Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of discrimination, physical/emotional abuse, and death.

Nora Krug’s memoir is deeply embedded in the cultural context of postwar Germany, where grappling with the legacy of the Third Reich and the Holocaust remains an ongoing national and personal struggle. The concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Germany’s reckoning with its Nazi past) has shaped generations of Germans who have grown up in the shadow of war crimes they did not commit but cannot ignore. In the decades following World War II, many Germans, especially the older generation, were silent or evasive about the Nazi past, whether out of guilt, shame, fear, or a desire to move on. This silence frustrated and angered the younger generation of Germans (those who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s), who wanted honest reckoning and accountability for the atrocities committed during the Third Reich.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, a complex and ongoing national process of coming to terms with the past occurred in Germany. Much of this process was initiated and undertaken by the US military and other Allied forces, who occupied Germany until 1955. The effort aimed to confront the atrocities committed during the Nazi regime and to prevent future recurrence through legal, social, and educational measures.