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“What Would I Have Done When They Took My Neighbours Away?”

1

The Transgenerational Experiences and Traumas of the Descendants

of Nazi Perpetrators in Germany

Masters Thesis, Holocaust and Genocide Studies

University of Amsterdam

June 2014

Graduate School of Humanities

Master of Holocaust and Genocide Studies

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Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS...III ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...V INTRODUCTION...1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS... 2 OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS... 2 DEFINITIONS... 3 HISTORIOGRAPHY... 5 METHODOLOGY... 6

CHAPTER 1 – SILENCE, DENIAL, AND EMOTIONAL AVOIDANCE...8

SILENCE... 9

REPRESSION... 11

DENIAL... 13

UNDERSTANDINGTHE PAST - CONTRADICTIONS...17

CONCLUSIONS... 21

CHAPTER 2 – EXPERIENCING GUILT AND TRAUMA...23

GUILT, IRRATIONALITY, AND MORALITY...24

THE NATURE OF GUILT... 26

CONFLICTING FEELINGS – MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS WITH POSSIBLE PERPETRATORS...30

AMBIGUITYAND INVESTIGATION...31

CONCLUSIONS... 33

CHAPTER 3 – ACTS OF APOLOGY...35

‘BREAKING THE VEIL OF SILENCE’, AND THE MARCH OF LIFE...37

THE MARCH OF LIFE – CREATION AND EXPANSION...40

STOLPERSTEINE – INDIVIDUAL MEMORY AND EVERYDAY ACTIONS...43

COMPARISONS AND CONCLUSIONS... 47

CHAPTER 4 – RELATIVES OF HIGH-RANKING AND WELL-KNOWN PERPETRATORS ...50

THE UNAVOIDABLE PUBLIC NATURE OF IDENTITY...51

PHYSICAL AVOIDANCE AND IDEOLOGICAL MISREPRESENTATION...54

INDIVIDUALS INCREASING PUBLIC AWARENESS...57

GUILT AND APOLOGY... 63

CONCLUSIONS... 65

CONCLUSIONS...68

APPENDIX...74

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RESPONDENT A.K... 74

RESPONDENT H.J... 77

RESPONDENT H.W... 78

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Acknowledgments

This thesis would not have been possible without the support of my friends, family, and academic advisers. First and foremost I would like to thank Dr. Karel Berkhoff for his assistance in exploring and constructing this thesis, and for his invaluable advice. His guidance and expert knowledge have been hugely

beneficial to the process. My overall experience of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Masters program has also been made immeasurably valuable and thoroughly interesting due to the UvA and NIOD staff. Dr. Nanci Adler, Dr. Dario Fazzi, and, of course, Dr. Berkhoff have provided academic challenges and encouragement throughout the year. I would especially like to thank Dr. Uğur Ümit Üngör for supervising the course and for offering especially constrictive advice throughout the year, alongside inspiring teaching content. Without his input I would be leaving the UvA with a far inferior understanding of the field of genocide studies. I have also relied on the support of my friends, both in

Amsterdam and abroad, in helping to encourage and inspire me throughout the year. I would particularly like to thank Anna Gopsill, Kiki Peterson, and Jorinde van den Meijden for their invaluable support, intellectually, practically, and emotionally. Special thanks to Lindsey Allen for all her emotional support and for the huge amounts of help formatting this thesis. Your kindness and generosity does not go unnoticed. Many thanks to Anika Auweiler and Hannah Widmann for providing the German translations, and for their friendship. I am also grateful to Koen Kluessein for providing me with the original spark for the idea of this thesis. And of course, I am forever grateful to my parents, my brother, and my sister, for their continual support and encouragement.

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Introduction

This thesis will explore the experiences of Germans related to perpetrators of the Nazi period. It will focus on the process of discovering a connection to this horrifying element of the past, and the stages of reacting to such information.

Learning about, psychologically comprehending, investigating and attempting to come to terms with past actions and ideologies of relatives presents a set of processes that can work either in isolation or in combination (depending upon the individual). For many, this process had a profound effect on their relationship with the perpetrator (or the perpetrator’s generation, more generally), the view of their own identity, actions and ideologies. Additional focus will be on the progression of this relationship, the link between the intellectual understanding and emotional reaction involved, and the conflict this can induce. I will argue that while the account of each descendant of a perpetrator was unique, some similarities could be seen within the development of their connection to the past, to their family, and within themselves. Elements of silence, denial, repression, guilt, emotional trauma, investigation, remembrance and apology could be witnessed both within the situations of specific individuals, and as general trends within the wider group. Seemingly contradictory emotions frequently existed side by side within one person’s experience.

Germany has been active in remembering and representing victims of Nazi atrocities within the public, national, and collective contexts. Though elements of the past have remained taboo, there are memorials, museums, education programs, and examples of national and international oration acknowledging and offering deep regret for the Nazi era. This has allowed

German society, over generations, to deal with the past more thoroughly than any other ‘perpetrator nation’ ever has before. However, the same cannot always be said for the development of individuals and individual comprehension for the descendants of perpetrators. Though German politics and society have attempted to go through the process of coming to terms with the past

(Vergangenheitsbewältigung), the experiences of the descendants of Nazi

perpetrators is far more challenging and emotionally direct. Though any German (and, in this sense, any other person) can attempt to know and understand the

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wrongs of the past, the influence of a direct family context reframes this

understanding. The descendants of Nazi perpetrators, in many cases, remained confronted by the past in a particular way. For many there was not simply an awareness of the events, but a combination of awareness and emotional or genetic closeness to the perpetrator, that led them to take on transgenerational guilt and emotional trauma. Though some accepted this connection and

attempted to deal with the process of discovery and comprehending the past, others were not able to do so.

Research Questions

The main questions I want to research are: How does transgenerational guilt in Germany affect relatives of individuals active during the Nazi years? How do these individuals respond to an awareness of the past and how does this process develop? Is it possible to ‘come to terms’ with the experience? And, how does the emotional response to the past differ from the intellectual one?

Subsidiary questions within this research are: What can be learnt, by looking at the range of accounts? Are there significant similarities and differences within the experiences? How has this process changed over generations? Do acts of apology achieve something? What is achieved with ‘coming to terms’ with the past? Who is it for?

