On the past – Susanne Beyer in Der Spiegel:

‘Eva Neidlinger, 34, is telling her story in a café in Babelsberg, the story of her and her great-grandfather. She reaches into her purse and unfolds a silk kerchief in which she has wrapped the pictures that her great-grandfather took so many decades ago. She pushes her teacup to the side and spreads the photos out on the table. Women in headscarves can be seen along with men in traditional clothing – and her great-grandfather in uniform. The uniform of the Wehrmacht, the military of Nazi Germany.’

(…)

‘The Wehrmacht occupied the territory of Ukraine and turned the country into one of the main theaters of fighting during World War II, with over 8 million deaths including an estimated 5 million civilians. With the knowledge of the Wehrmacht, and sometimes even with its help, German Sonderkommandos rounded up Jews and shot them, ultimately slaughtering around 1.5 million Jews on Ukrainian soil in this "Holocaust of Bullets.” Soldiers also took food from the starving population. Among the aims of the German war of annihilation was securing both the country’s grain supplies and the beautiful Crimean Peninsula.

Neidlinger’s ancestor was one of 17 million Wehrmacht soldiers. Most of them did not join voluntarily, but that changes nothing about the atrocities they committed. For men of military age living in Germany during World War II, it was normal to serve in the Wehrmacht. It was also part of normal life during the Nazi period to take part in crimes – or at least accept them by looking the other way.
The evidence is widely known: In 1945, ever fifth German adult was a member of the NSDAP, even though the party didn’t accept everybody and ceased admitting new members for many years. Concentration camps like Buchenwald, Dachau and Neuengamme were easily visible and located near towns and villages. In the territory of the German Reich, there were more than 20 concentration camps and over 1,000 satellite camps. In excess of 13 million people were pressed into service as forced laborers in factories, on construction sites, in small companies, on farms or in households and were thus part of everyday life in Germany. The possessions of deported Jews were expropriated and publicly auctioned off – with much of this looted property still being bequeathed to younger generations today.’

(…)

‘In 2002, the study "Grandpa Wasn’t a Nazi” was published, compiled by a team led by the social psychologist Harald Welzer. The study documents how in the stories that families told of their ancestors, anti-Semites were frequently transformed into resistance fighters.’

(…)

‘It seems as though there is an unspoken agreement that dealing with the Nazi period can be outsourced to the memorial sites and museums and that families themselves are absolved from doing so in all but the most drastic cases.’

(…)

‘A few weeks ago, Neidlinger attended a research seminar, where she learned how to work in archives and to approach historical documents. Historian Johannes Spohr, 42, has been giving such seminars since 2011 and says interest as recently been growing. A new generation is now joining in, Spohr says. In the past, his seminars were mainly attended by the grandchildren of the World War II generation, but now, great-grandchildren like Neidlinger are also enrolling.’

(…)

‘And yet there are a number of indications which, when taken together, seem to show that things are changing in Germany. The Working Group for Intergenerational Consequences of the Holocaust, an association for the descendants of both perpetrators and victims, has doubled in size, to 160 members, since the pandemic. That is, to be sure, not a huge number of members in absolute terms, but the trend is interesting. The association has been offering online events since the pandemic and has thus become better known among younger people. And the younger members, the association says, have mostly joined for political reasons – out of concern for Germany’s shift to the right.’

(…)

‘Stephan Lebert and the psychologist Louis Lewitan mention the phenomenon in their book – "Der blinde Fleck” or "The Blind Spot” – which was published in April. "The armor of silence” about the culpability of ancestors begins to break down once those ancestors are no longer alive, the publisher’s announcement notes: "Because they no longer have to fear confrontation with their grandparents or parents, more and more people have begun researching their family history and examining how it has affected their own lives.”’

(…)

‘Eva Niedlinger has devised an artistic expression to portray this mixture of curiosity and reticence that is so typical of Germans 80 years after the end of the war and National Socialism. She recently took part in the "Enkel:Innen” art project organized by the Schloss Wiepersdorf Cultural Foundation, where descendants of Holocaust survivors worked together with descendants of perpetrators on creating art works. Neidlinger came up with the idea of wrapping the human sculptures in the castle park.
What is wrapped can become visible. But someone must decide to unwrap them.’

Read the article here.

The past can be outsourced to museums and memorial sites. Both decent and convenient.

Now that most of the perpetrators are dead, one can confront the past that is seemingly less painful, less alive, or maybe one should say, alive in a different manner.

And some intergenerational artwork.

Forgiveness is for the descendants.