Trying to understand

Some aspects of our history are so heartbreaking that it is natural to turn away, to avoid confronting the hardships and humiliations suffered by earlier generations.

We pretend not to notice that our grandparents, most certainly our great-grandparents, were denied what we regard as the most basic opportunities and freedoms.

That inclination is made all the stronger because the wrongs of earlier times were often invoked to sustain division and hatred, to justify violence and sometimes murder.

Though today we may be more at peace with our past than earlier generations, it is probable we will never fully understand what they had to endure.

That, however, does not mean we should stop trying. The publication of The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine is the most significant contribution to deepening our understanding of the scale, the reasons for, and the consequences of the greatest catastrophe in our modern history in decades.

By better understanding the past, we can better face the future. This publication makes a very significant contribution to that process.