Familiengeheimnisse. Gefühlserbschaften der NS-Zeit

With the rise of the AfD, the strengthening of anti-Semitism and the broad genesis of theories of inequality, there is increasing discussion about the role played by the intergenerational psychological legacy of National Socialism. The Nazi ideology, its thought and emotional patterns, did not simply disappear: they were repressed and the unprocessed guilt was unconsciously passed on to descendants. These emotional legacies remain powerful. At the same time, but not in a comparable way, the unresolved suffering of the persecuted lives on in subsequent generations. Emotional legacies can develop disastrously if they remain unrecognised.

Peter Pogany-Wnendt is a psychotherapist in private practice in Cologne, Alexandra Senfft is an author and freelance journalist. Both are chairwomen of the Working Group for Intergenerational Consequences of the Holocaust, formerly PAKH e.V. Based on their personal stories as the granddaughter of a perpetrator and as a descendant of Jewish Holocaust survivors, they ask: How does the Nazi era still shape us today?