18 - Confrontations with the Holocaust in the Era of the Cold War: German and American Perspectives

Summary

Understanding German and American confrontations with the Holocaust from 1968 to 1990 demands more than chronicling the significant historical markers - names, places, dates, and events. In the highly charged political climate of these years, remembering the Holocaust became intertwined not only with the interests of the two German states vying for legitimacy, but also with the emotions of succeeding generations who were differently invested in understanding the horrors of the Nazi regime.

The period 1968-90 began little more than twenty years after the Holocaust and covered at least three generations. The first generation participated in the war - as victims, perpetrators, bystanders, soldiers - the second remembered and challenged silence and ignorance, and the third, the children and young adults of today, are the first to forget. Each of these generations struggled to interpret the events of the Holocaust according to its own collective and individual memory, spawning a process known in Germany as Vergangenheitsbewältigung or “mastering the past.” The 1990s saw the rise of revisionists and deniers aswell as the discovery of fresh archival sources that produced revelations about guilt and complicity. More concretely, in unified Germany, the Jewish community continued to grow (to approximately 88,000 by 2000), swelled by immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Combined with continuing media attention on Jewish life and the Holocaust, this larger Jewish presence heightened the visibility of Jewish issues.