Outline of Chapters

This thesis is based on the attempts by descendants of those active during the Nazi era to ‘come to terms’ with the actions of their relatives. The order of this thesis will follow the logical process of the development of the emotional response and attempted comprehension of the descendants of perpetrators. The emotional response of a descendant of a perpetrator is an extended process rather than a static moment or belief. In this sense it develops over time. It must be specified that not everyone follows the process of development. This is merely a simplified, logical chronology of the various accounts. The first chapter

discusses the role of silence, ambiguities in information, and various types of denial. Following the revelation of information and a period of accepting the

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information many individuals then go through an extended period of emotional trauma, often including aspects of guilt and shame. These experiences are collected within the second chapter. Though some continued to feel emotional trauma indefinitely, others attempted to take action, using apology or

commemoration in attempts to come to terms with it. Such attempts at apology and remembrance (focused around two cases studies) are explored within the third chapter. Though few descendants reach this stage of development, it is important for understanding how some physical actions can relate to prior emotional responses. Finally, the accounts of relatives of high-ranking and well-known perpetrators of the Nazi era will be explored. Though many have

interactions that are similar to the individuals assessed throughout the first three chapters, this group of individuals also go through a set of experiences that are specific to them.

Definitions

The term ‘perpetrator’ is highly debated. Initially used to refer to only the higher echelons of power, or those involved in direct killing, today the term is also used to acknowledge the growing circles of association, as the role of the Nazi state (and all those within it) were intrinsic to the processes of destruction. Throughout this thesis I use ‘perpetrator’ to mean a person directly or indirectly connected to an action and/or ideology of the Nazis. However, in order for an individual to partake in research regarding their parent’s actions they must first self-define as the children of perpetrators. The nature of the sources (usually interviews) means that those who remain silent regarding their parents’ pasts (or do not see them as perpetrators) are inevitably absent from the literature to begin with. Again, this does not necessarily allude to the parent having a large or violent role within the period, but refers instead to the influence upon the next generation’s recognition or reaction to it. The issue for many within this second generation has been that they felt different or removed from their peers, and German society more generally, due to a sense of family shame. In this way, despite the growing circle of perpetrators, the use of this word throughout this thesis is connected to direct or indirect involvement (for example, physical or

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administrative), which may or may not have been linked to a belief in Nazi ideology.

Within the first three chapters the use of the term ‘perpetrator’ refers to individuals who have a Nazi past. This group includes a range of activities, including direct involvement in exterminations, witness or agent to murder or mass murder, or involvement in the Nazi party that did not involve violence. Due to the wide range of individual accounts featured and compared it was necessary to use this term as a shortened description. For many individuals of the following generation, the actions of the relative were left ambiguous or silent for many years. For these reasons I have not used the term to refer to a specific action (for example, murder, working in a concentration camp, ordering deaths of groups or individuals), though it may involve those actions mentioned. Thus, the term ‘perpetrator’ is used as a shortened description, in order to account for the problematic experience of the subsequent generations.

Meanwhile, chapter 4 uses the term ‘perpetrator’ in a more singular manner, referring to those that were high-ranking or well-known within the Nazi party. This is the traditional sense, referring to individuals who committed direct acts of violence, or operated as part of the high Nazi command.

Though the perpetrator relative is, in most cases, the father, some accounts also relate to the grandfather, the uncle, and the great uncle. The relationship interacts with the heinous acts committed by a male relative, but in theory this phenomenon could also apply to female relatives. The thesis is not based in a gendered assumption, but is responding to the circumstances of the combined experiences. Female roles were also important for those related to perpetrators. There were issues that related far more to the mother, including the issue of withheld information, the role of inaction, and the anger that stemmed from these problems. However, in none of the circumstances discussed was the female relative a direct perpetrator.

Historiography

There has been steady increase of research into the various groups affected both directly and indirectly by the Holocaust in the period since the Second World War. There is a particularly large collection of research based

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around the descendants of Holocaust survivors. Starting in the mid-1960s attention began to be given to theories of transgenerational trauma, particularly regarding the children of Holocaust survivors. A growing body of literature focuses on subsequent generations of survivors and their reactions to the

identity of Holocaust memory and identity, and, in some situations, transference of trauma. Since the 1990s the third generation have been receiving attention. Although research on the descendants of Nazi perpetrators has also increased over time, this area is not as well studied as the effects on relatives of survivors. Though there are a number of studies of groups of descendants, biographical research related to specific descendants, and the role of transgenerational guilt more generally (within German society), there is not a lot of current research discussing the effects of long-term, personal transgenerational guilt, and the experiences of the second generation of descendants of post-war Germans.

Since the late 1960s there has also been a focus on Germany coming to terms with its past, addressing its history openly and vocally. In the immediate post-war period there was a virtual collective silence, but since then the past has been discussed far more. The biggest change occurred in the 1960s when the Second Generation of German society (those who lived through the war as children, or were born directly after) gave the first real admittance of guilt, sorrow, and criticism of earlier generations. German society at the time failed to deal with the memory of the Holocaust, leaving subsequent generations with a sense of obligation to act. German society began vocalising indirect issues of guilt for societal perpetration. The role of guilt continues to play a role in German identity and Germany’s relationship with the past to the present day. However, this issue has largely been studied in relation to society, rather than individual emotional responses.

Psychological theories of transgenerational and collective guilt and trauma have developed alongside intergenerational studies of parties connected to the Holocaust. Although the experiences of second and third generation survivors of German society generally have acquired prominence in recent literature, the long-term individual experiences of those directly connected to perpetrators has received less attention.

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Methodology

Using almost exclusively English language material, there were limited resources regarding the specific personal experiences of the descendants of Nazi perpetrators. Although some key texts did emerge, there is not a strong

historiographical precedent for the specific topic of emotional reactions by the descendants of perpetrators. The work of Dan Bar-On is important within my research, not only due to his extensive interviews with the relatives of Nazi perpetrators, but also for his research accounting for transgenerational trauma following the Holocaust.2 Both Bar-On and Peter Sichrovsky have conducted research presenting collected interviews with large groups of perpetrator

descendants.3 Bar-On’s Legacy of Silence (1989) offered a range of contextualised accounts, and presented a neutral and open stance in recording the opinions of the individuals involved. Though Sichrovsky’s Born Guilty (1988) was less neutral within its analysis, the book presented a wide range of in-depth interviews. Other sources either focused on one individual, or presented findings from generalised societal studies.

One of the key problems with the literature is that, with the exception of descendants of high-ranking Nazis, it is only possible to assess those who self-identify as the descendants of perpetrators. If a person is not aware of their family history, or chooses to not to investigate such issues it is impossible for them to be included within such studies. Many of the descendants of

perpetrators discussed the relative isolation and confliction they felt within this role, but it is impossible to know in quantifiable terms how many others are simply not exposed to the information. A large amount of the literature also focused on German society collectively, rather than on the direct experiences of individuals. While this was useful for understanding trends and comparison with

2

Dan Bar-On, Legacy of Silence – Encounters with Children of the Third Reich (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 1989), Dan Bar-On, “The use of a Limited Personal Morality to Rationalize Horrendous Evil: Interviews with an Auschwitz Doctor and his Son”, Journal of Traumatic Stress, 3:3, 1990, pp.415-427, Dan Bar-On, The Indescribable and the

Undiscussable – Reconstructing Human Discourse after Trauma (Central European University Press,

Budapest, 1999)

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Peter Sichrovsky (Translated by Jean Steinberg), Born Guilty – Children of Nazi Families (Basic Books, New York, 1988)

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individual accounts, it was more difficult to access resources that provided personal experiences. The personal nature of the topic also makes the findings largely unquantifiable.

