‘One goes left to the Russians, the other goes right to the Americans’- Family Recollections of the Holocaust in Europe

Abstract

The public and private discourse about the Holocaust in contemporary Germany is contradictory. On the one hand, the majority of Germans are aware of their problematic past and no longer deny that Nazi Germany was responsible for the Second World War, the war of extermination in the East, and the Holocaust on the European Jews. This constitutes a dramatic change compared to the situation at the end of the war and the following two decades.1 We will argue, however, that whilst Germans know and consume a lot about the ‘Third Reich’ and the Holocaust, the second and third generation remain convinced that their ancestors did not do anything bad during that awful period of time. The third generation, specially the grandchildren, distinguish in a ‘black-and-white’ fashion between their grandparents — who were always the ‘good guys’ — and the ‘Nazis’ — who were always ‘the others’ and bad. Furthermore, admitting the crimes of Nazi Germany reflects the desire to swap the burdensome image of the perpetrators with that of the victims. In other words, the more the third generation learns about National Socialism and the Holocaust, the more it distances itself from it.