For a generation after the Second World War it was difficult to discuss one's German-Jewish origins or the Holocaust without embarrassment. Even children whose families had been murdered in the camps found it hard to speak about their loss. In Germany, the 1964 trial of Robert Mulka - former adjutant to Commandant Rudolf Höss - and 21 others for crimes committed at Auschwitz enabled a new generation to confront the past, but in Britain and the United States it was only some years later that it became possible to broach the subject. Today, by contrast, a scarred identity earns almost universal respect.

LRB 20 January 2005 | PDF Download