After Auschwitz: The Difficult Legacies of the Gdr (Paperback or Softback)

From the moment of its inception, the East German state sought to cast itself as a clean break from the horrors of National Socialism. Nonetheless, the precipitous rise of xenophobic, far-right parties across the present-day German East is only the latest evidence that the GDR’s legacy cannot be understood in isolation from the Nazi era nor the political upheavals of today. This provocative collection reflects on the heretofore ignored or repressed aspects of German mainstream society―including right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism and racism―to call for an ambitious renewal of historical research and political education to place East Germany in its proper historical context.

Enrico Heitzer is a research assistant at the Sachsenhausen Museum and Memorial / Brandenburg Memorials Foundation

Anetta Kahane is a writer and chair of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which she founded in 1998.

Martin Jander, historian, lecturer and journalist, teaches German and European history at the Berlin campuses of Stanford University and New York University, and in the FU-BEST program.

Patrice G. Poutrus is a Research Fellow in the Department of Modern and Contemporary History and History Didactics at the University of Erfurt as part of the project "Dictatorship, Experience, and Transformation: Participatory Memory Research." Since 2016 he has been a member of the DFG network "Foundations of Refugee Research."