[WikiEN-l] Helga'a theme

[tarquin]

Fred Bauder wrote:

>Here's a link (good for a few days) on the theme Helga was harping on:
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/18/arts/18SCHN.html?todaysheadlines
>
>F
>

Only in the past three years or so have German writers and historians 
begun to tackle a topic previously taboo: the sufferings of the German 
civilian population in the last years of World War II. (The Sebald 
essay, which was excerpted in The New Yorker in November, is being 
published by Random House in the United States next month under the 
title "On the Natural History of Destruction.")

At least one reason for the almost complete avoidance of this topic 
would appear to be self-evident: the critical authors of postwar Germany 
considered it a moral and aesthetic impossibility to describe the 
Germans, the nation responsible for the world war, as being among the 
victims of that war.

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Hmm. similar to the way *no-one* in France talks about collaboration 
with the occupiers.  Some 3 years ago a French historian published a 
book about it, and was immediately shunned in academic circles & 
criticized in the press, I heard.

there must be a special term for it ... post-traumatic shame or something.

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