As English language resources were somewhat scarce, I attempted to contact groups and organisations for assistance with this research. A number of individual volunteers from the ‘Stolpersteine in Berlin’ group were forthcoming in answering questions, providing me with information regarding their personal motivations in helping to maintain Stolpersteine (‘Stumbling Stones’) in Berlin. However, after many attempts to contact Jobst Bittner and the TOS Ministries in Tübingen (the group behind the ‘March of Life’), the organisation was unavailable for interviews. This left a number of questions regarding their ideology

unanswered.

Overall, the research provided me with a broad overview, and a varied range of accounts of the, often self-defined, descendants of perpetrators in Germany. Though the majority of the research focuses on second generation descendants, there is also an awareness of the developments between the second and third generation, and the changes that continue to take place both between and within individuals and German society generally.

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Chapter 1 – Silence, Denial, and Emotional

Avoidance

The issue of silence regarding the Holocaust is complex amongst the relatives of perpetrators. Outright silence is hard to study. Those individuals that participate in studies or interviews (who make up the majority of my research) have clearly made the decision to give some vocalisation to the legacy of their families’

involvement within the Third Reich. While total silence is difficult to measure and analyse a number of elements arise from it that can shed light on the issue. These elements demonstrate the complexity of comprehending and verbalising that which is both taboo (the Holocaust) and emotionally intimate (the family). There are elements of silence within many different testimonies, ranging from an absence of information, repression, minimisation to denial. These issues also may differ within both time and context for each individual. It is an immensely

difficult and constantly evolving process to come to terms with the legacy of the past, and it elicits a great number of responses even within a single individual. In this way the roles of vocalisation and silence are not mutually exclusive. The issue of an individual’s interactions with silence, denial, repression and

ambiguity must be seen as a continual process, rather than a static set of beliefs. Nevertheless, the variable nature of silence within the lives of individuals related to Nazi perpetrators is essential to the process of coming to terms with the past.

Silence is a distinct problem within the legacy of the Holocaust. It creates gaps in knowledge and ambiguities that can distort and reframe events of the past. This can have the effect of minimising victimhood and potentially creating a false narrative. Individuals who maintain silence, particularly witnesses, pass this damaging ambiguity on to the next generation. Focusing on the ways in which silence, ambiguity, repression and denial are understood by both individuals and German society can help to explain the evolving process of

Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past).

As the decades since the Holocaust pass it is remains necessary to understand the importance of accepting and uncovering the truths of the past.

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Time alone is not a constructive or reparative impulse; instead “open

engagement, public debates and private conversations, and reparative acts of reconciliation.” are crucial.4

Silence

A common feature for many relatives of Nazi perpetrators was the experience of almost complete silence regarding the events of the war during their formative years. The majority of interviewees described learning

information about their fathers’ pasts predominantly during their teenage years, though this was rarely the full story. Unlike survivors, wartime perpetrators generally “fall silent once the regime they served collapses”, even amongst their closest relations.5 In the initial post-war years of silence many children of perpetrators were, perhaps understandably, given no information regarding the actions of their relatives during the Third Reich. Similarly, the wives of those active within the Third Reich largely kept silent, leaving the discovery of the truth largely to the next generation, if it emerged at all.6

In many instances this silence was passed on through the generations, largely as a source of emotional protection for the next generation and as an attempt to prevent uncomfortable questions and truths within the family. The relatives of perpetrators commonly stated in interviews that their parents “never spoke [of the Holocaust], there was never any talk at all about it”, or that “never before had my parents said anything about Jews; it was a word that didn’t exist”.7 8 This situation, for many parents, was a reaction to “their own unresolved

4

Katharina von Kellenbach, The Mark of Cain – Guilt and Denial in the Post-War Lives of Nazi

Perpetrators, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013), p.24.

5

Katharina von Kellenbach, “The Truth about the Mistake” – Perpetrator Witness and the Intergenerational Transmission of Guilt”, Historical Reflections, 39:2, Summer 2013, p.14.

6

Dan Bar-On, The Indescribable and the Undiscussable – Reconstructing Human Discourse after

Trauma (Central European University Press, Budapest, 1999), p.157.

7

Dan Bar-On, Legacy of Silence – Encounters with Children of the Third Reich (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 1989), p.249.

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conflicting feelings associated with the NS era”, leaving them in a position where they could not offer support to their child’s understanding of events, “either emotionally or cognitively”.9

Many individuals also referenced a moment of revelation or discovery, usually due to an external factor (in some cases the arrest of the father). For many, this moment initiated a process of trauma. For some this also led to a self-directed search for information. Some descendants needed many years of quiet contemplation, whereas others asked direct and challenging questions to their parents. Commonly, there was a shift within the nature of the relationship between family members, as their past and identity were changed forever. Ingeborg (whose father was arrested by the British in 1945 for executing partisans) described how, after discovering her father’s past, “all that respectability suddenly was gone” within their relationship.10

The absence of many fathers in the family home (often due to

imprisonment, death in the war, or suicide at the end of the war) also facilitated the silence and ambiguity, and often prevented the following generation from having a clear understanding of the past. While some families prevented access to important documentation, others provided just enough information for some individuals to begin their own investigation.11 The silence surrounding small fragments of information suggested to some “that there must be something fishy in this story”, influencing investigation into the past of their family, their nation, and the secrets that had been kept from them.12 Katharina von Kellenbach, a Professor of Religious Studies in the United States, has described her slow discovery of her uncle’s crimes, and the lengths that her family went to in order to hide them from her. She spent “several years in the archives to disprove the

Peter Sichrovsky (Translated by Jean Steinberg), Born Guilty – Children of Nazi Families (Basic Books, New York, 1988), p.20.

9

Bar-On, The Indescribable and the Undiscussable, p.179.

10

Sichrovsky, Born Guilty – Children of Nazi Families, p.132.

11

Bar-On, Legacy of Silence, p.240.

