A few years ago Linda Kinstler discovered that a man fifty years dead – a former Nazi who belonged to the same killing unit as her grandfather – was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation in Latvia. The proceedings threatened to pardon his crimes. They put on the line hard-won facts about the Holocaust at the precise moment that the last living survivors – the last legal witnesses – were dying.

Across the world, Second World War-era cases are winding their way through the courts. Survivors have been telling their stories for the better part of a century, and still judges ask for proof. Where do these stories end? What responsibilities attend their transmission, so many generations on? How many ghosts need to be put on trial for us to consider the crime scene of history closed?

In 2019 the lecture series This is America. Reflections on a Divided Country started as a collaboration between the Bavarian American Academy and the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism. In this series, renowned intellectuals are invited to examine historical developments and discuss the current political and cultural state of affairs in the United States.

Moderation: Andrew S. Gross, Professor of North American Studies at the University of Göttingen since 2015. Previously Andrew Gross held positions at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (2012-2015), at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Free University of Berlin (2004-2012), and at the University of California, Davis (1993-2004).


Photo: Linda Kinstler ©Pete Kiehart