Book Review: Those Who Forget

Those Who Forget

My Family's Story in Nazi Europe – A Memoir, A History, A Warning

by Geraldine Schwarz

 Scribner 

 Biographies & Memoirs 

Pub Date 22 Sep 2020 

I am reviewing a copy of Those Who Forget through Scribner and Netgalley:

Géraldine Schwartz grandparents were neither heroes or villains during World War 2.  They were simply Mitlaüfer those who followed the current.  After the war ended they wanted to bury the past under the wreckage the third reich left behind.

The first mass deportation of the Jews took place in the region Geraldine’s grandparents lived in October 1940.  When more than 6500 Jews from the southwest of the country were deported to the Gurs camp in the south of France.

After the war Geraldine’s Fathers family never talked about politics and in general discussions at the dinner table were rare.

Geraldine’s Grandparents has thought their past was buried under the wreckage of the third reich until it reared it’s ugly head one morning in January of 1946.  Karl Schwarz found an envelope in the mailbox with a return address that immediately implied bad tidings—Dr. Rebstein-Metzger, Lawyer, Mannheim.

It wasn’t until decades later, while going through  old filing cabinets in Mannheim that Schwartz discovers that in 1938, her paternal grandfather decided to take advantageous Nazi policies and bought a business from a Jewish Family for far less than what it was worth.  She also finds letters from the only survivor of the family her Grandfather had bought the business from, (the rest  had died in Auschwitz).  The letter demanded reparations, but her  Grandfather refused to admit his responsibility.   Géraldine finds herself questioning the past.  She can’t help but question how guilty her grandparents were.  She questions what makes a person complicit?  She investigates the role of her Grandfather on her Mother’s side a policeman in Vichy.

Those Who Forget weaves together the threads of three generations of her family story with Europe’s process of post-war reckoning,   Schwartz explores how millions were seduced by twisted ideology, and overcome by denial over what happened after the war.  And In Germs especially managed to transform collective guilt into democratic responsibility.  In this book She asks: How can nations learn from history? And she observes that countries that avoid confronting the past are especially vulnerable to extremism.

I would recommend Those Who Forget to anyone who has ever posed the question how can we learn from history.

I give Those Who. Forget five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!