With the term “second guilt”, Ralph Giordano gets to the heart of the failure of German society after the Holocaust.
He examines what happened to the persecutors and deplores the sanctimonious and incomplete way Germany coped with its past, an approach that was based on amnesty for the Nazi criminals, who were reintegrated into postwar society. This “second guilt” contributed significantly to shaping political culture in Germany; Giordano calls it the “great peace with the perpetrators”. Since, at the same time, collective guilt was not acknowledged, it was impossible for a reliable foundation for the culture of remembrance to take shape. This refusal to deal with the Holocaust represents a major moral failure. Yet Giordano also wrote the book in the hope that what had already led to persecution and war once would not be repeated.
