Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich

Knowing the worst is terrible but, as Bar-On finds in this powerful and compassionate book, not knowing it is even more terrible. With persistence and an odd tenderness, he explores the psychic wounds of silence and suppression. "Legacy of Silence" is a journey as much as a study. Bar-On traveled with personal trepidation and on a dangerous intellectual borderline.--Richard Eder "Los Angeles Times " "Legacy of Silence" is a record of Bar-On's interviews with the (now adult) children of men who ranged from minor functionaries of the Holocaust to serious mass-murderers...This account probably comes as close to total honesty as it is humanly possible to achieve. And such is [Bar-On's] skill as an interviewer that one feels his partners in dialogue have likewise reached the limits of bearable insight into the mentality of their elders.--John C. Marshall "Nature " The strength of the book is the way in which he shares his own self-discovery with that of his interviewees, many of whom had not had the chance to think and talk systematically about their guilty parents before the interviews. The book is particularly interesting in light of the recent "Historikerstreit" in Germany and the bitter controversy about the uniqueness or otherwise of the Holocaust. Bar-On is light-years removed from any attempt to minimize the Final Solution...The humanity of this study is not the least of its virtues.--John Hiden "History " "Knowing the worst is terrible but, as Bar-On finds in this powerful and compassionate book, not knowing it is even more terrible. With persistence and an odd tenderness, he explores the psychic wounds of silence and suppression. "Legacy of Silence" is a journey as much as a study. Bar-On traveled with personal trepidation and on a dangerous intellectual borderline." --Richard Eder, "Los Angeles Times"""Legacy of Silence" is a record of Bar-On's interviews with the (now adult) children of men who ranged from minor functionaries of the Holocaust to serious mass-murderers...This account probably comes as close to total honesty as it is humanly possible to achieve. And such is [Bar-On's] skill as an interviewer that one feels his partners in dialogue have likewise reached the limits of bearable insight into the mentality of their elders." --John C. Marshall, "Nature" "The strength of the book is the way in which he shares his own self-discovery with that of his interviewees, many of whom had not had the chance to think and talk systematically about their guilty parents before the interviews. The book is particularly interesting in light of the recent "Historikerstreit" in Germany and the bitter controversy about the uniqueness or otherwise of the Holocaust. Bar-On is light-years removed from any attempt to minimize the Final Solution...The humanity of this study is not the least of its virtues." --John Hiden, "History"