A German friend of mine works in a museum of Nazi crimes. My friend, who looks like a butterfly collector, is the gentlest of souls. I once asked him, “Why devote your life to this gruesome topic?” He said, “I have to. My grandfather was a Nazi. My great-aunt was a senior Nazi. This is my subject.”
Many visitors to the museum and its archive, he continued, were Germans like him. They had always sensed that grandpa had done bad things, but had never dared ask. Their parents had told them nothing. Finally these people come to my friend’s archive, give the grandfather’s name, and ask for information about his war record. My friend regularly breaks horrible news to descendants. “But usually they sort of know already,” he told me.
He is describing the last phase of Europe’s coming to terms with the second world war. First Jewish victims spoke, usually hesitantly, fearful of drawing attention to themselves again. Then people accused their own countries. Only recently have large numbers of Europeans begun accusing their own families. And as the French author Alexandre Jardin is now discovering, this is a hard thing to do. That’s why it’s the last phase.