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Looking back at World War II Family Histories
Surveys in recent history have shown that many Germans want to believe that their ancestors had nothing to do with the crimes committed by Nazi Germany. Members of the younger generation, though, now want to know for sure — also out of concern for Germany’s political future

By Susanne Beyer, Der Spiegel Geschichte 19/2025, May 3rd 2025

„Children, meanwhile, have an extremely intimate relationship with their parents, says the Cologne-based doctor and psychotherapist Peter Pogany-Wnendt, the descendant of Holocaust victims who is a member of the board at the Working Group for Intergenerational Consequences of the Holocaust. First and foremost, he says, because children are existentially reliant on their parents during the first years of their lives. „The close bonds remain even if they don’t get along well” – which means, he says, that the stories told by parents are often not questioned.“

>> read full article (behind paywall), der Spiegel 19/25

How we remember in the 21st century
By PAKH-member Oliver Sears (Holocaust Awareness Ireland)

Oliver Sears explores Holocaust memorialisation through the prism of his own remarkable and tragic family history. How best, he asks, do we honour and preserve history, in the 21st century?

Yom HaShoah, which fell on 23 April this year, was the first official Holocaust Memorial day, established in Israel in 1951 to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. It took another 54 years before the UN designated 27 January International Holocaust Memorial Day.

With extraordinary courage and, knowing that they could not possibly win, a group of young, poorly armed ghetto fighters defied the might of the SS for a month, stemming the continuous deportation of Jews from the ghetto to Treblinka, a death camp north of Warsaw where some 900,000 Jews were murdered in 18 months, gassed within 90 minutes of arrival. 90 per cent of the Warsaw ghetto was deported to Treblinka, where there were no more than 60 survivors. While their resistance was futile, the ghetto fighters bought the 55,000 remaining ghetto residents an extra month of life, a month which offered them their last winking ember of hope before the ghetto was finally liquidated and they, too, were deported to their deaths.

>> continue reading

PAKH-member Oliver Sears on RTE Radio 1

On a family friend, Josef Cukier, stranded in London at the outbreak of WW2, and his plan to rescue his wife and two daughters, Jews caught in the chaos and terror of Nazi-occupied Poland

>> listen to RTE

I think of the hostages and their tortured families and weep for the broken generations in Gaza. Whatever injustice, historic and current, that successive Israeli governments have served to the Palestinians, there is no resonance with the Holocaust

The Irish Times, 6th May 2024

I was invited to join PAKH, the study group for intergenerational consequences of the Holocaust, last September. Comprising the descendants of victims and perpetrators, we meet to discuss our impossibly complex family stories.

Recently, online, we listened to Israeli Rami Elhanan and Palestinian Bassam Aramin explain how they work together to promote peace. The subjects of Colum McCann’s 2020 novel, Apeirogon, these heroic men each lost a daughter in the decades-long conflict. Their determination to focus on the importance of respecting the rights of the individual, their lack of self pity and how they have come to rely on each other, emotionally, is humbling to observe.

Both men possess the insight of inherited trauma, along with their own piercing personal loss. Bassam’s stems from the displacement of his people, Rami’s mother was, as he says laconically, a graduate of Auschwitz. They both agree that the absence of Palestinian self-determination was the reason they lost their children and that Israeli society entire needs a total reset. It’s clear to them that both Hamas in Gaza and the settlers who have taken over the Israeli cabinet are a disaster for both peoples…

These two remarkably dignified, emotionally literate men are the embodiment of Viktor Frankl’s maxim that to understand your own pain you must first help someone else understand theirs; and that when pain has meaning, it is no longer pain. Bassam says they are not friends but are brothers. They show us what is required to break the cycle of hatred. Rami was clear that it’s not necessary for Palestinians and Israelis to love each other but respect is the key.

As I think of the hostages and their tortured families and weep for the broken generations in Gaza, I accept with an open heart that, among my fellow PAKH members, I have come to love and embrace children and grandchildren of monsters. And this, in the Ashkenazi tradition of trying to repair the world, headache by headache. On Yom HaShoah, I sense this is the furthest point from despair that a heart like mine can travel within the boundaries of this difficult inheritance.

Oliver Sears is founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland

Breaking the Spell of the Nazi Past: How to find a voice and a language to address NS war crimes within one’s own family
with PAKH second chair Alexandra Senfft

Center for German and European Studies, Brandeis University
Wednesday, December 13, 2023
>> listen to event

Irish Radio Station RTÉ Radio 1
CLIP • 30 MINS • 09 DEC 2023 • BRENDAN O’CONNOR

Oliver Sears, founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland, joins Brendan to talk about his life as the son of a Holocaust survivor, and to give a Jewish perspective on the debate surrounding the current war in Gaza.

>> listen to interview

View on YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok3Ss1aPntw

London born, Dublin-based art dealer and curator Oliver Sears is joined by award-winning author and critic Daniel Mendelsohn for an intimate and illuminating conversation about this powerful exhibition, The Objects of Love, on view at 92NY’s Weill Art Gallery from September 13 through November 28.
First shown to great acclaim at Dublin Castle in Ireland, The Objects of Love vividly tells the story of one family torn apart in Nazi-occupied Poland. This emotional journey unveils Oliver Sears’ family story through a curated collection of precious objects, photos, and documents passed down through three generations. How do we honor our loved ones — and our own personal histories — in the wake of atrocity? What story emerges, reconstructed from objects and keepsakes retrieved from the Holocaust, about what we’ve lost?
Recorded Sep 13, 2023 at 92nd Street Y, New York.

In 2021, we launched a new group called »Storytelling Lab«. This group meets once a month online, for the time being. It is designed for newcomers to PAKH who would like to gain insight into our approach to dialogue and wish to learn about intergenerational transfers. Our focus is on the intergenerational consequences of the Holocaust and the ways in which the past continues to affect us personally and collectively. We also address current topics that are directly or indirectly linked to the NS era and its aftermath. The group is open to non-members of PAKH; anyone who is interested in our activities or is considering membership is welcome.