Abstract
How do you live with the knowledge that your father ordered the death of thousands of innocent people? Children of parents who have committed or been involved in atrocities have to live with the guilt of their parents’ deeds, even when guilt is acknowledged by the parents. Because of their family history, these children often become ‘lightning conductors’ for social guilt, tainted with the mark of evil. Drawing on clinical material and interviews with children of Nazi SS officers, this paper examines the personal psychological repercussions and conflicts that children of perpetrators face in their lives. These conflicts live on not only within the children who have inherited their parents’ crimes but within the larger society in the form of memory, denial and guilt. The psychological dilemma for children of perpetrators provides a prism through which we can better understand the impact of past atrocities on the collective.
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