Those Who Forget
My Family's Story in Nazi Europe – A Memoir, A History, A Warning
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“[Makes] the very convincing case that, until and unless there is a full accounting for what happened with Donald Trump, 2020 is not over and never will be.” —The New Yorker
“Riveting…we can never be reminded too often to never forget.” —The Wall Street Journal
Journalist Géraldine Schwarz’s astonishing memoir of her German and French grandparents’ lives during World War II “also serves as a perceptive look at the current rise of far-right nationalism throughout Europe and the US” (Publishers Weekly).
During World War II, Géraldine Schwarz’s German grandparents were neither heroes nor villains; they were merely Mitlaüfer—those who followed the current. Once the war ended, they wanted to bury the past under the wreckage of the Third Reich.
Decades later, while delving through filing cabinets in the basement of their apartment building in Mannheim, Schwarz discovers that in 1938, her paternal grandfather Karl took advantage of Nazi policies to buy a business from a Jewish family for a low price. She finds letters from the only survivor of this family (all the others perished in Auschwitz), demanding reparations. But Karl Schwarz refused to acknowledge his responsibility. Géraldine starts to question the past: How guilty were her grandparents? What makes us complicit? On her mother’s side, she investigates the role of her French grandfather, a policeman in Vichy.
Weaving together the threads of three generations of her family story with Europe’s process of post-war reckoning, Schwarz explores how millions were seduced by ideology, overcome by a fog of denial after the war, and, in Germany at least, eventually managed to transform collective guilt into democratic responsibility. She asks: How can nations learn from history? And she observes that countries that avoid confronting the past are especially vulnerable to extremism. Searing and unforgettable, Those Who Forget “deserves to be read and discussed widely...this is Schwarz’s invaluable warning” (The Washington Post Book Review).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this astute debut, German-French journalist Schwarz, granddaughter of a Nazi Party member, examines how the denials and excuses of people like her German grandparents helped create the current revival of alt-right nationalism. While digging through family file cabinets in Manheim, Germany, in the early 2000s, Schwarz discovers a document showing that her paternal grandfather purchased a Jewish family's oil company in 1938 for nearly nothing. She digs deeper into her family history and discovers that her grandparents attempted to justify their wartime activity as Mitl ufer "people who followed the current" until the 1960s when the televised trial of former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann recalled mass murders and crimes against humanity, which most people had attempted to forget. As Schwarz explains, within decades, however, people like her grandparents attempted to rewrite or forgive past actions, which, in turn, allowed hatred to fester: "The most dangerous monster is not a megalomaniacal and violent leader, but us, the people who make him possible, who give him the power to lead." This timely memoir also serves as a perceptive look at the current rise of far-right nationalism throughout Europe and the U.S.
Customer Reviews
Required Reading
Written by a young French-German journalist, Those Who Forget, is a literate, well-researched reaction to the increased willingness of large segments of the world’s population to deny, to forget, to evade responsibility of addressing the consequences of history… from the holocaust to slavery.
“It didn’t happen on my watch,” “I am not responsible for the past,” are arguments that deny the flow of history and the weight of morality.
Keep smilin’
Highly Important and Riveting
This is one of the most important books of this or an year. If you care about our democracy vans the importance of not letting history repeat itself, if you’re worried about the rise of extremist groups and leadership that encourages them, if you care about your children’s future..... read this important work. It’s riveting and eye opening.