The results showed that the responses of children of survivors and Nazis revealed similar threads of images and associations to the past that run through their lives. These include four main themes: information-seeking, meaning-making, personal sense of injustice, and connectedness. Each is discussed in turn.

Information-Seeking

This section presents a description of the psychosocial background of the lives of children of Nazis and survivors by investigating the parameters of the child's knowledge of and responses to their parents' experiences. Typical answers to the questions "How did you get information about the Holocaust?" and "How did you respond to this information?" were:

Child of Nazi: I was about fifteen, I think it was the Eichmann process. Before the Eichmann process-you know a Nazi, what does it mean? It did not mean much. But suddenly during the Eichmann process there were things in the paper and on television and I was totally floored. I remember seeing these pictures of young kids going to the concentration camps. I couldn't believe that anybody could have done that to other people and I wanted to know what happened. I went to my mother and father and I said what happened. And nobody wanted to talk about it. So it is very much in me. And I could never understand. And I wanted someone very much to tell me-to take responsibility or something. I wanted somebody to talk to me. And there was nobody. And it was incredibly frustrating.

Child of Survivor: I was about seven and I remember my mother was watching the Eichmann trials on television. She was crying and I asked her why. I don't remember exactly what she said but she sort of explained to me that the man on television was responsible for killing her family. I was shocked and really upset to see my mother crying. I think this is when I really understood that my mother was in concentration camp. And that the number on her arm was somehow connected to that. From that day on I wanted to know more about it.

Most of the children of Nazis and survivors learned about their parents' experiences through bits and pieces of information. One difference that emerged between most children of survivors and children of Nazis is that children of Nazis first heard about the war whereas children of survivors first heard about the Holocaust. Subjects' verbal reports of their immediate responses to the information they received included shock, horror, guilt, anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and shame. The information they received was simultaneously evocative and numbing. It was evocative because the information they received was fragmentary, and it was numbing because of the overwhelming horror of the descriptions. Although a few subjects had learned the exact chronology of their parents' lives, most subjects had only fragmentary knowledge of isolated details and a distorted sense of chronology. For example, one subject said:

Child of Survivor: I'm rather embarrassed actually about the fact that I can not get the history straight. Although I have gone over the story with them as an adult and I have even taped it, and have written it down, my grasp of the history remains kind of childlike in some way. It never makes sense. I can't make the years kind of flow and be put together. But you know it is really crazy. It is just 6 years from 1939 until 1945 but there just seems to be something that confuses it. So I'm actually rather embarrassed about the fact that I cannot get the history straight.

Another subject gave the following description:

Child of Nazi: I could never get the full story, because there would only be pieces of the war experiences, but never anything connected to the Third Reich directly. Sometimes you would get a little piece about someone being high in the party but then they would stop talking. Nobody would talk about Hitler, about what happened. Every time it was just about the bombs falling, or about not having food. I never could really figure out what happened except at the end when they escaped from the East-from the Russians. I would hear that my father was an officer in the army but what kind of army, I did not know. I would hear from my father about him being upset about snipers. But I never got a real sense of how he spent those years in the army. Even when I asked harmless questions-I just never got answers. I knew that he went early into the army, I knew he wanted to be a flyer but that he couldn't be one. I would get it in pieces. Even if I asked questions about him being a soldier he would right away withdraw.

The information that most children of survivors and children of Nazis received also often contained references to "the Jews" or "the Nazis." A few subjects, however, reported that they heard stories that distinguished "good Nazis from bad Nazis or stories about good Jews."

Child of Survivor: I didn't view all Nazis as evil. It depended on what they did, what kind of cog they were in the machinery of it. My mother worked in a labor camp for a while. And an SS officer treated her kind of nicely, kindly, like a human being. Because my mother was young, he gave her a better post. He liked my mother's work and I think he conveyed it to my mother. I don't know what kind of punishment my mother would have picked for him after the war. On the other hand there was Mengele.

Child of Nazi: I remember my parents telling me that they had a lot of Jewish friends, nice people before the war. And they would play cards with them and make music. And I was always wondering why they never wondered about what happened to those nice friends.

Again, most children of Nazis and survivors learned about the past through bits and pieces of information. It is almost as if they were given a complex jigsaw puzzle that had most of the pieces missing. Many children of survivors and Nazis would discover an unexplainable detail, like a photograph of Hitler, military documents, the absence of grandparents, a tattoo, that became for them a key to an important mystery. Few children of survivors and Nazis knew all the chronological details of their parents' experiences. Often critical information about their parents' history was learned by accident. For example, one child of a Nazi was told that her father was a colonel and that the army was a fighting army and had nothing to do with the SS. When she was an adult she found out that her father was actually in the SS and was devoted to the Nazi ideology. Another child of a Nazi learned only after her father's death, when she was already an adult, that her father ordered an entire village of innocent people to be shot. Another subject (child of a survivor) learned only during late adolescence that her father had been incarcerated at Dachau. Another child of a survivor was told recently, by her father, that after he was liberated from concentration camp he hunted down a Nazi who ran the camp.

