“To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’. It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger… Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.”
Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” in Illuminations (London: Pimlico, 1999). p.247
(thanks Susann)