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web of lies, deceptions, and evasions that were spun by close family members to conceal my own uncle’s history”.13

The societal context in Germany’s immediate post-war years was also largely silent. Many relatives of perpetrators, growing up in the late 1940s and early 1950s also spoke of the silence that dominated their life outside the family home. During school “the word Hitler didn’t exist”, preventing further discussion of the past.14 In many ways this situation is understandable. Germany, as a nation, still experiencing the deprivations of defeat, prevented young individuals from starting to come to terms with the situation and from exposure to the details of events. The topic of the war became taboo and the education system generally did not interact with the recent past. While many individuals mentioned the silences of their early years (within the home and the school) there were a number of references to specific teachers who broke this silence of their own accord. One individual described his formative years, and the lack of information that precipitated ignorance over the past: “Look, if you don’t know anything, then you can’t repress anything. My parents didn’t talk to me about it. Older people didn’t. It wasn’t mentioned at school. Young people didn’t know anything about it, so how could they repress anything? How could you if you didn’t know

anything?”15 Despite the potential advantages of silence, some uncovered

information from external sources. In many cases this information was traumatic to hear, and with the opportunity to ignore evidence, use of repressive and self-imposed silence could continue.

Repression

Though silence began with the perpetrator generation, some individuals chose to remain silent even after details of the past emerged. A key factor within this situation is the issue of repression or self-imposed silence, as a way of

psychologically escaping the truth. After discovering the truth (or elements of it), 13

von Kellenbach, The Mark of Cain, p.4.

14

Bar-On, Legacy of Silence, p.33.

15

Ibid., p.38.

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many relatives of Nazi perpetrators attempted to forget, ignore, or physically escape from the realities facing them. Dan Bar-On (Israeli psychologist, who has published significant works regarding the children of Nazi perpetrators)

described the desire by the children of perpetrators “not to know and not to feel close” to their parents or to the past.16 This repressive escapism and desire to keep away from the past (psychologically) was a common circumstance. Many individuals connected to Nazi perpetrators and created a wall of self-imposed silence, following the initial silences of the previous generation. Repression gave individuals an opportunity to ignore the unsavoury evidence of the past that faced them. The resulting information could be “so threatening that [it could] easily become undiscussable again, lost in oblivion” for a period of time.17 This can also be greatly exacerbated by the closeness to the individual, as it may bring the connection to such extreme acts far closer to home. For Katharina Von

Kellenbach, writing about her own experience, “the idea of a mass murderer upon whose knees I had sat as a child brought the horror too close to know.”18

Repression was often temporary, particularly during teenage years when the children of perpetrators were still living with the silent generation that preceded them. One individual, using the pseudonym Fritz, described his avoidance of the subject during his youth. After being told by his uncle of his father’s role as head of the Gestapo in the Braunschweig area, and of subsequent crimes and execution, Fritz avoided the subject for some time.19 He found himself “sick of the whole thing” and “more or less managed to forget all about it” for a time, instead concentrating on “my girlfriends, my studies, and nothing more than that”.20 Although later in his life he was able to face the past openly, this period of repression provided a self-imposed silence for years.

16

Ibid., p.41.

17

Bar-On, The Indescribable and the Undiscussable, p.155.

18

Katharina von Kellenbach, “Vanishing acts: Perpetrators in Postwar Germany”, Holocaust and

Genocide Studies, 17:2, 2003, p.307

19

Bar-On, Legacy of Silence, p.292.

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However, for others, the use of repression to block out knowledge of past events has been long-term, or even permanent. One individual described his decision to “live without a past” following knowledge of his father’s crimes. His actions regarding this purpose included paying people from his past to ignore him and refraining from “investigating where and whom I came from”, cutting himself off from any sense of identity connected to his family.21 This form of repression acted as psychological protection on a habitual basis for some individuals.

Even once the repression was identified, some individuals continued to choose silence as a way of protecting and maintaining their personal

relationships. A number of personal testimonies of the relatives of perpetrators described an outward acceptance of the past, coupled with an inward repression. Even with an intellectual understanding of the Nazi crimes committed (including those directly connected to a relative), many individuals described a “protective boundary”, or emotional distinction, that prevented them from inwardly coming to terms with the actions of the relative.22 This lack of internal honesty proved much harder to overcome than the literal and intellectual knowledge of the past. In order to save the parental relationship and to continue loving the parent (in spite of knowledge of their crimes) some individuals found themselves, and remained, torn between two identities. Bar-On described “a collision within herself” relating to an individual who accepted the terrible crimes of the father intellectually, but was unable to see him outside his role as a “wonderful” father.23 24 This phenomenon may be called inward repression. Although repression presented many challenges, the relationship with the parent complicated this process further, and often created an intellectual and emotional schism within the relative of a perpetrator.

21

19 Sichrovsky, Born Guilty, p.56. 22

Bar-On, Legacy of Silence, p.134.

23

Peter Wyden, The Hitler Virus – The Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler (Arcade Publishing, New York, 2001), p.279.

24

Wyden, The Hitler Virus, p.280.

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Denial

Most individuals accepted the actions of the past, either whilst

maintaining or avoiding a functional relationship with the previous generation. However, a small minority who felt a confliction of emotional love and

intellectual understanding turned towards varying degrees of denial. This relationship was able to facilitate a continuance of emotional repression within the individual. Though the issue of outright denial represented a small minority of the individuals assessed (within the sample of those willing to speak about their experiences to researchers) it cannot be ignored. Denial has taken various forms. Firstly, there is ‘active denial’: a disregard for the record as it stands, either ideologically, factually, or emotionally. Secondly, ‘passive denial’: the

minimisation or distortion of the past (or specific elements of it). This was far more prevalent within the category of the relatives of Nazi perpetrators. Though the use of outright denial was rare, it was the silences and ambiguities left within relationships that eventually led to elements of it. In cases where information was not clear it was easier for individuals to shy away from destructive truths regarding their relations’ actions in the past. Though these issues may be identified separately in theory, in practice the categories are not mutually exclusive. Elements of denial, particularly passive denial, could be seen within the narratives of individuals who were otherwise confronting the past. Denial was rarely the only contributing factor to a belief, but coexisted alongside silence and ambiguity.

The various manifestations of Holocaust lies and denial among the relatives of perpetrators are “closely tied to issues of parental respect and trust”.25 Stemming from the initial silences over the relative’s actions during the war, and repeated over time, it became “extremely difficult to admit one’s culpability”.26 In some cases this process led to outright denial by the second

25

Jonathan Petropoulos, “Holocaust Denial: A Generational Typology, in Lessons and Legacies”, in

Lessons and Legacies: Memory, Memorialization, and Denial, ed. Peter Hayes (Northwestern

University Press, Evanston, IL, 1999), p.242.

26

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generation of the parent’s actions during the war, due to the lack of information provided by the parent’s generation.

