Learning From Descendants of Holocaust Survivors and Descendants of Holocaust Perpetrators
April 2, 2025
by Tamar Aizenberg
In October 2024, the New York Times published an article on how American grandchildren of Holocaust survivors relate to and retell their family history. Because grandchildren of survivors are one of the main topics of my dissertation research, it seemed that everyone I know mentioned this article to me—including several participants in the BOLLI course I was teaching at the time. Though sharing an article might seem like a simple gesture, to me, this act reflected the heart of my experience teaching at BOLLI: an ongoing, dynamic conversation, both in and outside of the classroom. This conversation has led me to rethink and revise my course plans and ask new questions of my own research on the grandchildren of survivors and the grandchildren of Nazi perpetrators. Here, I write about a couple of key moments in this process of reworking and what I have taken away from them.
I taught my first class at BOLLI in the fall of 2023. This course, which was on American Jewish Holocaust literature, led me to think more about the importance of genre in this field. Building off my interest in the grandchildren of survivors, I structured this class based on a generational framework—that is, one session each on survivors, children of survivors, and grandchildren of survivors, with introductory and conclusory sessions on either end of these. I developed this structure so that we would be able to see and analyze changes in how these subsequent generations processed and related to the Holocaust.
For the sessions on survivors and children of survivors, I chose excerpts for us to read that were from memoirs that are very clearly about the Holocaust: Ruth Klüger’s Still Alive and Eva Hoffman’s After Such Knowledge. On the third generation—the grandchildren of survivors—I selected several short stories written by Nicole Krauss. These short stories were distinct from the previous readings in several ways. First, they were a different genre, as these stories were fictional rather than autobiographical. Also, they were also not directly about the Holocaust. Instead, as is the case in much third-generation Holocaust literature, the Holocaust lurked in the background of Krauss’s stories.
In class, we noted Krauss’s writing structure in our class discussion and considered its significance. Since one of the goals of the course was to connect the experiences of survivors, their children, and their grandchildren, we asked: How can we compare individuals’ experiences as expressed in memoir versus as expressed in fiction? Though an important question—and one I think about in my research regularly—I realized from my own observations in class and from talking to others that this text had been, to put it simply, too different from the other materials in the course. The shift in genre had made it harder to draw connections between the different generations and their texts.
Because of the difficulty of drawing this cross-genre comparison, when I taught the same course for the second time in the spring of 2024, I replaced these short stories in the syllabus. This shift led us to think beyond the descendants of survivors and to consider the experiences of the descendants of perpetrators—which I do in my research as well. Thinking that a nonfictional text would help further the class framework, I chose excerpts from a memoir written by a grandchild of a survivor: Rachael Cerrotti’s We Share the Same Sky. I was looking forward to discussing this book because it is one of my favorite third-generation memoirs, and in class, I was excited to see that it generated a similar reaction among the participants.
Unexpectedly, the conversation about Cerrotti’s book led us to decide to focus on a new topic in the last session of the course: German-Jewish dialogue and the experiences of the descendants of Nazi perpetrators. In addition to writing a memoir, Cerrotti had participated in a conversation with the grandchild of a Nazi perpetrator that was documented by WBUR. These articles and videos from WBUR became the material for our final session. Discussing these materials felt appropriate because one of the goals of studying survivors and their descendants is to understand how people respond to genocides and atrocities. Though we can learn from the experiences of survivors and their descendants how individuals and families live with and pass down memory of immense loss and trauma, we can also learn from perpetrators’ descendants about how people can reckon with and take responsibility for their predecessors’ crimes.
The fascinating discussion we had about Cerrotti and this grandchild of a Nazi perpetrator inspired the course I taught at BOLLI in the fall of 2024 and am teaching in the spring of 2025. This course, which is on Nazi perpetrators and their descendants, resulted in considering related but new questions. Like the course on American Jewish Holocaust literature, I structured this one with a session on each generation, plus sessions for introducing and concluding the topic. As might be expected, we continued to look at changes across the generations. But throughout this course, I was also struck by certain new questions we kept returning to that I wrestle with in my own research. Some were questions on the specific people we were learning about, such as: Were perpetrators who wrote about their involvement with the Nazi regime capable of expressing genuine remorse for their crimes or only elaborate self-justifications? To what extent, if at all, should descendants of perpetrators feel guilty for their predecessors’ actions? Other questions focused on how we as readers should approach materials created by and about perpetrators and their descendants. For example, we questioned if we should trust perpetrators and their descendants as narrators, or if we should approach them with skepticism, and to what extent, if at all, we should attempt to empathize with perpetrators and their descendants. We discussed how these questions about how to interpret texts and with whom to empathize had broader implications too, as we might ask the same questions about materials or people we encounter in our day-to-day lives. In that way, probing the experiences of perpetrators and their descendants led us to consider how we relate to our environment and the people around us.
As I was planning to teach the course on Nazi perpetrators and their descendants this term, I thought about ways I might implement changes in response to feedback from and conversations with participants and my own reflections on where our conversations took us. I asked myself: Are there more sources that pick up on the themes of self-justification and guilt that I could bring forth? Is there a reading or discussion prompt I could develop that would lead to a deeper discussion on empathy? The fact that teaching at BOLLI has led me on this journey to think about how to fine-tune a syllabus, develop two courses, and ask and discuss questions that get at our very nature and limits as human beings is what I appreciate about being a part of this community of learners.
Tamar Aizenberg is a Ph.D. student in Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. She has taught at BOLLI since 2023.