Holocaust Perpetrators and Their Children

Abstract

This study attempts to trace evidence of a suppressed moral conflict in perpetrators of the extermination process during the Third Reich and in perpetrators' children. The questions raised are (a) was there a suppressed conflict of morality in the perpetrators concerning their roles in the Holocaust and did such a conflict surface toward the end of their lives, and (b) did the silence around the parents'perpetrating roles affect the development of an independent "moral" self in the children? Twenty-five Protestant and Catholic priests and 29 physicians, nurses, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists were asked about contacts with perpetrators in their relatively secure confessional settings. Only one priest reported a direct encounter with a perpetrator, who confessed his atrocious activities before his death. A physician and a psychiatrist reported hearing similar stories. Evidence shows that some perpetrators allowed a single memory of their experiences in the extermination process to penetrate what they had suppressed. By that memory, they maintained an illusion of their moral selves and were able to prevent full acknowledgment of what they had done or witnessed from threatening their psychological integrity. Also, 30 children of identified perpetrators and 18 children of likely perpetrators (S.S. members who were on duty when and where the extermination process took place) were interviewed in various locations in Germany between September 1985 and October 1987. Most psychological reactions of perpetrator-parents reported by their children can be defined as a "reduction to normality." The difficulty in finding more evidence of the paradoxical conflict of morality in Holocaust perpetrators is attributed, among other reasons, to the "double-wall" phenomenon: perpetrators did not want to disclose their inner conflicts, and others-their children, the potential confessors, and maybe most of us-did not want to know about it. "Why should a wretched man, guilty, we will say, of murder, prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in its own heart...! "Yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm physician. "True; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmesdale. "But, not to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent by... their nature. Or,-can we not suppose it?-guilty as they may be... they shrink from displaying themselves... because... no evil of the past [can] be redeemed by better service. So, their own unutterable torment, they go about... looking pure as new-fallen snow while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves." "These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chillingworth.... "They fear to take up the shame that rightfully belongs to them...." (Hawthorne [1874], pp. 159-160) It is true that we often translate our egoistic motivations into more "acceptable" utilitarian ones. It may be that the process of developing moral maturity is simultaneous with overcoming such self-deception. (Boyce & Jensen [1978], p. 218)