One very distinct impression emerging from many subjects' reports is that their parents were extremely ambivalent about communicating their experiences to them. On the one hand, most of the children of Nazis and survivors perceived that their parents were in need of unburdening themselves. On the other hand, the children sensed they were equally in need of guarding disclosures that might tend to depict themselves in a bad light or that might evoke sadness in the child. Most children of survivors and Nazis were told by their parents that they could not understand those times. For example, a child of a Nazi reported, "My father use[d] to say that I was green behind the ears and that I couldn't understand those times." A child of survivor was told by her mother, "It is like many, many jumps away from what you could possibly understand. People may understand hardship, but you really can't relate, my mother always said, unless you were there. It was the worst nightmare-you can't tell someone what it was really like." Consequently, all subjects (except one child of a survivor) expressed some degree of reticence about approaching their parents with questions about their experiences. This fragmentary type of information-seeking process created a dilemma for children of survivors and Nazis. On one level they sensed that they needed to avoid confronting their parents with their questions about the past, while, on another level, they felt that they needed to learn more about the past. Accompanying this dilemma was communication about the Nazi-Jew dichotomy. The symbol "Nazis" (or "Jews") was extremely puzzling and existed in relationship to the symbol "Jews" (or "Nazis"). Many subjects described their confusion and fear when their parents first told them about Nazis or Jews. They asked themselves who were these people who hurt my parents, or who were these people who were hurt by my parents?

Meaning-Making

Although parents' descriptions and details of their experiences varied in detail and vividness, there was one common feature: None of the fragments parents communicated to their children approached the overpowering horror of the descriptions made available in documentaries, movies, and books about the Holocaust. As previously noted, most parents of children of survivors and Nazis were reluctant to talk about their experiences. Additionally, many parents' accounts of their past often minimized the horrors or contained mixed messages. For example, in answer to the question "What response did you get from your parents when you tried to find out?" one subject said:

Child of Nazi: My parents said it wasn't that bad, a lot of it was propaganda. At the same time I heard my mother talking about these poor people who were in camps.

Another subject said:

Child of Survivor: My mother told me these gruesome stories of what it smelled like when there was a large selection of people being gassed and then she might switch and tell me a funny story about something that happened in the camp.

Other subjects reported the following:

Child of Nazi: My father's stories about the war were mostly funny stories. About you know the good soldier, how to get around the army boredom, and deprivation of army life, and making fun of their superiors and that sort of thing and male bonding.

Child of Survivor: My mother was so young when she was in camp. And the whole thing was sad but adventurous kind of. It was very tragic and sad but there were all these adventure stories too.

Thus, many children of survivors and Nazis were presented with inconsistent information. That is, on the one hand they knew some details of the actual crimes that were committed, yet simultaneously they were being presented with contradictory information. Also, most children of survivors and Nazis reported that they sensed that information was being hidden from them. Examples of their reports are:

Child of Nazi: One day at the house of some friends I looked at a book with pictures of Auschwitz. Even before I could really understand what I was seeing, I was just consumed with the thought of my father. I sort of put my hands over the pictures almost like I wanted to hide it from myself so that it couldn't be true. I was sort of confused and afraid that what I had suspected all those years, that dark secret, that crime. And I kept thinking what was the relationship between my father and this horror.

Child of Survivor: I always felt like my parents didn't really want to tell me everything. And sometimes I would read things or look at some pictures from Auschwitz and I would wonder, I mean sometimes I even thought I saw them in the pictures. It would be really painful to look at those pictures and imagine that my mother was there-that one of these people could even be her. I couldn't look at it for too long. Sometimes I would go and ask them about if something happened. And I would wonder why didn't they tell me before I asked. I felt like they were keeping things a secret from me. Like they were hiding some unimaginable horror that they experienced or saw.

A common reaction for most children of survivors and Nazis was that the inconsistent, fragmentary, and secretive style of communicating information created an overwhelming feeling of anxiety and fear. Additionally, most of the children reported that they felt they couldn't put all the information together. Many subjects reported that they felt as though a dark fog surrounded them, and they couldn't break through it. Thus, it left them not knowing exactly what meaning to give to the information. The perception that something terrible happened that involved their parents, the need to find out more and to make sense of it but simultaneously feeling afraid to find out more, was common for most subjects. Most children of Nazis and survivors portrayed their ambivalence about learning the dark secrets of the past. For children of survivors there were fantasies of parents' having committed some kind of crime to stay alive. For children of Nazis there were fantasies that their parents committed greater crimes than they knew about. For example, subjects state:

Child of Survivor: I remember my mother telling me that she worked sorting dead people's clothes, and that this was a good job because many people brought food to the camp, and also you could exchange the shoes and stuff for food. But somehow from her reaction I felt that she almost felt like it was a crime to have worked there. Because you know essentially she was able to survive because she had access to dead peoples' things. I got sort of afraid to ask her more questions about it.

