Beyond statistics

May I take this opportunity to reply to the query by Janet Wojtkow (‘Sette Giugno victims’, June 11) regarding the number of victims of Sette Giugno.

Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

The massacre, rather than an “incident”, was spread on more than one day and a couple of victims’ lives expired weeks later. In fact, I think it would be proper for Heri­tage Malta to add the names of the other two victims to the honour list on the monument in Valletta.

May I also invite the correspondent to kindly acquire a new book to be launched on June 24, entitled Sette Giugno in Maltese History, which is being published by Midsea Books and edited by eminent historian Henry Frendo, from which my article on the afterlife of the event was abridged. I am certain this volume would stimulate the interest of non-Maltese readers.

As Walter Benjamin points out, instead of telling the sequence of events “like the beads of a rosary”, the historian could “grasp the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier on, establishing a conception of the present with earlier ones”. I am confident that reading my full contribution and other very interesting chapters in this book would enlighten readers, not only to get the full facts but also to understand better the role the Sette Giugno event had in the construction of Maltese identity beyond statistics.