A record of interviews with those who experience Nazi Germany as a legacy that shapes their reminiscences of childhood. Dan Bar-On, an Israeli psychologist, went to Germany to talk to the middle-aged children of Nazis, men who ranged from minor functionaries of the Holocaust to mass murderers.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Legacy of Silence is a moving and upsetting document about family life in the Third Reich and its repercussions in contemporary Germany. Between August 1985 and October 1987, Israeli psychologist Bar-On traveled to Germany on four occasions to speak with men and women whose fathers had served in the Nazi elite. His book records 13 from over 50 such meetings. The voice of the author remains audible throughout the text, questioning, probing, commenting, and ever pointing out ambivalences. This quality of a dialogue--external and internal--distinguishes Legacies of Silence from a recent book with a similar theme, Peter Sichrovsky's Born Guilty: Children of Nazi Families ( LJ 1/88). Essential for most libraries.
- Ulrike S. Rettig, Wellesley Coll., Mass.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Ulrike S. Rettig, Wellesley Coll., Mass.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Knowing the worst is terrible but, as Bar-On finds in this powerful and compassionate book, not knowing it is even more terrible. With persistence and an odd tenderness, he explores the psychic wounds of silence and suppression. Legacy of Silence is a journey as much as a study. Bar-On traveled with personal trepidation and on a dangerous intellectual borderline. (Richard Eder Los Angeles Times )
Legacy of Silence is a record of Bar-On's interviews with the (now adult) children of men who ranged from minor functionaries of the Holocaust to serious mass-murderers...This account probably comes as close to total honesty as it is humanly possible to achieve. And such is [Bar-On's] skill as an interviewer that one feels his partners in dialogue have likewise reached the limits of bearable insight into the mentality of their elders. (John C. Marshall Nature )
The strength of the book is the way in which he shares his own self-discovery with that of his interviewees, many of whom had not had the chance to think and talk systematically about their guilty parents before the interviews. The book is particularly interesting in light of the recent Historikerstreit in Germany and the bitter controversy about the uniqueness or otherwise of the Holocaust. Bar-On is light-years removed from any attempt to minimize the Final Solution...The humanity of this study is not the least of its virtues. (John Hiden History )
Legacy of Silence is a record of Bar-On's interviews with the (now adult) children of men who ranged from minor functionaries of the Holocaust to serious mass-murderers...This account probably comes as close to total honesty as it is humanly possible to achieve. And such is [Bar-On's] skill as an interviewer that one feels his partners in dialogue have likewise reached the limits of bearable insight into the mentality of their elders. (John C. Marshall Nature )
The strength of the book is the way in which he shares his own self-discovery with that of his interviewees, many of whom had not had the chance to think and talk systematically about their guilty parents before the interviews. The book is particularly interesting in light of the recent Historikerstreit in Germany and the bitter controversy about the uniqueness or otherwise of the Holocaust. Bar-On is light-years removed from any attempt to minimize the Final Solution...The humanity of this study is not the least of its virtues. (John Hiden History )
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This review is from: Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich (Paperback)
I thought "Legacy of Silence" was a well written book with countless amounts of information. I read it after it was recommended by a Holocaust researcher, while I was doing a report on the Holocaust for school. During the course of my research I read several books and interviewed a Holocaust survivor. "Legacy of Silence" was without question the most helpful of the books I read. "Legacy of Silence" gives the reader a unique insight to the personal lives of Nazi leaders and the inablility of their children to cope with their parents crimes. On many of the book's stories the children seem to recall almost pleasantly the activities of their parents. In my opinion it shows how, while the children of Holocaust survivors actively attempt to understand what their parents went through, the children of the perpetraters try to avoid dealing with their parents sins. I read "Legacy of Silence" shortly after my interview with a survivor. That interview along with "Legacy of Silence" and many other pieces of information have caused me to educate myself on the Holocaust even now that my paper has long since been completed. As a younger American I am trying to understand what happened during that horrible period of human history. If you are like me and want to learn more than what is in the Encyclopedia. Then I encourage you to read "Legacy of Silence".
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