Guest Blog Entry: Germany After the Holocaust and What We Can Learn about Healing the Memory of Evil
Germany After the Holocaust and What We Can Learn About Healing the Memory of Evil
by Frank Miller-Small
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
- James Baldwin, As Much Truth as One Can Bear
On a plane back from a family celebration in Michigan last year, my wife handed me Deborah Lipstadt’s review about Susan Neiman’s recent book, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil. The book explores Germany’s reckoning with the Holocaust and draws conclusions that might help our country address its own dark racial past. Interested in this subject, I soon read the book and afterward felt compelled to write this article, so I could spread awareness of this vital, little-known history and the wisdom derived from its study. I’ll begin with a brief description of how Germany dealt with its crime, followed by the connections and possible lessons for America, and close with the importance for those connected to our Center.
For many years after the war, Germans viewed themselves as victims, focusing on their own misery and couldn’t face the horrific wrongdoing they had committed. This denial of responsibility underlay the begrudging attitude toward the “compensation” agreement made with Israel in the early 1950’s. Done largely to gain acceptance in the world community, the agreement also contained an unwritten assurance that Germans could remain silent about the Shoah and continue employing infamous Nazis in prestigious positions.
This silence and immoral arrangement persisted until the student protest movement of the 1960’s, when students confronted parents and teachers about their roles in the corrupt and barbaric regime. Although this challenge subsided after the 60’s’ rebellion, it resurfaced at the 50th anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power in the early 1980’s. Throughout Germany books, speeches, exhibits, plays, movies and performances of Nazi-prohibited music proliferated. The willingness to examine and work through their savage history, though often meeting strong headwinds, increased through the 1990’s. During this period, Germans held public commemorations of Nazi violence, viewed a popular Wehrmacht exhibit which confirmed the criminality of the German army, and erected many commemorative monuments which honored victims, accused perpetrators, and lauded Upstanders.
These monuments made an invaluable contribution to reconciliation, charging it with an emotional resonance. Some highlighted the many heroes who risked their lives to oppose Nazism and help victims. Others shed light on both perpetrators and victims, like at concentration camps, the House of the Wannsee Conference, and the Gestapo torture chambers. Perhaps most notably, Germany built an enormous Holocaust Memorial on one of the most prized public spaces in Berlin to symbolize the nation’s decision to repent. It became Germany’s monument of shame to its inglorious past.
Concurrent with this Memorial’s construction was the start of a program that would eventually place sixty-one thousand stumbling stones placed in front of buildings throughout Germany where Jews had formerly lived, accompanied by informational plaques showing the names, birth dates, and deportation dates for each person. Intended to disturb, these stones have become a constant reminder to Germans of the human beings who were taken away and brutally murdered with little or no resistance from neighbors. Significantly, mostly children and grandchildren of perpetrators, not victims, initiated the placing of individual plaques.
Today, almost all Germans regret their Nazi past, though the work of atonement remains unfinished. According to the author, Germany’s efforts offered it a more “open, free… joyful” country and increased its trust and respect in the world community.
Neiman keeps the German progress in post-war healing in our minds as she explains the similarities and contrasts with our own country’s Southern response to the aftermath of the Civil War and slavery. The defeated Southerners, mirroring the Germans, suffered tremendous casualties, destruction, poverty and hunger. They also made offered rationalizations about their inability to secure victory and defend their honor. However, in the wake of the war, the behavior of the American South offers a marked contrast with Germany’s actions after WWII. Not only do confederate monuments and other forms of Confederacy adoration run rampant in Southern culture, but only one large monument commemorates the victims of racial terror in the US: the Memorial for Peace and Justice (aka the National Lynching Memorial). Initiated by African-American Bryan Stevenson, it seeks to remember the victims and inform the public about the factors that led to the brutal extra-legal public murders.
Stevenson stands out as one of the only prominent Americans who advocates for studying German atonement as a model for Americans wrestling with our own past racial atrocities. Stevenson contends that we need to employ two critical elements learned from the Germans. First, we need leadership to admit a need to recognize our iniquitous past and the racist values we previously embraced. We then need to publicly reject and replace those values with ethical ones, lest we be forever contaminated with evil. Secondly, we need to acknowledge a national shame which goes beyond regret or remorse. Without shame, Stevenson maintains, people won’t correct injustice. To overcome shame we must do something to show others that we are not stuck in the mind-set of past depravity.
Given Germany’s arduous journey, Stevenson’s recommendations won’t be easily realized. But why, one might ask, is reconciliation so difficult? Neiman responds that shame and guilt are painful emotions that humans naturally try to avoid. As the Germans learned through their various intense and widespread programs of education, only a massive effort can break through the resistance, and this massive effort needs to be fueled by an increasing number of citizens willing to atone for the evil of their country in order to create a better society.
Neiman’s account of Germany’s healing and its possible relevance for America can assist visitors to HMTC in their efforts to comprehend the ramifications of the Shoah and apply its lessons to current life. If we can grasp the faltering process of how and why Germany failed and succeeded, it can serve as a road map for those wishing to ameliorate our own country’s soiled heritage. Germany reaped huge benefits from its reconciliation efforts and America could do so too. The knowledge that Germany, unique in the world, accomplished this herculean task, though imperfect and on-going, can offer us hope and inspiration that our impact could help effect an important achievement.
Confronting the American need for repentance could have immediate and practical value for HMTC. Through a variety of modalities, we could contribute to educating our visitors. Exhibits showcasing Germany’s response to the Shoah, including their memorials, could spark questions about our country’s handling of related issues. Special programs incorporating films and presentations could also enlighten visitors about past and present racial oppression. Moreover, public forums, where people with a variety of views engage in civil debate and discussion about relevant issues, could challenge our participants to sharpen their opinions, perhaps leading to constructive action. For our school groups, we can provide a safe space for students to share their thoughts and feelings about racial conflict.
The murder of George Floyd and the recent protest movements have thrust the legacy of racial injustice onto center of the national stage. Neiman’s timely book can equip us with the insights and perspectives we can harness to shape our actions and responsibly take part in the resolution of this issue.
In this way, at this critical juncture for race relations, we can join the struggle to create “a more perfect Union” – healthier, more tolerant, and more just.
Frank Miller-Small is a volunteer and docent at HMTC.