Category Archives: Biographical Work

Alexandra Senfft, l’héritage du silence

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Près de soixante-dix ans après sa condamnation à mort et son exécution comme criminel de guerre, la mémoire de Hanns Ludin, ambassadeur du Troisième Reich en Slovaquie, continue à peser sur ses descendants. Alexandra Senfft, sa petite-fille, a brisé le déni familial.
La Croix, François d’Alançon, 14/08/2017
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21.Juin 2017, Allemagne, Landsberg am Lech, Baviere, Alexandra Senfft, auteur , photographier sur la cimetire de Spšttingen, avec des tombes de la deuxime guerre mondiale Cemetery Spötting Landsberg am Lech © Maurice Weiss/Agentur Ostkreuz

«Living with the Dead: Sharing the Truth and the Pain of the Past»

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in: Clio’s Psyche: Understanding the “Why” of Culture, Current Events, History, and Society
Special Issue on Psychology and the Holocaust: Part II
Meeting Report, Volume 21, Number 2, New York, September 2014, Pages 210 ff
excerpt:
Tomi, my grandfather is dead, but you are alive,” I say. Tomi agrees with a sense of relief as we hold on to each other, somewhat lost and yet not alone. We still have a long way to go in order to come to terms with a past that is haunting most of us up to this day. Sharing this experience with Tomi was the right thing to do. My daughter and the film team were with us and wrapped us in cotton wool, supporting us in our shared sorrow. We weren’t alone at all. Dan Bar-On once said to me “Alexandra, you might lose some of your family over working through the past, but you will find others to fill their place.” “It couldn’t be truer,” I think gratefully, as Tomi and I leave the cemetery arm in arm, nestled by a cocoon. In the face of the rising populist, right-winged develop-ments in Europe, I wonder though if all our efforts are too late.»
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Silence is Such Sorrow – Schweigen tut weh

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Despite the fact that Germans, both academically and politically, have taken great strides towards exposing the crimes committed during the National Socialist period, silence still continues to rule with respect to the biographical handling of the past. Not only within the context of families, but also in society more generally, the perpetrators are always »others«.
JMB Journal 6 »Generationen«, July 2012
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