Zwischen rituellem Gedenken und Wirklichkeitsverleugnung. Die Shoah in der Erinnerung von Tätern, Opfern und Nachfolgegenerationen

This article deals with the question of why, after the Allies liberated the (former) National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft (People’s Community) in 1945, the Federal Republic failed to become a community of responsibility and how the collective denial of reality in Germany, which continues today, can be explained. Moreover, a key issue for me is the question of the biographical after-effects of the Holocaust on the children and grandchildren (“emotional legacies”) of the birth cohorts shaped by German fascism. I present forms of biographical remembrance work that include both the descendants of the victims and of the perpetrators as a possible option for a future culture of remembrance.