The silence surrounding the Holocaust continues to prevent healing – whether of the victims, Nazis, or the generations that followed them. The telling of the stories surrounding the Holocaust, all the stories – is essential if we are to understand what happened, recognize the part of human nature that allows such atrocities to occur, and realize the hope that we can prevent it from happening again.

Seeking to shed light on the collective silence surrounding the Holocaust in Germany, the authors provide compelling accounts, histories, and experiences of a multitude of Germans still grappling with the consequences of the Holocaust. Denial in the older generations, as well as the anger and confusion in the younger, come vividly to the surface in these evocative stories of coping and healing. Told from the vantage point of both the therapists and the clients attempting to cope with this shared pain, these are stories of all those facing the legacy of genocide – from the daughter of a high ranking Nazi official to the children of Jewish \émigr\és, from those raised in the Hitler Youth Movement to those born well after the war.

Barbara Heimannsberg & Christoph J. Schmidt have private psychotherapy practices in Frankfurt, Germany. Gordon Wheeler and the late Cynthia Harris have each devoted a lifetime to the study of German language and culture with an emphasis on the field of post-Holocaust studies.