Unwanted Legacies: Sharing the Burden of Post-Genocide Generations

by Gottfried Wagner, Abraham Peck

Overview

How does a society reconcile itself in a post-genocide era? How can generations of those whose families were victims and victimizers break the cycle of hate, mistrust, shame, and guilt that characterizes their relationship? What family reactions do they face as they seek to begin the act of sitting across from each other and facing their legacies?
        For more than two decades, Gottfried Wagner, great-grandson of composer Richard Wagner, whose music inspired Adolf Hitler and whose family helped the Nazis rise to power, and Abraham J. Peck, the son of two survivors whose entire families were murdered in the Holocaust, have been engaged in a unique and often torturous discussion on the German-Jewish relationship after the Shoah. That discussion has focused on their family histories and on the myths and realities of the relationship between Germans and Jews since the beginning of the nineteenth century and the process of reshaping that relationship for those Germans and Jews born after 1945. Rejecting the notion that they are either victims or perpetrators, both authors examine the “unwanted legacies” they inherited and have had to confront and overcome.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780896728349
Publisher:	Texas Tech University Press
Publication date:	11/15/2013
Series:	Modern Jewish History
Edition description:	1
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Gottfried Wagner studied musicology, philosophy, and German philology in Germany and Austria. He works internationally as a music historian and multimedia director. He has lived in Italy since 1983.

Abraham J. Peck is the executive director of the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies and professor in the department of history at Saint Leo University outside Tampa, Florida. He is the author of fourteen other books on the Holocaust and Judaism.

Table of Contents

Illustrations xi

Forewords Michael Berenbaum Steven Leonard Jacobs xiii

Authors' Acknowledgments xxiii

Introductions Gottfried Wagner Abraham J. Peck xxv

I The Shadows of Richard Wagner as a German Myth Gottfried Wagner 1

1 Family Trees: From the Founding of the Bayreuth Festival (1876) to the Collapse of the Third Reich (1945) 3

2 The Power Principle. German History and Family History from 1945 to 1976: From "We Are Victims of World History" to "One Hundred Years of Self-Representation" 40

3 In Search of a New Identity: Confronting the Shoah: 1977-1991 84

4 The Rocky Road to a Post-Shoah Discussion with Abraham Peck (1991-2005) 113

II Running Toward and From the Churbn Abraham J. Peck 127

5 Vie World of Our Yesterdays: Vie Families Pik and Kolton 129

6 Hitler is Always at Our Door: From Landsberg to America 160

7 I Discover the Holocaust and Live with Its Consequences 167

8 Capitalism Is to Blame for Everything: We Become the Generation of1968 177

9 Into the Belly of the Beast 187

10 Opening the "Iron Box": The Holocaust as Burden and Hope 206

11 A (Mis) Step in the Direction of Reconciliation? 229

12 Holocaust, Genocide, and the Clash of Civilizations (1992-2005) 234

III Post-Holocaust Germans and Jews Abraham J. Peck 251

13 What Do They Have to Say to Each Other? Post-Holocaust Germans and Jews in Dialogue 253

14 Holocaust Memory: In the Shadow and Light of Family History 262

15 Facing the Past 277

IV Viewing the Past but Looking to the Future Gottfried Wagner 303

16 Reflections on the Trip to Auschwitz in August 2005 305

17 Viewing the Past but Looking to the Future 307

V The Final Chapter? Repairing the World Abraham J. Peck

18 The Path to Tikkun Olam 313

IV Beyond the Shadow of German and Family Myths Gottfried Wagner 321

19 April 2012. Beyond Reconciliation with the Wagner Clan-Be Yourself 323

20 From Tel Aviv to Bayreuth and Back Again to Teresina, Eugenio, and Stella: A Journey with Ella, Noam, Peter, and Simon into the Past and into the Future 339

VII New Allies: Holocaust, Genocide, and Human-Rights Studies Abraham J. Peck 349

21 From Holocaust to Genocide 351

VIII Afterwords 355

22 Discourses on Holocaust and Genocide: Have We Learned Anything from History? Gottfried Wagner 357

23 Our Dialogue Today: What Has Changed and Who Have We Become? Abraham J. Peck 366

Endnotes 369

Index 395

Editorial Reviews

This discussion is nothing less than the coming together of different poles in the common quest for understanding. It is a masterful dual meditation on the evils men can do and how they can be overcome. —Paul R. Bartrop, director, Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, Florida Gulf Coast University

Gottfried Wagner and Abraham Peck, despite diametrically opposite backgrounds, have joined forces to provide a roadmap of understanding for succeeding generations. Their biographies alone, which dig deeply into Nazism and the pain of the Holocaust, make Unwanted Legacies must reading. —Eugene DuBow, founding director, Berlin Office – Ramer Institute, The American Jewish Committee

Unwanted Legacies, important in its own right, is a positive and hopeful starting point for all who wish to engage in meaningful dialogue with “the other.” Ideally, it will indeed, it must be read widely and discussed even more. ?Steven Leonard Jacobs, Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair of Judaic Studies, The University of Alabama

This sensitively written book demonstrates conclusively that racial, religious, or ethnic prejudice is never genetic, and that any post-Holocaust German-Jewish reconciliation must be predicated on the absolute rejection of fanaticism and bigotry. —Menachem Z. Rosensaft, adjunct professor of law, Cornell Law School; lecturer in law, Columbia Law School

From the Publisher