Germany
prides itself for the way the country has owned up to past atrocities of the
Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 and here in particular the Holocaust, in which
six million Jews but also Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, and disabled people were
murdered. The Holocaust represents ultimate evil, and its teaching became
mandatory from the 1970s, 1980s onwards. In this blog post, I will reflect on
Germany’s and the Germans’ attempts to atone for the Holocaust in particular in
relation to the country’s support for Israel, drawing also on my own
experiences in the German school system.