulnerable. So, I pour myself a cup, borrow a section of his paper and sit next to him.