Child of Nazi: I have to say I never quite asked the question bluntly, did you ever kill Jews? I could not face asking that question. So I never assumed he was involved in the extermination of Jews, but, I have to say I never asked that question. I did ask him whether he ever shot at anyone, did you ever kill someone by shooting. I still have the fear that maybe he was more involved than what he actually told me about.

The range and details of parents' accounts about the past in terms of content, as reported by subjects, was extremely varied. The style of communication, however, as described by the children can be characterized as inconsistent, fragmentary, and secretive. Most subjects reported that their parents' accounts had precipitated the sense that information was being hidden from them. (The one exception was one subject, a child of a survivor, who expressly stated that his father would answer any questions he asked.) A few subjects reported that they had surreptitiously gone through their parents' papers. Others reported that they relied on the literature to discover more information. Many subjects were concerned about specific aspects of their parents' experiences. These included crimes parents may have committed in concentration camps, specific abuses inflicted on them, and war crimes. Many subjects reported that they often imagined what those crimes or abuses might have been.

In spite of the fears of discovering dark secrets, all subjects indicated a desire to construct meaning out of the past. Subjects gave two rationales for this need to make meaning. The first reason involved a need to understand their identity through understanding the events that had affected their parents and, indirectly, themselves. The second reason involved a need to understand why human beings would participate in mass murder. For example, a typical report for most subjects was as follows:

Child of Survivor: It was a whole part of my growing up, and even now, is the question of why. I think that's why I kept doing what I am doing-I am looking for an answer. I read any book I can find, to find the goddamn answer. Six million people just can't die for nothing! It just can't be! There's got to be an answer. What's the answer? Do I turn to God for the answer? Will my own searching give me answers? I'm just always asking: Well, why did this happen?

Another subject reported:

Child of Nazi: I just could never understand how one human being could do such things to another human being. When I was a child I would try to understand it, and I would ask but no one would give me an answer. I could not really discuss it with friends, so I felt really alone in this search to find out.

Personal Sense of Injustice

Among the emotive-cognitive systems known to influence social behavior, perceptions of justice have been found to be of particular importance. The desire to behave and be treated in a just manner and also the need to believe in a just social order are the determinants of many actions and moral judgments (Heider, 1958; Kagan, 1989; J. Lemer & Matthews, 1967; Piaget, 1932). The sense of injustice is that set of sensibilities that connect people and make them part of the social world. The personal sense of injustice refers to the sympathetic and evaluative reaction of outrage, horror, shock, guilt, shame, resentment, anger, and all the other emotions that all of the children of Nazis and survivors felt when they perceived the injustice of the Holocaust. The following statements reflect this sympathetic reaction:

Child of Nazi: When I saw pictures of children going to the camps that was the worst. How could people do something to them? A child for me was a symbol of someone who never did anything bad to anyone. I felt, first I always feel very guilty. I mean I took the guilt of my parents. The guilt my parents did not want to take on I took on. And I felt incredibly guilty. Every time I would see a Jew I would feel all my guilt. I feel now that I have a responsibility. I feel that incredibly strongly. I have a responsibility toward the Jewish people but also first of all, in this particular case not to have it forgotten. I feel that very, very strongly. That we need to remember.

Child of Survivor (crying): When I first realized what my mother went through. I mean when I really understood the horror of it, the pain, the suffering she experienced I felt guilty almost. It sort of evoked these maternal feelings in me for my own mother. I mean even though I wasn't born yet I felt like I wished I could have protected her, shielded her. And I had this sense of feeling guilty that she suffered and I wasn't there to protect her. Also, I had this feeling of how unfair it was. She was only seventeen years old. And I would look at pictures of her brother. He was a child only twelve years old and he was killed in Treblinka. I never could understand how another human being could do that. And I think it left me with this feeling of outrage.

Empirical data show that most people are motivated to right existing wrongs or to at least convince themselves that they live in a just world (M. Lerner, 1980). Attempts to rectify injustice may range from acts of blaming the victim, compensating the victim, giving charity or financial reparation, to starting a lawsuit; they may incite the individual to acts of revenge or forgiveness or the masses to political revolution. Concerning the Holocaust, legal sanctions and financial reparations were set up by the Western Allies and the Federal Republic of Germany in an attempt to restore justice to victims. The program was identified as Wiedergutmachung, which literally translated means "to make good again." Yet it is widely recognized that these measures had the opposite effects and were equally resented by survivors and Germans alike (Kestenberg, 1980). Also, a system of legal principles does not consider the need for taking personal actions of retribution or retaliation.

