How Germany Developed a ‘Policy on the Past’

A Constellation of Days Has Emerged to Remember the Holocaust and Its Victims

Germany does not have a traditional, centuries-old national holiday, such as July 14 in France or July 4 in the United States.

But Germany is carefully attuned to dates, and how they might be used to reckon with the history of dictatorships, encourage the maintenance of memorial sites, and spark remembrance in ways that draw the public to past sins, and provide vital information and moral orientation.

Reckoning with and making restitution for the Nazi dictatorship of 1933–1945, World War II, and the deaths and persecution of millions occupies Germany to this …

by Theo Schiller | November 28, 2022

Uncovering a Life Deemed ‘Unworthy of Life’

Why the Story of Hans Heinrich Festersen—Gay, Disabled, and Murdered by the Nazis—Matters

by Kenny Fries | November 17, 2022

On September 8, 1943, Hans Heinrich Festersen was hanged at Berlin’s Plötzensee prison. Festersen, 35, had been arrested almost a year earlier, on October 12, 1942, for violating Paragraph 175, …

Why It Matters That Star Trek Is Confronting Eugenics

For Decades the Dangerous Pseudoscience Was Heavily Censored on Screen—While Offscreen It Continued Influencing Policy

by Jackie Mansky | August 12, 2022

In a meme that’s been floating around online recently, William Shatner asks, “When did Star Trek get all political?”

The joke is on Shatner, or rather on an old tweet from …

A mural on a wall in the former Jewish ghetto of Vilnius

Where I Go: Lithuania’s Vanished Center of Jewish Life

In Vilna, Where Thousands Were Murdered, I Learned How Difficult It Is to Mourn an Absence

By David Nasaw | October 18, 2021

I did it all backward. Instead of taking my research trips before writing my book, like any normal historian would have, I’d waited. Only after I had completed my first …

Coming Home to the Holocaust

My Mother Barely Escaped Nazi Germany. I Returned to Remember Those Who Didn’t and to Reclaim Them as My Own

by Kim Fellner | October 1, 2020

In the town hall of Fischach, a village in southern Germany with a population of 2,500, I am staring at a glass display case holding the detritus of the Jews …

When Does a Garden-Variety Demagogue Become Dangerous?

In 1923, Adolf Hitler Created a Fictional Persona to Recast Himself as Germany's Savior

By Thomas Weber | January 10, 2018

In the summer of 1923, Adolf Hitler realized he had a problem. Germany was in the midst of an extreme economic crisis that inspired widespread feelings of disaffection, worries about …

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