According to Raymond Queneau remembering and forgetting are like the metal pipe and the rust covering it. You must scrape the rust to polish the pipe. You must forget to remember the important things.

Whatever “important” means, the selection of memories follows a pattern. Members of one certain group share a pattern, which in return become one very typical characteristic of the community and all its members. Borrowing the term from Thomas S. Kuhn this shared pattern could be identified as the paradigm a solid guide for remembering and forgetting.

For example the members of the Hungarian interwar period aristocracy share the paradigm that the Soviet troops conquered Hungary from 1944. Their family history remembers to the upcoming years as a dark age. For them the memories of the summer pioneer camps do not evoke happy student years with lots of laughing and sport, as the paradigm of conquest filters out the happy bits and saves the sombre ones. Meanwhile Jews recall these years as liberation. For them the very same pioneer camp can be the memory of freedom and equality with others.

The point is that these paradigms are not only influencing how they interpret the  very same experience but what they can recall from the very same event. It is the attention to the detail that varies, as details are filtered by the pattern of the community.

Having said that all stories remember in biased ways to past events. Like the layers of an onion the layers of interpretations surround the past. The problem is that as you peel away these layers finally you will find air.