For all subjects, the imagery of the Holocaust comes to provide visions of a perceived injustice and visions for understanding moral responsibility and evil. In turn, those visions provide a framework for acting in the world. All the subjects reported that they felt their parents did not sufficiently engage in retributive actions-that is, actions aimed at restoring a moral balance. For example, typical reports were:

Child of Nazi: I never saw my father take any or make any sacrifice. Or bring it up in the sense of restitution as a moral obligation. I wish he had done something. To at least say what we did was awful and I was wrong.

Child of Survivor: I used to wish that my parents would be like Simon Wisenthal-hunting down Nazis or something like that. But I guess they are doing and did what they were capable of doing. They raised a family.

These reports are consistent with empirical evidence that suggests that adequacy of compensation is a determinant of a harm-doer's compensatory behavior; harm-doers tend to compensate their victims if they have an adequate amount of compensation (E. Walster & Prestholdt, 1966). In addition, although harm-doers would like to compensate the victim, they also want to avoid contact with them (Freedman, Wallington, & Bless, 1967). Finally, if harm-doers are given time to think about their acts they are less likely to make inadequate or excessive restitution. During the interval of time they are more likely to consider other possible ways of reducing their distress (E. Walster & Prestholdt, 1966). Although these experimental findings are about variables affecting harm-doers' retributive behavioral reactions, it is reasonable to assume that they also might apply to the victim. That is, one may surmise that most survivors of the Holocaust did not engage in retributive actions because they felt that no level of compensation would be adequate, they preferred to avoid having contact with Nazis, and they found other ways of reducing the distress caused to them.

Anthropological and historical data suggest that if an injustice is not rebalanced between people, the imbalance does not disappear with the death of the original people but is extended to their descendants (Thomas, 1958). We use redressing to encompass the different actions children of survivors and Nazis take to offset an injustice posed to them by their common heritage. Those actions range from undertaking massive studies on the Holocaust, attending or delivering lectures, to engaging in political and social actions. The word redress has multiple meanings in Webster's Third World Dictionary: "to cover with or add something that improves the appearance," "to cure by softening," "to seek a remedy," "to compensate for a loss...... to exact reparation for," "to remove the cause of," and "to heal." We propose that these different meanings reflect the many ways children of survivors and Nazis attempt to restore justice to their everyday lives. What follows are some ways children of survivors and Nazis redress (I = interviewer, CN child of Nazi, CS = child of survivor):

I: Do you feel like you have tried to compensate the survivors in your father's name?
CN: Yes. My current academic work, which is a translation of a sort of pro-Zionist novel from English into German, and the effort of getting that published with the appropriate attention paid to the elements of the book is another. Yes, I feel like that is a big part of my life. It doesn't right anything. That can't be, how can anything be made right that was done wrong then. But I can try to be different.

I: Have you tried to get compensation for your parents?
CS: No, but the thought has crossed my mind. I think I have a much more powerful sense of vengeance than most people do. There were times when I said I would just love to shoot a Nazi. I'm not stopped from doing an act of violence toward a war criminal on ethical grounds. It is not like I say to myself acts of violence are always bad. So I'm not stopped by the ethical issue. I'm stopped by a practical issue. I don't want to go shoot some Nazi living in Argentina and then spend the rest of my life in jail. I know if was going to die soon, I would love to have the option to do that.

One may infer from subjects' reports that because they perceived that their parents took either minimal or no compensatory actions, they felt called upon to seek opportunities to redress the imbalance and to repair the injustice in the histories of their parents. This finding is consistent with historical and anthropological evidence that suggest retribution can last for centuries.

Perceptions of Connectedness

Do children of survivors and children of Nazis have anything in common? For the first generation that is a question many feel should not even be asked, an impossibility that should never be suggested. For the children, however, as indicated in their reports, the thought that they are in some way connected is a felt possibility. Most subjects stated that they felt they were joined by the context of the problems posed to them by their common heritage. One of the most striking results was that many children of Nazis stated that they felt linked to children of survivors and vice versa. Examples of their reports are:

Child of Nazi: I think children of survivors and children of Nazis are connected whether we want it or not. We are very strongly connected. We are connected through the experiences of our parents. It is something that happened between our parents. As a German you are connected to the Jewish people. Because of what happened. This experience affects both children of survivors and children of Nazis.

Child of Survivor: I think children of survivors and children of Nazis have an awful lot in common. Yea, because I think they are suffering. The form of their suffering, how they are taking it beyond and how it affected their actual lives, I am not really sure. But, I think they have to have suffered. If they haven't suffered, then they are not people with, they are people who lack emotions. And I think children of survivors suffer because of what happened to their parents so we are tied by that.

DISCUSSION