Unsettled Ground: Reflections on Germany's Attempts to Make Amends

Germany one felt the world’s wrath for crimes committed during the Nazi regime. More recently, it received extravagant praise for facing up to the atrocities. The country now boasts of new Jewish museums, Holocaust memorials, restored synagogues, and classroom lessons designed to honor its Jewish heritage and teach tolerance.

This effort was led not by politicians or historians, but by local citizen activists, few of them Jewish, almost all of them born after World War II. They could have sh...