‘Active denial’ can broadly fit into two categories. It may include (for extreme cases) an approval of the ideology of the Holocaust, or denial of some factual elements of the past (a denial of the crime), or (within the acceptance of the overriding facts) a denial of the involvement or wrongdoing of a relative within a given context (a denial of the father). The latter category is the hardest to remove, and was the most common among individuals presenting elements of active denial. One individual (using the pseudonym Gerhard), cited in

Sichrovsky’s Born Guilty, actively denied any persecution of the Jewish

population during that time, and stood by his belief that the Jews in the area had “all emigrated to America and were doing all right there”.27 His father had been mayor of the town during the war, and to believe in the destruction of the local Jewish population would be to accept the responsibility of his father. His total disbelief and denial of events also permitted him to desire publicity in a bid to represent his father in a positive light. He lamented that his father has been “accused of all sorts of things” and insisted that “not one of them is true”, and welcomed the decision to “straighten it out” on the public record.28

Renate Wald, daughter of Robert Ley (Chief of the German Labour Front), represents an individual who used both denial of the crime itself and denial of her father’s crimes jointly, as an extreme means of repressing her trauma. Wald has defended her father’s actions, stating that he “was not a criminal” and that he “never inflicted any damage on a human being; instead, his work benefitted and served as a blessing to Germans and foreign races”.29 In this instance the denial of the crime itself and the denial of the father’s deeds are conflated, each supporting the imagined truth of the other. In this way she “turned her intimate experience of her father and desire to respect him as a generous and caring human being into proof positive of his inability to participate in Nazi atrocities”, using the love

27

Sichrovsky, Born Guilty, p.85.

28

Ibid., p.82.

29

von Kellenbach, The Mark of Cain, p.158.

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for her father as a tool in creating revisionist history.30 Gerald Posener described this scenario as part of an emotional bond between relatives, stating that, “by denying their fathers’ complicity in monstrous crimes, they attempt to justify the pureness of their love. Since they refuse to acknowledge any criminal taint they do not feel compelled to explain or excuse their feelings.”31 As the emotional closeness towards the perpetrator increases, the social costs of admission and acknowledgement become almost unbearable”, creating a far more difficult environment in which to definitively acknowledge the crimes of the past.32

‘Passive denial’, or the minimisation and distortion of events, is a far more flexible means of using silences and ambiguities to change the intellectual and emotional comprehension of the Holocaust. This category has been far more common than ‘active denial’, and could be observed within the testimonies of individuals who did not deny the crimes of the Holocaust and did not agree with the underlying principles. Often, the minimisations and distortions of the past grew from silences and ambiguities that existed in areas that had not been identified, investigated or accepted by the relatives of Nazi perpetrators. Minimisation and distortion of the past can either be related to beliefs about a person or about an event. Both act as a way of maintaining a form of family relationships whilst accepting knowledge of crimes of both the individual and of the nation.

Some individuals used the notion of victimhood to distort and to justify their views of the past. Many children of the post-war generation saw their parents as “victims of a lost war”, following the destruction of their ideology, nation, and, for many, their lives.33 The action of “constructing a victim family biography” became a significant factor in allowing the justification or ignoring of the crimes of the past and acted as protection to passive denial.34

30

Ibid., p.158.

31

Ibid., pp.158-9.

32

von Kellenbach, “Vanishing acts”, p.307.

33

Sichrovsky, Born Guilty, p.7.

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One individual interviewed (under the pseudonym Brigitte, interviewed jointly with her brother Rainer) expressed great bitterness at her family’s

wartime experiences, and openly confronts her brother regarding her position as a victim of the war. She openly challenged him: “What do you know about

bombing raids, about fleeing from the Russians, about our panic when Father was arrested?” when he challenged her views, clearly seeing her experience as one of a victim.35 Similarly, another interviewee (mentioned previously in this chapter, using the pseudonym Gerhard) repeatedly referred to the harsh

treatment of his father after the war. Gerhard described the town turning on his father (the former mayor) and stated that, “they kept going after him” and “kept on attacking him”.36 He compares his family’s ensuing financial situation to that of the Jews (although whether he is discussing a local or global Jewish population is left ambiguous) and claims that “they didn’t look like people who had everything taken from them. Only my father had everything taken from him”.37 The

assumption of victimhood was used by a minority as a means to negate the suffering of others and to minimise the persecution of European Jews under the Nazis, thus justifying or minimising the actions of their relatives. It is important to note that such individuals were in the minority within the sources employed for this study. A study of German generational guilt noted that, generally

speaking, “non-Jewish Germans tend to be preoccupied with their own guilt”, and rarely seek to claim a sense of their own national victimhood.38

However, some used areas of silence and ambiguity to provide factual minimisations within the events of the Holocaust. One individual (under the pseudonym Stefanie) questioned, “whether it really was so bad” for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.39 By allowing doubt and minimisation to creep into the

Gabriele Rosenthal, “Veiling and Denying the Past – The Dialogue of Holocaust Survivors and the Families of Nazi Perpetrators, History of the Family 7:2, 2002, p.231.

35

Sichrovsky, Born Guilty, p.59.

36

Ibid., p.83.

37

Ibid., p.85.

38

Rosenthal, “Veiling and Denying the Past”, p.231.

39

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proven facts of events, Stefanie accepted the events in a generalised capacity, but used ambiguity and minimisation to conceal outright denial.

Understanding the Past - Contradictions

While this example is one of a believed factual ambiguity, this form of distortion is often based around a set of beliefs concerning the perpetrator, held by the next generation. The traumatic experience of uncovering a direct

connection between a close relative and the heinous crimes of the past led many individuals to divide their views into two parts. Though this approach cannot be considered a silence or overt denial of the past, it does represent a contradiction of identity, that challenges the way the relatives of Nazi perpetrators are able to talk about and psychologically comprehend the Holocaust, their relatives’ actions, and their reaction to both these issues.

The contradiction is based in a vocalised emotional distinction and is found predominantly among individuals who had investigated their family history and expressed a level of anger and guilt regarding the actions of the relative. In many cases this situation created a clear division of understanding, and allowed the intellectual knowledge of the past to be kept separate from the relationship with the relative. Unlike the examples discussed with regards to repression, these individuals often expressed anger and emotional distance towards their relatives. This intellectual and emotional split also caused trauma for many of these individuals, with one despairing that his father “wasn’t simply one or the other, either my father or a criminal. He was both. And that’s what I hold against him”.40 The conflation itself, of parent and killer, deeply affected a number of individuals, who felt that their lives were intertwined with this contradiction of emotional and intellectual understanding. The combination of the two factors provided a long-standing trauma within the identity of many relatives of perpetrators. One individual saw the actions of his father as being an “obstacle to normal family relationships”,and a factor that caused significant mental anguish.41 The role of having a loving relationship with the perpetrator

Sichrovsky, Born Guilty, p.30.

40

Ibid., p.60.

