Veiling and denying the past: The dialogue in families of Holocaust survivors and families of Nazi perpetrators

Abstract

The impact of how the past of grandparents and parents and their way of dealing with it affect the lives of their descendants is the general empirical question of this research. Two different family groupings, based on the first generation having been categorized as victims or perpetrators during the Nazi period, are compared. We examine how family histories that differ dramatically affect the process of transmitting the family past from one generation to the next. Similarities as well as structural differences between the family dialogue of survivors' and a perpetrator's families are examined. The impact on the second and third generation is also a concern.