After the Shoah – Then What?

• Sunday, 19 January 2025 | 1 p.m.-4:30 p.m.
• House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site | Am Großen Wannsee 56-58, 14109 Berlin
• Free admission | Register here by 13 January 2025
• Note: The event will be translated simultaneously into German and English. Photos and/or film recordings will be made during the event.

April 2025: After surprisingly short negotiations, a new coalition is formed. Having just been sworn in, the Vice Chancellor and the Minister of Culture agree that a political remembrance signal should be sent for the 8 th of May. Like the ban on gender-inclusive language, a ban on the word ‘liberation’ will be imposed on all federally funded and sponsored institutions on 8 May. 

In addition, a commission will be set up to examine how data protection law could be used to restrict access to Nazi-related archival material. ‘My grandfather built this country. He deserves to rest with dignity in death,’ says the Vice Chancellor, ‘the files must finally be closed.’ 

A dystopia? No, because historical revisionism has long been a part of political debates. Where emphasis is placed on the ‘positive aspects’ of German history, the memory of the Holocaust is reduced to ‘bird poop’ (Vogelschiss). Warnings and admonitions don’t seem to have an effect. 

Today, like 80 years ago, reckoning with the past remains contentious. Immediately after the liberation and in the decades that followed, there were major recurring disputes that are relevant again today: Document the Shoah? Close the files! - Prosecute the perpetrators? Grant amnesty! - Educate people about Nazi crimes? Put the past behind us! - Commemorate the victims? Everyone is a victim of war and violence! - Critical self-reflection? We didn’t know anything! 

Under these premises, developing a pluralistic, democratic society did not seem self-evident. Can its fragility today and the current antisemitic and racist, anti-democratic and historical revisionist attacks on democracy be attributed to this tenuous start? 

Eighty years ago, Shoah survivors encountered people in a German majority society who were marked by self-justification, denial, mistrust and contempt. They met in denazification tribunals or reparations offices. Together, they formed local assemblies and state parliaments and became engaged in the discourses of the re-emerging civil society. 

How could the victims of Nazi persecution make their voices heard? How could they assert their demands and ideas? Prof. Dr Gideon Reuveni addresses these questions in his keynote speech. In the subsequent panel, we consider how society and the state in East and West Germany developed with such contradictory experiences of ‘liberation’. Is there anything to learn from the events of 80 years ago that could help us defend against today’s attacks?

Programme, January 19, 2025

12:30 - Arrival 

1:00 p.m. - Introduction: The Wannsee Conference in 1942 and the Liberation in 1945

Niels Pohl-Schneeberger (Centre for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich) & Dr Ruth Preusse (House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site) 

1:15 p.m. - Keynote: The Jewish Search for Reckoning and ‘Wiedergutmachung’ after the Holocaust 

Prof. Gideon Reuveni (University of Sussex, School of Media, Arts and Humanities) 

2:00 p.m. - Coffee Break 

2:45 p.m. - Panel: What Remains of the Liberation in 1945? – Perspectives on Democracy in the Past and Present 

With:

• Zarin Aschrafi (University of Leipzig, Research Centre Global Dynamics)
• Dr Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk (historian and author)
• Dr Klaus Lederer (MdA, former Senator for Culture and Europe)
• Dr Volker Weiß (historian and author)
• Prof. Gideon Reuveni (University of Sussex, School of Media, Arts and Humanities)

Moderation: Dr Andrea Despot (Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future) 

4:30 p.m. - End of event

Contact person for event management: Jennifer Heidtke, veranstaltungen[at]ghwk.de 

Contact person for the press: Eike Stegen, stegen[at]ghwk.de