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also meant that it was “not all that easy to condemn one’s own father as a

murderer” even once the information was known and accepted. 42 This created a psychological discrepancy in remembering the past. A relationship is largely based on socialization, rather than their historical biography. This may allow memories to be re-imaged and allowing the “ignoring of perpetrator stories [to occur] accidentally”.43

On a more general, societal level this distinction is present for many families (including but not exclusively those directly connected to the Holocaust), the Holocaust “has its place in the cognitive realm of our knowledge of history, but not in family histories”.44 While Holocaust education has become particularly successful and incredibly widespread in Germany, the silence of the family (including those a clear and accepted knowledge of the past) remains an issue. Harald Welzer has suggested that despite the great success of many aspects of Holocaust education in Germany, it does not necessarily lead to an acceptance or understanding of the existence of relatives as perpetrators. Welzer has stated that when it comes to comprehending the past in both an intellectual and emotional sense “knowledge and the assimilation of knowledge on a personal basis are two very different things”.45 Welzer’s study of 40 German families and their understanding of the Holocaust found that ambiguity and silence re-emerged for the youngest generation of Germans. The study showed a “pronounced discrepancy between the official and the private cultures of

remembrance in Germany”.46 This study was not directed specifically at relatives

Ibid., p.69.

42

Ibid., p.79.

43

Harald Welzer, “Collateral Damage of History Education: National Socialism and the Holocaust in German Family Memory”, Social Research, 75:1, Spring 2008, p.297.

44

Harald Welzer, “The Collateral Damage of Enlightenment: How Grandchildren Understand the History of National Socialist Crimes and their Grandfather's Past”, in, Victims and Perpetrators 1933–

1945: (Re)Presenting the Past in Post-Unification Culture, ed. Laurel Cohen-Pfister and Dagmar

Wienroeder-Skinner (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, 2006) p.293.

45

Harald Welzer, Grandpa Wasn’t a Nazi – The Holocaust in German Family Remembrance (International Perspectives 54, American Jewish Committee, 2005), p.1.

46

Ibid., p.2.

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of known perpetrators, and suggests that the relatives of perpetrators observed throughout more specific literature in some way represent outliers to the trend of German families more generally by speaking out and investigating their families’ past directly. The significant similarity within this study to the

experiences of many relatives of perpetrators was the action of separating the knowledge of the crime and the knowledge of the individual. But further still, Welzer found that the youngest generation involved in the study consistently separated their relatives living during National Socialism from the Nazi ‘other’, thus “bringing the ‘evil’ of Nazi rule and the ‘good’ of one’s own grandparents and great-grandparents into peaceful coexistence”.47 This not only ignored the

possibility of relatives’ involvement in the Third Reich, but also alluded to the creation of relatives as victims or resisters of Nazism. Welzer observed this “paradoxical effect” of Holocaust education, “inclining people to turn their parents and grandparents into opponents of the regime, helpers, or casual or even explicit resisters”, whilst accessing greater historical information of the period.48

Katharina von Kellenbach has argued that Germany as a nation has “acknowledged moral obligations of repair and financial commitments to pay reparations. People, cities, businesses, and institutions have issued declarations of regret and extended gestures of restitution or initiated projects of

commemoration” and notes that “these reparative and commemorative acts have been accelerating rather than declining as the distance from the mentality of perpetration has grown”.49 Although the public nature of Holocaust remembrance has increased within German society, the individual awareness of the actions of individual perpetrators (within the family) has been decreasing and still remains wrapped in silence in many cases. This situation strengthens the renewal of silence and ambiguity within the families of Nazi perpetrators. Likewise, while education on the subject has increased over the last decades and an

47

Ibid., p.17.

48

Ibid., p.26.

49

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understanding of Germany’s history has become pervasive in Germany’s

education system, an understanding of the specific actions of individuals is often lacking and the knowledge remains abstract and removed. As Welzer states, with reference to this issue, “knowledge and the use of knowledge are two different things”.50 The finding that increased and detailed education of the Holocaust and of the Nazi era more generally “paradoxically evokes a need to remove one’s relatives from this framework of knowledge”.51 Von Kellenbach, too, has concluded that, “understanding the individual, subjective, and emotional

documents of family life is critical for the success of educational campaigns about history in general and the Holocaust in particular”. 52 In this sense, formalised education alone does not lead to a completion of ‘coming to terms’ with the past, or to the acceptance of the role of one’s family members within this context.

Conclusions

The improving status of Holocaust education in Germany has not fully prevented the return of a form of silence within younger generations’

understanding of the Holocaust. The widespread public discourse and education regarding the Holocaust does not eliminate the “considerable reluctance to approach the Holocaust personally and by way of one’s own family

involvement.”53 Whilst on an intellectual level there is a high degree of

understanding and awareness, on a directly personal level younger generations of Germans have largely lost the acceptance of their relatives role in the process. Although the high level of education and memorialisation of Germany’s past has allowed for great general societal comprehension and remembrance of events it has, to some extent, neutralised the individual impact of the crimes.

50

Welzer, “Collateral Damage of History Education”, p.288.

51

Welzer, Grandpa Wasn’t a Nazi, p.16.

52

von Kellenbach, “Vanishing acts”, p.306.

53

Ibid., p.306.

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With regards to individuals who are aware of their family link to

perpetrators, the process of coming to terms with the past is more complex still. For many, the early period of silence regarding their families’ past (often

containing lies or silences upheld by the previous generation) heightened a process of trauma once the truth or, more usually, elements of it, was exposed. Though most relatives of perpetrators found a way to acknowledge some aspects of their relatives’ connection to Nazi crimes, a minority could not sufficiently comprehend such actions, and sought to propagate lies or denials pertaining to their relatives’ actions within the Holocaust. Although outright denial was rare, many individuals felt a split regarding their dual relationship, with the parent and with the action. In some cases this led to a tendency of minimising or misrepresenting the past. In situations where the crimes of a relative could not be denied or overlooked the duality of intellectual and emotional understanding often became more harmful and ultimately harder to rectify.

The importance of overcoming the silences and ambiguities of the past on both a national and individual level within Germany is not only the

comprehension of the crimes of individuals within the Third Reich, but also in providing a strong awareness of the victims. By overlooking the victims, silences and ambiguities can help to exacerbate the issue of false victimhood when memorialising the past, preventing legitimate remembrance towards those who were persecuted under the Nazi regime.

Many individuals who break the silences of previous generations and speak out against their relatives find themselves faced with trauma and guilt. The role of guilt in coming to terms with the process differs between individuals and can be seen as a possible step in the process of breaking away from silence. Though the link between vocalisation and comprehension of guilt differs between individuals, the impact of silence and denial clearly inhibit personal growth and understanding.

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Chapter 2 – Experiencing Guilt and Trauma

Many descendants, who accept the role of their relatives in the crimes of the Third Reich, experience feelings of guilt and emotional trauma. In this context ‘guilt’ refers to a sense of shame and negative emotional response created by gaining awareness of the crimes of the past. It does not refer to a criminal or immoral act carried out by the individual, but appears in response to knowledge or strong suspicion of the actions of a relative. The guilt and trauma that was ignored by those in Nazi roles was often passed down to the next generation as transgenerational guilt. For many relatives of active Nazis, guilt, shame and emotional trauma form part of the process of attempting to come to terms with these actions, and in finding emotional stabilisation with knowledge of the past.

