Demands for a Clean Break with the Nazi Past

“Demands for closure,” “drawing a line under” or a “clean break” (Schlussstrich) from the Nazi past are a constitutive mode of post-Holocaust antisemitism. They were and are used to express the wish that the remembrance of the Holocaust should be ended, the confrontation with (Nazi) antisemitism discontinued and payments to the victims stopped. Demands related to the Holocaust are a phenomenon that is particularly widespread in Germany and Austria, the countries from which the Holocaust originated and where the main responsibility lies. Furthermore, such demands are found primarily in discourses of societies in which co-responsibility was accepted in the first place and where a corresponding sense of complicity is felt. In a German context, they first aimed at a legal and moral exoneration of the perpetrators and of Nazi society in general. After the phase of repressing Nazi crimes was gradually followed by confronting them, the advocates of a clean break have been making further demands. They claim that remembering historical crimes or taking responsibility for them imposes a significant and unjustified restriction upon the development of national identity, as well as potentially the personal development of individuals within that society.