UC Irvine

This personal account is the author's attempt to come to terms with the traumatic effects of growing up among the generation of German children born after World War II. Drawing on Abraham & Torok's (1994) theory of transgenerational haunting, Schwab argues that her generation suffers from a trauma handed down from its parents. Upon returning to her home town in Germany, Schwab is shocked to discover that it once contained a thriving Jewish community. Like the older generation, Schwab realizes that even she had internalized the denial & silence that pervaded Germany after the war. With implications that go far beyond Germany, Schwab contends that children of perpetrators most break their traumatic silence in order to exorcise the ghosts of the past, not only for their personal wellbeing but to avoid the repetition of traumatic history. D. Sabet