num_pages: 320
description: Those Who Forget published to international awards and acclaim is journalist Graldine Schwarzs riveting account of her German and French grandparents lives during World War II an in-depth history of Europes post-war reckoning with fascism and an urgent appeal to remember as a defense against todays rise of far-right nationalism. During World War II Graldine Schwarzs German grandparents were neither heroes nor villains; they were merely Mitlaferthose who followed the current. Once the war ended they wanted to bury the past under the wreckage of the Third Reich. Decades later while delving through filing cabinets in the basement of their apartment building in Mannheim Schwarz discovers that in 1938 her paternal grandfather Karl took advantage of Nazi policies to buy a business from a Jewish family for a low price. She finds letters from the only survivor of this family (all the others perished in Auschwitz) demanding reparations. But Karl Schwarz refused to acknowledge his responsibility. Graldine starts to question the past: How guilty were her grandparents? What makes us complicit? On her mothers side she investigates the role of her French grandfather a policeman in Vichy. Weaving together the threads of three generations of her family story with Europes process of post-war reckoning Schwarz explores how millions were seduced by ideology overcome by a fog of denial after the war and in Germany at least eventually managed to transform collective guilt into democratic responsibility. She asks: How can nations learn from history? And she observes that countries that avoid confronting the past are especially vulnerable to extremism. Searing and unforgettable Those Who Forget is a riveting memoir an illuminating history and an urgent call for remembering.
language: English
title: Those Who Forget: My Family's Story in Nazi Europe – A Memoir, A History, A Warning
publisher: Scribner