Language:
English
Year of publication:
2003
Titel der Quelle:
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
17,2 (2003) 305-329
Keywords:
Ebner, Alfred
;
War crime trials
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
Abstract:
In the early 1970s, Kellenbach discovered that her uncle, Alfred Ebner, had been an SS officer who was tried in West Germany for the murder of 20,000 Jews in Pinsk in 1942. Ebner's participation in the genocide was shrouded in silence in Kellenbach's family. In the context of the study of family history, and based on her personal investigation and story, reflects on the mechanisms by which postwar West German society tried to suppress consciousness of the genocide of the Jews, both on the family level and in the judiciary. The courts which tried Nazi criminals took into account every minor ailment of the defendants. Both the courts and society tended to regard the perpetrators as victims and to neglect the suffering of the genuine victims, or to accept claims of "resistance" made by perpetrators. In the postwar West German family, suppression of Holocaust memory served to restore intergenerational relations.
Note:
On Alfred Ebner, the author's uncle, who was accused of killing 20,000 Jews.
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