The German village of Lembeck cherishes its history, which you might expect in a place that recently celebrated its first one thousand years. Tourists are drawn to a moated castle that originated in the twelfth century. Residents are proud of a Catholic church that’s only about a century younger than that. But their collective memories skipped right past Lembeck’s darkest chapter soon after it ended, when villagers persecuted their Jewish neighbors during the Nazi era, then watched as the Jews were hauled away to be murdered.

 

Elisabeth Schulte-Huxel, who grew up there in the 1960s and early ’70s, had a simple answer when I asked what she learned about the Holocaust as a youngster. “Nicht viel,” she said. Not much. The subject was discussed only briefly during her later years in school.

 

Elisabeth’s interest was piqued in the early 1980s when she started to realize villagers were hiding something important. She soon joined forces with a small group of her peers from the area—now incorporated into the town of Dorsten—who shared her annoying habit of asking rude questions about the Nazi period. Their elders’ discomfort only deepened their resolve. Dirk Hartwich was one of those pesky activists, having learned in his twenties that his father’s family included many active Nazi supporters. Now that he was a member of the city council, he had a public platform to ask whether Jews had ever lived there and what became of the town’s leading Nazis. His determination stiffened when his inquiries were ruled out of order.

 

Thus began Germany’s slow reckoning about a time it had worked so hard to erase, as what was happening in this small western corner of the country was being repeated elsewhere by the children and grandchildren of Nazi perpetrators and bystanders. They could have easily excused themselves from responsibility for crimes committed before they were born. Instead, they got busy documenting painful, hidden truths. They felt ashamed at what they learned, channeling their emotions into a powerful remembrance movement that came to fruition four decades after the war. They were determined to educate others about a Jewish presence in Germany that had existed for more than a millennium and to do what they could to prevent another genocide. This process of “working through the past” became known by the unwieldy name of Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung.

 

Around the time these young Germans were taking responsibility for atrocities their country committed during the Nazi era, I was belatedly expressing interest in my family’s roots there. This book, in a sense, is what happened when our paths crossed.

 

I grew up in America only vaguely familiar with my heritage. I didn’t know that my father’s family had lived in the area around Lembeck and Dorsten for at least two centuries before most of them were killed. I didn’t know that my mother’s family had lived in Bavaria for a similar amount of time until they fled. And I hardly knew anything about the circumstances surrounding my parents’ flight to freedom. My parents weren’t interested in talking about what they had gone through until I was old enough and curious enough to ask. Even then, they were reluctant witnesses. They weren’t enthusiastic about reliving the trauma they endured at an early age, nor subjecting my brother and me to it.

 

Whatever success I’ve had in reconstructing where my relatives lived for centuries—until escape was the only means of survival—is because I was helped by contemporary Germans, most of them born after the Hitler regime. The bonds are tight between Germans at the forefront of this remembrance movement and descendants of Holocaust survivors, at least those of us who are open to it. I’m appreciative of the Germans I’ve met who’ve dedicated much of their lives to this cause. Some of them made it their career.

 

But I’m also keenly aware of the challenges when people commemorate a religious and cultural heritage that they were never part of. Their work can betray inauthenticity. There’s also a performative aspect to the memory movement. Jews can feel relegated to the role of perpetual victims, assigned to vouch that a newly redeemed Germany bears no relation to a nation that once embraced Nazism.

 

More importantly, Germany has not fully eradicated its long-standing anti-Semitism, despite an earnest reckoning with the past. No nation has done so, though Germany might have been different. Goodwill built up over four decades buckled against the onslaught of anti-Semitism soon after Israel’s destructive invasion of Gaza followed Hamas’ murders and hostage-taking in October 2023. This wave of hate threatens the small but burgeoning Jewish community in Germany and shocks those who devoted much of their adult lives to extolling tolerance and diversity.

