Third-generation German Perceptions of the Holocaust

This study explores the perspectives of nine third-generation Germans (educated across five federal states of Germany: Hamburg, Brandenburg, Berlin, Lower Saxony and North-Rhine Westphalia) surrounding their experience learning about the different victims of the Holocaust in their secondary schooling. As the research progressed, it became evident the majority of interviewees attributed their emotional connection to the victims of the Holocaust to their diverse secondary school experiences. It was apparent all interviewees felt a personal responsibility to remember the victims of the Holocaust. The state history curriculums grounded in them an understanding of their own individual responsibilities in ensuring such events of the Nazi period never happen again. Four interviewees wished to make connections between the 1930s and 1940s in Germany and contemporary right-wing political movements, expressing concern about calls by parties such as the Alternative for Deutschland (AFD) to reduce Holocaust memorialisation, including from within compulsory school curriculums. Germany’s culture of Holocaust memorialisation heightened four of my interviewee’s sensibilities about identifying with aspects of their German heritage. Unlike the case for some second-generation Germans, most of my third-generation German interviewees were more likely to encounter the Holocaust transnationally because of increasing opportunities for travelling abroad and being on school exchange after the fall of the Berlin Wall. These transnational experiences of the Holocaust, sometimes consisting of being subject to negative stereotyping by non-Germans, has also, I believe, made some of my interviewees ambivalent about their own German identity