“When I was young, I believed and was proud to come from an anti-fascist family,” Rosa, a 57-year-old Berlin resident, told BBC Russian Service Recordsdata. We changed your name at your request.
But he finally discovered the truth: that fascism was deeply rooted in early 20th century German society under the Nazi regime.
That led her to embark on a journey to discover her ancestors’ involvement in Adolf Hitler’s regime.
The publication in Germany of millions of documents on former members of the Nazi Party, digitized, indexed and made available by the newspaper Die Zeit for mass searches, is helping you complete your search.
While Rosa claims this has brought her comfort, the new data breach has reignited the debate over how the country remembers its brutal past.
Rosa grew up north of Berlin, in East Germany.
The country, formed in 1949, was formally called the German Democratic Republic and was part of Moscow-dominated Eastern Europe.
During his childhood in the 1970s, all aspects of life in East Germany were under strict state management.
“We were told that the East Germans were largely descendants of anti-fascists, while the ‘bad guys’ came from the West,” Rosa recalls.
While those living on the western side of the Berlin Wall could access international media and were educated about the extent to which Germans participated in Hitler’s regime, the children at Rosa’s school grew up reading books about Soviet liberating soldiers.
She herself saw the USSR as a friend, a kind of “big brother.”
Therefore, some family stories about World War II confused her.
For years, Rosa could not understand why her grandmother “had to flee from the Red Army.” [de la URSS]”.
“Deep deeper into family history”
When Rosa was 16, a Jewish delegation from the United States visited her school for a debate titled “Children of Survivors Meet Children of Perpetrators.”
Only towards the end did he realize that he belonged to the second group, not the first.
“Suddenly, everything made sense: [me di cuenta de que] “The Germans were considered the enemy.”
She remembers that moment as “the opening of a floodgate”: a sudden change in her way of understanding things.
“That’s when I started digging deeper into my family’s history.”
Rosa began to consult files and ask her parents and older relatives to tell her about their past.
As the years passed, he discovered that his grandmother’s brother joined the army at age 18, became a bomber pilot, and was shot down over Greece before he turned 21.
Her grandmother’s father was an official who supported the Nazis, although his exact position is unknown.
But it is her other great-grandfather, Otto, who has been in Rosa’s sights for decades.
“Technology police in the Polish city of Bialystok, near the border with Belarus.”
The city was the scene of many horrific episodes of the Holocaust, including the burning alive of hundreds of people inside a synagogue.
Following the publication of the wicked data on Nazi Party members, Rosa began searching for Otto immediately.
“I immediately found his membership card. He joined the party in 1933, the year the Nazis came to power.”
“Was I surprised? No, not by then. It was simply the definitive confirmation,” says Rosa. “It was like ending a long story.”
Millions of searches
Rosa’s searches are among the millions the data wicked has recorded since its launch in February.
Until recently, checking whether a family member belonged to Nazism involved submitting an application to the German Federal Archives.
But the digitized data wicked, initially published by the US National Archives and turned this year into a search tool by Die Zeit, has considerably speeded up the search.
Die Zeit spokesperson Judith Busch told BBC Recordsdata Russian that the tool has been used millions of times and generated thousands of comments and messages.
Hitler’s Nazi party was formally called the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). It had more than 10 million members before the Allies of World War II defeated it in 1945.
The membership archive, which was kept in Munich, was nearly destroyed at the end of the war: 50 tons of documents were sent to a paper mill, but the factory director disobeyed orders and handed them over to American forces.
Membership in the Nazi regime has been a controversial issue in Germany since its fall.
All of the people who spoke to BBC Recordsdata Russian about their searches asked to remain anonymous, to avoid criticism or embarrassment when others learn of their family links to the Nazis. We have changed their names to protect their identity.
“I think it has to do with the loyalty that people feel towards their relatives, even if those people are no longer alive,” says Johannes Spohr, a German historian specializing in family history.
“For a long time, this topic has been a very strict taboo,” he commented in conversation with BBC Recordsdata Russian.
“Everyone I know who looked through those files found relatives,” says someone we call Hertha.
She herself found two great-grandfathers – a police officer and a teacher – in the database, but she believes that they did not commit any crime.
“At that time, belonging to the Nazi Party was not uncommon, and some people were even forced to join it simply because of their work.”
“Never join any political party”
Martin, as we call him, found his great-grandfather’s name.
“It was very shocking to me. My father told me that my great-grandfather used to say: ‘Never join any political party. I once joined one, but then I realized it was the wrong party.'”
Historians generally agree that no one joined the party “automatically”; Membership required deepest application and approval.
“Not all party members were personally involved in the crimes,” emphasizes Christian Staas, head of the history section of Die Zeit.
“But all those who chose to join the NSDAP thus supported the Nazi regime, responsible for the war, the Holocaust and many other crimes against humanity.”
However, a membership card alone cannot prove how active a person was or whether they committed crimes; That requires further investigation.
Rosa still has no details about what her great-grandfather Otto did in Bialystok.
Tens of thousands of Jewish detainees passed through the city, where records of mass executions and other atrocities were found after the war.
After confirming her suspicions that Otto was a member of the Nazi party, Rosa says she feels “a responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Privacy violation?
While some flock to the wicked data, others criticize its disclosure.
Some argue that publishing such data violates privacy.
Others believe that reliving the mistakes and traumas of the past is preventing Germany from moving forward.
“It is true that some Germans are tired of these discussions,” says Rosa.
“Some say we should ‘end it full stop’ now.”
For her, doing so would be like erasing history.
“We can’t stop teaching this to children,” she says, particularly given what she perceives as growing echoes of the same kind of rhetoric heard in Germany today.
Johannes Spohr expresses doubts about whether the study of family history helps to avoid repeating past mistakes.
However, he states that connecting with the past can foster maturity and a sense of responsibility.
“It is important to emancipate ourselves from all the myths and even lies we grew up with – the same ones that shape German society – to understand who we are and what our ancestors did.”
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