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Moral philosopher Susan Neiman has studied how Germany came to terms with the crimes of nazism. She explains why the US and Britain should take note
When Susan Neiman’s German friends discovered she was working on a book called Learning from the Germans, they laughed. “They told me: ‘You cannot publish a book with that title. There’s nothing to learn from the Germans; we did too little and too late.’ And there is something paradoxical about saying: ‘Well, we committed this terrible crime, but weren’t we great at coming to terms with it?’ You can’t really say that. But someone who’s a semi-outsider as I am, can, in fact, say that.”
Neiman, a moral philosopher, spent part of her childhood in the American south and she has written a comparative study of how Germany has come to terms with the crimes of nazism, and why the US, in failing to confront its own human rights abuses, should take note. Ambitious and detailed, it ranges from the initial reluctance of German citizens to begin the process of truth and reconciliation to small-town Mississippi, and the shooting of nine African American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, four years ago. Continue reading...