Learning, to Learn from History – A Conversation with Géraldine Schwarz

Join the Human Rights Program at on March 7 at 12:30 PM for a book talk with acclaimed author Géraldine Schwarz about her memoir Those Who Forget: My Family’s Story in Nazi Europe. Lunch will be served.

During World War II, Géraldine Schwarz’s German grandparents were neither heroes nor villains; they were merely Mitlaüfer—those who followed the current. Once the war ended, they wanted to bury the past under the wreckage of the Third Reich. Weaving together the threads of three generations of her family story with Europe’s process of post-war reckoning, Schwarz explores how millions were seduced by ideology, overcome by a fog of denial after the war, and, in Germany at least, eventually managed to transform collective guilt into democratic responsibility. She asks: How can nations learn from history? And she observes that countries that avoid confronting the past are especially vulnerable to extremism. Searing and unforgettable, Those Who Forget “deserves to be read and discussed widely…this is Schwarz’s invaluable warning” (The Washington Post Book Review).