Those individuals that do come to uncover and judge the past actions of their relatives can produce a significant trauma through the association with and personal acceptance of this guilt. This traumatic sensation is of course derived from a number of factors including the individual’s relationship with the perpetrator, the access to historical information regarding specific events, and the severity of the perpetrator’s actions. After assessing individual biographical accounts of these processes it is impossible to make solid generalisations, but some patterns of transgenerational guilt and the associated trauma can be seen. The issues of guilt and emotional trauma discussed apply neither to all Germans, nor to all individuals directly or indirectly connected to specific perpetrators. The analysis of these issues helps to provide an understanding of the strong

emotional responses (including irrationality, fear and shame) of many individuals related to perpetrators of Nazi crimes.

The situation of being confronted by Nazi atrocities in a sincerely intimate and sometimes shameful contexts prompted many individuals to question their own contemporary morality and often overlay it onto the events of the past. ‘What would I have done?’ was a question asked by frequently by the relatives of perpetrators.

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Guilt, Irrationality, and Morality

When we attempt to understand the role of transgenerational guilt on the relatives of Nazi perpetrators the irrationality of the situation is evident. These individuals did not have any personal interaction with the crimes of the Third Reich, either being born after 1945 or experiencing the period only as children. No crimes were committed by their hand, and they were not knowing bystanders to Nazi atrocities. And yet, a common reflection was a sense of being “haunted by guilt”, either as a response to a general or specific context.54 Despite the decades of distance between the individual and the crimes committed, “guilt by

association” permeates the lives of many descendants of Nazi perpetrators.55 On a rational level these descendants are, of course, not responsible for any

wrongdoing and hold no logical guilt. But on a psychological, and largely irrational, level knowledge of their close association to the perpetrators, and therefore the crimes of the Holocaust continue to affect them. This can colour the nature of their personal relationship to the past, which perpetuates negative emotional repercussions, and can damage their interpersonal relationships.

The sensation of transgenerational guilt is particularly prominent in situations where those involved in crimes of Nazism did not come to terms with events themselves or admit their own wrongdoing and guilt. A common narrative for the descendants of these individuals is the adoption of guilt that has not been dealt with by the previous generation. One descendant states: “I think it places a certain moral guilt upon a person...I mean, I wasn’t directly involved. But you think, well, after all he was your father”.56 He attempts to justify his (logical and rational) innocence, but falls back into connecting his morality to his father’s actions decades before and a desire to somehow deal with them.

This sensation of carrying the guilt of previous generations may also be placed in a societal context. One individual expressed that simply being born German was a “life sentence” in the context of Holocaust guilt, demonstrating the

54

Sichrovsky, Born Guilty, p.39.

55

von Kellenbach, The Mark of Cain, p.8.

56

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collective, as well as the individualised guilt that may be transferred to later generations.57 Sociological studies have also noted the habit of subsequent generations of Germans using the terms “we” (as opposed to “our parents” or “the Nazis”), in relation to the crimes, expressing no lexical distinction of responsibility between the past and the present, again demonstrating the widespread nature of the issue of guilt.58 The expression of transgenerational guilt both on an individual and collective level demonstrates the large-scale nature of guilt in German society, and in some cases causes significant psychological anguish.

Following the acceptance of residual transgenerational guilt, many

descendants of perpetrators expressed a view of themselves as an individual, not only affected by guilt, but also morally damaged by a connection to the

immorality of the Holocaust. The idea that “somehow there must be something evil in me” echoed throughout individual testimonies in one form or another.59 Though this belief differed extensively between relationships and experiences, it remained present with both individuals who had and had not formed close relationships with the perpetrator. Some individuals who had never had an intimate relationship with the perpetrator still felt that they were, in some form or another, tainted by guilt or immorality passed down from the previous generation. The precedence of biological (rather than purely emotional) relationships with the perpetrator often served as a specific anxiety, and suggested a fear of innate immorality due to a personally perceived genetic connection, rather than simply through a relationship or behavioural learning.

It must be stressed that the sense of transgenerational guilt has not been considered either universal or permanent within descendants of Nazi

perpetrators. Some descendants discussed a period of guilt and emotional fragility that they felt had since been overcome (or significantly lessened),

57

Sichrovsky, Born Guilty, p.41.

58

Detlef Siegfried, “Don’t Look Back in Anger: Youth, Pop Culture, and the Nazi Past”, in Coping with

the Nazi Past – West German Debates on Nazism and Generational Conflict, 1955-1975, ed. Philipp

Gassert and Alan E. Steinweis (Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford, 2006), p.146.

59

Bar-On, Legacy of Silence, p.289.

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sometimes due to the influence of therapy or a personal process of gradually coming to terms (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) with the situation over a period of time. One relative of a perpetrator highlighted this situation by stating that, “it was impossible for me to grow up and become an adult without confronting

something”. In this instance the process of “coming to terms with the family”, or

attempting to deal with the process, was necessary.60 Though some described a full rejection of their personal guilt, for the majority of individuals that accepted the roles of their relatives in the Holocaust, elements of personal guilt and shame went hand in hand with the acknowledgement of the past.

The Nature of Guilt

The nature of transgenerational guilt differs from person to person, dependant upon many factors including their upbringing, the specific crimes of their relatives, and the manner in which they came to uncover the past. Many individuals experience negative effects directly connected to their feelings of guilt due to crimes perpetrated during the Nazi period and the people they connect to it. However, a significant similarity exists between many of the individuals, regardless of family or historical background. This similarity centres on the relative of perpetrators being confronted with the questions, ‘What would I have done in that situation?’ and ‘Am I capable of the abhorrent acts of my father?’ These questions have been asked by a broad range of individuals, from relatives of convicted participants, to those with a less tangible connection. In some cases these questions were asked directly by the perpetrator parents towards the child, in an attempt to describe their own situation.61 For some identifying with these questions was purely rhetorical and functioned as a means to providing some degree of understanding to the previous generation and the circumstances they faced. For still others, however, it was a decidedly literal question that fixated the individual on the possibility of their own immorality and linked them to a form of

60

Ibid., p.153.

61

Gabriele Rosenthal in cooperation with Christine Müller, “Passing the guilt on to the grandchildren: the Sonntag family”, in The Holocaust in Three Generations – Families of Victims and Perpetrators of

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‘evil’ that they felt they could not escape. This preoccupation with placing oneself in the context of the past demonstrates a level of emotional trauma, as the

individual cannot separate their sense of identity and morality from the

recurring and unanswerable thought process of questioning their position in that context. Though the phenomenon of transgenerational guilt touches each person uniquely, there are certain characteristics that occurred relatively frequently among the relatives of Nazi perpetrators. These tendencies and reactions reveal more details regarding the nature of the complex guilt felt by these individuals and help to highlight the emotional trauma within this group.

