ABSTRACT
For German descendants, the children and grandchildren of the German generation that perpetrated the Holocaust, the Nazi past can evoke a sense of guilt and shame, feelings that are often associated with half-spoken family histories. For the descendants of Holocaust survivors, the shadows of unimaginable trauma endured at the hands of the Nazis remain. The introduction to this book suggests that we are all shaped by history’s collective crimes. The author uses his own German family history as a means to illustrate this process. He juxtaposes his work on German family memory of the Holocaust with Thomas Kohut’s important historical research on the German generation that perpetrated the Holocaust. Kohut’s (2012) book A German Generation: An Experiential History of the Third Reich forms the basis for this collection of essays by leading historians and psychoanalysts on Germany, the Holocaust and the importance of empathy.
