Generational Cohorts and the Shaping of Popular Attitudes towards the Holocaust

I " (n\,\,o'J p~riance with regard to survivors of the Ilolocaust we oflen speak of 'f(eIllT~lions', lIith a term such as 'second general ion survivor' denoting the children of peopk who sun·il·ed the llolocaust. Discussions of education about the llolocaust ,inn' Ihe l(jl)()s focus increasingly on what is termed the 'third generation'. These are I en rOllgh terms at hest, since a child of survivors might have been born in war-torn I:.mope in Ihe late 19.fOs, or in more prosperous circumstances a decade or more later, "flCIi in hr,wl or Ihe Unill"ll Slales. Surl'ivors of Ihe Ilolocallst who were themselves ,IIil"rcn or leen~ in the early IIHOs might not have had children umil well into the 196ns. Ciill'n Ihe different age-typical ways Ihe wide age-range of survivor parents e~perienced 1Ill' Iloloc1l1~t, and Ihe \'ery different cultural climates in which their children learned of lIH'ir parenls' e~prriences, we might expect that more precise attention to years of birth of Ihe I ~riolls f(cllerations wOllld hetter enahle liS 10 discern their common" traits. This p:lpcr is an 'lttempt to outline a theory that links defining experiences for whole agc cohorts of people first with the life outlook of those cohorts, and then with the life outlooks and attitudes of thcir children. I have attempted this not for Holocaust suniHlrs, hut for 'ordinary Germans' who came of age in the first half of the 20th n·ntun, and their children who came of age in the second half. Thus my observations arc reIn ant for the hystanders amI (potential) perpctrators of trauma, not for its victims. In Ihe l"Onle~t of l-lolocaust edllcalion today, this is the relevant target group. \lany historians and sociologists have ohserved that crucial experiences between the :l~es of 16 al1(l 26, in certain circumstances from 14 to 30, are critical in shaping lifetime polilical ~l1i1Udes.1 i\lomentous historical events sllch as wars and econOlnic crises may o\t'rs"adow more pcrsonally important el'ents in individuals' lives, thus affecting the p"lilictl attitudes of a large proportion of the people in the crucial age range at that lill1e.' I II ill refn 10 Ihesc clent-defined groups as 'age cohorts'. The term 'generalion' is "r'en u"ed in common p:.riance, hut I wish to reserve it for the groups of children of Clcnl-ddinl"ll cohort~, \\ hose political attitudes, in the absence of an epochal historical e\lll"riclltT, are shaped more hy Iheir mediated rel:l1ionship to their parents' experience," Thus Ill' II ill ha\'e political (OI/(/m shaped by Nazi-era events, and political generations II ho l"~llle of age in I he 19Sns and 19(,{)s, when important events were more diffuse than Ihe eptKh.11 turning points Iheir parenlS experienced. .\ IrllUugh I II ill e'\tend this theory back to the World War I conjuncture, let liS hegin 1\ irh a look ~t (iermans II ho came of age in 19JOs and 1940s. Witlely experienced epochal tllrnin~ points might h:we been the formation of the Naid state in 1933-34, and the tangihle tllrning poin! in the war in 1943. The cohorts affected by these events would haH' been horn hetween approximately 1904 (age 26 in 1930, when Nazism's popularity