Many individuals expressed a specific and overwhelming fear of being associated with the Nazi crimes and of having this association publicly identified. One individual stated that she “would be afraid they would place me on the same level. That people would despise me, find me detestable, because of [my

father]”.62 The fear of acquaintances discovering the family connection was a significant fear, and demonstrated the sense of apartness towards German society more generally. Although in historiography, the circle of perpetrators growing in recent decades, many children of perpetrators that were interviewed felt they were isolated in this position. The silence that touched many families and communities in the decades after the war remained a significant barrier for this generation for years to come. For this group of Germans to fear the potential discovery of their families’ past helps to demonstrate the isolation felt by many in this position. Another individual claimed that she “always thought if people found out they’d shun me, wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me, that I’d be ostracized”.63 These anxieties characterised the very real fear that many of the individuals had experienced at some point during their life (some continuously). These were deep-seated fears connected to something they felt they could neither escape nor control: their own identity. Though some individuals felt that they had come to terms with their familial past competently enough to recover from this identity trauma, many of this group reverted to a more emotional, fragile, and introspective state following interviews regarding their parents,

62

Bar-On, Legacy of Silence, p.280.

63

Sichrovsky, Born Guilty, p.99.

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accepting that they had not yet overcome the trauma as fully as they had previously believed.

Traumatic or recurring dreams, often linked to the Holocaust, were relatively common within relative testimonies, and suggest a psychological preoccupation with the events of the Third Reich. These dreams often involved specific details that directly related to the actions of the family member involved in the Third Reich. One individual recalled a recurring dream “about freight cars… Another thing I recall is seeing my father set fire to this village. That’s an image that haunts me anyway: a village surrounded, everyone in the village being killed.64 This dream directly echoed the few details he knew regarding his father’s actions, trial and subsequent imprisonment (due to setting fire to a Ukrainian village). Another individual described a recurring dream, linking him to a sensation of fear and victimhood: “Always the same dream… They tear me from my bed, drag me through the room, down the stairs, and push me into a car. They’re men/ wearing striped uniforms…There are showerheads on the wall, and through the openings something steams out with a soft hiss, like air from a defective bicycle tire”.65

While I do not wish to analyse the dreams specifically as a method of historical understanding, their presence alone exhibits a sign of emotional trauma connected to the knowledge and psychological comprehension of the relative’s actions. Dan Bar-On has described this process, stating that in psychoanalysis “metaphors, fantasies or stories [become] symbolic in their meaning”, illustrating the existence of trauma and anxiety that an individual has kept out of external dialogue.66 The presence of recurring connected dreams demonstrates the internal process of trauma for these individuals.

In ‘Veiling and Denying the Past’ Gabriele Rosenthal noted the similarities between experiences of psychological trauma by descendants of both

perpetrators and survivors. Rosenthal described, “a fear of being murdered, 64

Bar-On, Legacy of Silence, p.238.

65

Sichrovsky, Born Guilty, pp.39-40.

66

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which in some cases intensifies into a genuine fear of extermination,” and, (for the relatives of perpetrators only) an “unconscious fantasy of being murdered by their own parents”.67 The “unconscious fantasy” was experienced as a conscious fear by one individual: Helmuth (a pseudonym) described a vivid and

longstanding childhood fear of being poisoned by his mother.68 Following his father’s suicide (following his involvement in academic research for the Nazi’s euthanasia program) Helmuth refused to eat his mother’s cooking for a number of months, fearing that her grief and guilt would lead her to poison the whole family. Despite the similarities regarding issues of anxiety for both descendants of perpetrators and descendants of victims, many descendants of perpetrators find their anxiety and fears exacerbated or altered by an underlying sense of guilt. Despite great anxiety regarding his parents actions, Helmuth also stated his belief that his own guilt was “not less than that of my father”, demonstrating a more complex relationship between his fears and his self-identified guilt.69 His negative feelings and fear were not constrained to his parents’ actions and

ideology, but also manifested within himself. By conflating the fears and anxieties of the crimes of the Holocaust to both his parents and his own identity, Helmuth represents the complex and traumatic relationship between his anxieties, fears of his parents and shame at his own identity.

Throughout these accounts it is clear that the link to the perpetrator’s generation elicited emotional trauma, which created irrational, disordered thought, traumatic dreams, and distinctly connected fears. Yet these examples only show one side of the experience. Despite the damaging and traumatic experiences these individuals also maintain a loving and intimate relationship with the perpetrator generation (if not the perpetrator himself). The nature of this contradicting and conflicted relationship itself also developed a sense of trauma for many individuals.

67

Rosenthal, “Veiling and Denying the Past”, p.237.

68

Bar-On, Legacy of Silence, p.84.

69

Ibid., p.77.

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Conflicting Feelings – Maintaining Relationships with

Possible Perpetrators

When elements of trauma became known, many relatives of perpetrators experienced a contradiction within their relationships. The act of attempting to place a close relative in both the role of a loved one and, simultaneously, in the role of a perpetrator created and exacerbated conflicted relationships and was a significant similarity in many individual testimonies. Through the process of attempting to come to terms with the participation of their relatives in the Third Reich, many descendants found themselves questioning their relationships with the previous generation generally, and with their parents specifically. Many individuals attempted to balance a loving, emotionally close relationship with the knowledge or assumptions of past crimes and ideologies. For some this led to an increased sensation of guilt driven by their relationships with a perpetrator and the subsequent increased connection between their identity and the crimes of the Holocaust. The knowledge of direct or indirect involvement in the Holocaust, and an association with Nazi ideology, meant that many descendants found a contradiction within their feelings, and struggled to find the balance between a personal (emotional) and historical (intellectual) understanding of the situation. While something as complex as the family relationship, particularly the

connection between a parent and child, cannot be fully attributed to any one factor or context, there was a prevalence of ‘abnormal’ and discordant family relationships between those involved in the Third Reich and their descendants. This can be linked to the role of transgenerational guilt and connected with the actions of a relation, as many individuals stated described a fracture or negative shift within their parental relations following the access pertaining to knowledge of the Holocaust.

The issue of not being able to separate their direct emotional relationship (e.g. that of a father and son) and the discovery of actions under the Third Reich featured as a prominent and disorienting sensation, leaving many to question their own guilt upon discovering the nature of the past. One descendant stated that “[his father] wasn’t simply one or the other, either my father or a criminal. He was both. And that’s what I hold against him”.70 In this sense the relationship

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