The Holocaust in Three Generations: Families of Victims and Perpetrators of the Nazi Regime

What form does the dialogue about the family during the Nazi period take in the families of those persecuted by the Nazi regime and of Nazi perpertrators and accomplices? What impact does the past of the first generation, and their own way of dealing with it, have on the lives of their descendants? What are the structural differences between the dialogue about the Holocaust in families of perpetrators and those of the victims? This text examines these questions on the basis of selected case studies. It presents five families of survivors from Germany and Israel whose experiences of persecution and family histories after the liberation differ greatly. Two case studies of non-Jewish German families whose grandparents' generation are suspected of having perpretrated Nazi crimes illustrate the mechanisms operating in these families - those of passing the guilt on to the victims and creating the myth of being victims themselves - and give a sense of the psychological consequences these mechanisms have for the generations of their children and grandchildren.

Table of Contents:
Contributors Translation note Transcription symbols Preface Part I The Dialog about the Holocaust in Families of Survivors and Families of Perpetrators 1. Questions and method Gabriele Rosenthal 2. Similarities and differences in family dialog Gabriele Rosenthal 3. Similarities and differences in public discourse about the Shoah in Israel and West and East Germany Bettina Volter Michal Dasberg Part II Families of Survivors in Israel, West and East Germany 4. Traumatic family pasts Gabriele Rosenthal 5. Surviving together and living apart in Israel and West Germany: the Genzor family Gabriele Rosenthal Petra Jordans Bettina Volter 6. The collective trauma of the Lodz Ghetto: the Goldstern family Gabriele Rosenthal Michal Dasberg Yael Moore 7. Surviving as inmate-functionaries: the Shapiro/Sneidler family Noga Gilad Gabriele Rosenthal Yael Moore 8. Shared and divided worlds: the Stern family Waltraud Schade Sabrina Bohmer Gabriele Rosenthal 9. The Kubiak/Grunwald family dialog: blocking out the theme of migration from Israel to East Germany Maria Nooke in cooperation with Christine Muller Part III Israeli Families of Forced Emigrants from Germany 10. Families with grandparents of the `Youth Aliyah generation' Gabriele Rosenthal Bettina Volter Noga Gilad 11. A love-hate relationship with Germany: the Arad family Gabriele Rosenthal Bettina Volter Noga Gilad 12. The intergenerational process of mourning: the families of Fred, Lea and Nadja Weber Gabriele Rosenthal Bettina Volter Noga Gilad Yael Moore Part IV East German Families of Forced Emigrants 13. Remembering in the light of anti-fascism in East Germany Bettina Volter 14. Anti-fascism as substitute mourning: the Basler family Gabriele Rosenthal Bettina Volter 15. An anti-fascist `legend'?: the Kaufmann family Bettina Volter Part V Families of Nazi Perpetrators and Accomplices in West and East Germany 16. National Socialism and antisemitism in intergenerational dialog Gabriele Rosenthal 17. Passing the guilt on to the grandchildren: the Sonntag family Gabriele Rosenthal in cooperation with Christine Muller 18. We are the victims of history: the Seewald family Bettina Volter Gabriele Rosenthal Part VI Two Family Dialogs Compared 19. Veiling and denying Gabriele Rosenthal Glossary Bibliography

Review :
Details the results of a study undertaken by Israelis and Germans in the two countries between 1992 and 1996, looking at how families of those persecuted by the Nazi dictatorship refer to their past, how their conversations about their family history and the Holocaust differ from those of the perpetrators of the regime and their accomplices, and the impact of the first generation's experience on the lives of later generations.