Born after : reckoning with the German past What do we do with pasts we inherit that carry shame A major and original contribution to thinking about and grappling with the legacies of German and Nazi history this book reflects on the relationship between history and memory through the personal narrative of a postwar German intellectual. Arguing that the pasts that haunt us are shaped both by the things people did and suffered and the affective traces the past leaves in memory Born After is a powerful meditation on questions of guilt complicity loss and longing. With bracing honesty and without sentimentality Bammer draws on her own family story to think anew about a history that we have come to accept as familiar. Inflecting questions about history with questions about ethics her book speaks to all those concerned with historical pasts that remain unreconciled. Provided by publisher Prologue: Swastika Raincoat Part One: The Trouble with German In the Aftermath Lost in the Past Following the Clues Family Ties Between the Word Gaps Ambushed by History Passing through Bitburg Resident Alien Proof of Ancestry Part Two: Walking to Buchenwald Into the Past Walking to Buchenwald The Quiet Dignity of Being True Once Upon a Wartime A World in Letters Part Three: There Was a Butcher Here Once A Longing Called Home Memories of War Memories of Betrayal There Was a Butcher Here Once My Nazi Family Sources and Acknowledgments Notes Index.