Guilt about the Past Read Free

their own, bring about their own guilt when, in response to attendant accusations, they do not respond by dissociating themselves from those who are guilty. According to this principle it was possible for Germans, if not already guilty as perpetrators and participants prior to 1945, to be implicated in guilt thereafter for not having separated themselves from the perpetrators and participants though renunciation. That the Germans did not do so, or only did so haphazardly and half-heartedly and not as they were in a position to have done, is true without a doubt. They didn’t even do it when they, as the German protestant churches did, recognised collective guilt after the war; whilst acknowledging everyone’s guilt and seeking forgiveness for all, they neglected to renounce individual perpetrators and participants.
    The webs of guilt have their own tragic nature, in the sense that dissociation, repudiation, and judgment could not be fully successful after 1945. For one, the numbers were huge; those who were involved in one way or another were just too many. And then there is the grim alternative between repudiation by ‘a night of long knives’ that would cut down both the guilty and innocent, and repudiation by the state governed by the rule of law through court rulings, case by case, that can only be insufficient in the face of organised crimes against humanity. There is no third choice. Even if the Germans had wanted to renounce the perpetrators and participants decisively and wholeheartedly, instead of haphazardly and half-heartedly, they would not have been spared the guilt: because renunciation would not have included all those who were guilty or because innocent people would have been implicated as well.
    And the children? It is self-evident that the perpetrators, inciters, and accessories to the crimes are guilty. We understand also that those who did not offer any resistance or opposition in spite of being in a position to do so are guilty. We even understand that guilt also reaches those who do not actively separate themselves from the perpetrators and participants through dissociation, repudiation, or judgment. Finally, we understand that renunciation, if it had happened in a radical fashion, would still have produced guilt again and again. Still, is it necessary for children to find themselves entangled in this web of guilt as well?
    After the considerations up to this point the answer appears obvious: if members of a community of solidarity bring guilt upon themselves by not renouncing those guilty members of their community, and if a nation of people is such a community of solidarity, then yes, children too become entwined in the guilt of non-renunciation. This guilt sits in wait for them until they become able to recognise the guilt of others, dissociate or not dissociate themselves from it, and therewith become capable of acquiring their own guilt. But I think that the conclusion is more complicated than that.
    It has been observed that children whose parents experience guilt solely on the basis of not dissociating themselves after 1945, who were neither perpetrators nor involved in some other way, are usually free from feelings of guilt. The relationship with guilt that causes the norm of dissociating oneself does not appear to reach far enough. However, it is not the case that guilt has an effect only in horizontal relationships, i.e. among contemporaries, and not in vertical ones, i.e. between parents and children, since the children of perpetrators, inciters, and accessories to the crimes and, to a lesser extent, children of parents who, despite being able to, failed to offer any resistance or opposition, often experience feelings of guilt. Moreover, they experience the challenge of confronting their parents about their guilt and either coming to terms with it or withdrawing. Perhaps it could be said that the norm of self-dissociation extends to one further level of relationship only, horizontal or