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9 - Germany and the Holocaust

from Part II - Geography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2025

By
Harold Marcuse
Edited by
Laura Jockusch  and
Devin O. Pendas
Laura Jockusch
Affiliation:
Brandeis University, Massachusetts
Devin O. Pendas
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Summary

This chapter looks at the complex and contested legacy of the Holocaust within Germany itself. It considers both the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), and the way Holocaust memory in the two states interacted. It traces the politics of the past from early Allied efforts at denazification and reeducation, through the amnesty and rehabilitation of former Nazis into the memory wars of the 1980s and 1990s. It concludes with an analysis of the ways in which the Holocaust continues to shape German political culture into the twenty-first century, as with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s controversial decision to support large-scale migration of Syrian refuges in the context of that country’s brutal civil war.

Keywords

HolocaustMemoryMemorialsGermany (West)Germany (East)DenazificationCold War

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Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Holocaust , pp. 215 - 233
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

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