Private Remembrance and Public Commemoration of the Nazi Euthanasia Program in German Society

This essay will reflect on the perception and commemoration of genocidal violence relating to Nazi euthanasia in the private and public dimensions of German society. The first part will illustrate how genocidal violence affected the families of the victims and caused the formation of an inherited trauma that determined specific responses and relational dynamics. By means of excerpts from interviews conducted by the author with victims’ relatives, the characteristics and effects of the genocidal violence on the second and third generations will be defined in order to show how these were interiorized and passed on from one generation to the next, generating specific traumatic reactions and attempts to overcome it. The second section will then present a recognition of the different stages of Nazi euthanasia commemorations to illustrate German society’s difficulty with processing this crime.