 

Still, I’ve been touched by the personal commitment that postwar, non-Jewish Germans have made to try to overcome their country’s long-standing denial and apathy about the Holocaust. No, they aren’t “righteous gentiles,” akin to those who protected Jews from Nazi barbarians. They didn’t save lives and they didn’t end racial and religious hatred. But they did save memories, uncovering artifacts and traces of a Jewish past, restoring synagogues and cemeteries, building memorials and museums, and educating members of subsequent generations who approached with open minds. These achievements are worth honoring, too. They’ve made history by helping those who were willing to remember history more accurately. Their actions in the “culture of remembrance,” or Erinnerungskultur, ought to be preserved in any telling of the Holocaust and what came after. I’ve become as interested in their personal journeys as much as those of my relatives.

 

The pages that follow largely focus on a nation’s remembrance culture, the stories told about a country’s history that help shape what its citizens stand for today. In this way, “working through the past” is also rooted in the present. A psychological theory suggests that groups of people tend to cite history in a way that serves their current interests. The primary goal isn’t accuracy, it’s burnishing the group’s image. Historical figures and events that don’t fit the prevailing viewpoint get discounted. That’s how the U.S. ended up with an executive order from the White House in 2025 decrying cultural institutions that promote “national shame” and “divisive narratives.” It directed federal institutions to “remove improper ideology” and become “solemn and uplifting public monuments.”

 

The problem is, if you believe as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” you can’t pretend that the arc is actually a straight line.

 

The German remembrance movement sought to bend the country toward historical justice. Activists shattered the relative silence about the Holocaust (also referred to as the Shoah, the Hebrew word for catastrophe), challenged the nation’s collective memory, and achieved progress despite imperfect results. Most impressive is that this initiative began as a loose coalition of local efforts. Average citizens—not trained historians or elected officials, by and large—felt personally responsible for finding out what had happened in their hometowns and for seeking reconciliation with Jewish descendants, like me.

 

This book examines the movement through a wide lens, from its origins to its impact four decades later. But it provides personal stories, too. I write about my family’s long history in Germany, how my relatives embraced their native land despite having to contend with centuries of restrictions on Jews, and how the lucky ones survived the Nazi era only by fleeing or hiding when they had the chance. I took too long to appreciate the relevance of their lives, wasting opportunities to capture more firsthand memories. I then agonized over whether I had the right to embrace my German roots, given my family’s fate. I finally did so with my father’s encouragement, as well as friendships I formed with German contemporaries. I seek to tell their stories, too, to understand what compelled them to respond to heinous acts they had nothing to do with. We’ll meet people (most of them not Jewish), who live where my family once did and restored synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, created Jewish museums, and sponsored memorials that now dot the land.

 

Are there lessons for an America still wrestling with the legacy of crimes committed during this country’s racist past? I think so. “What brought change and had made the German approach to commemoration into one that is seen by many as a model to be emulated,” wrote historian Jenny Wüstenberg, “was not a sudden epiphany, but the tireless work of activists—Holocaust survivors, initiatives for reconciliation, and citizens’ groups. This, indeed, is a lesson for us all.”

 

But this book isn’t a lesson plan for America. Focusing mainly on Germany’s memorials neglects the hard work it took to get there, as well as its imperfections and the difficulty of changing hearts and minds.

 

Besides, there’s no need to compare tragedies, to weigh the ravages of the Holocaust with the ravages of slavery and the century-plus of discrimination, segregation, and racism against African Americans that came after. For one thing, Jews weren’t brought to Germany in chains. Though they endured centuries of discrimination regarding where they could live, work, or even be buried, Jews were in many ways more integrated into German society in the years just before Hitler’s ascendance than they had ever been. And largely gone soon afterward.

 

Not only is this not a contest to see which group suffered most, I am also not an impartial umpire and don’t pretend to be one. I come to this project unable to shake my background as a Jewish person living in America. African Americans, Native Americans, and others with their own history of persecution will look at Germany’s memory movement and come away with their own perspectives.

 

The Nazis drew inspiration from slavery and America’s eugenics movement (which sought to breed the perfect human race) to pursue their own program of racial hatred. But the Germans who followed in their wake years later, determined to take collective responsibility for the evils of the Hitler regime, didn’t work from another country’s blueprint to figure out how to make amends. They found their own way. My life is enriched by friendships that overcome the hate that motivated prior generations of their ancestors to terrorize mine.