ABSTRACT
Coming to terms with a difficult past is necessarily a burden. For the Germans this burden is so great that they have coined a word for it: Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The term has broad connotations since it implies the removal of Nazi influences, and the pursuit and punishment of criminals, and it implies the need and readiness to accept responsibility for the past, and to keep the memory of the past alive in the generations succeeding that which lived through the Third Reich. In all these aspects the German people are still compelled to examine themselves and their society. The crimes committed in Germany’s name by a minority of the population remain a mark of Cain on the national psyche, accepted by some and resented by others. There is, as we shall see in this chapter, constant confrontation with the Nazi period and neoNazis on the one hand, and with the witness of the people and peoples who suffered for the Nazi ideology on the other.
