According to unofficial figures, 30,000 people disappeared in Argentina under the military junta from 1976 to 1983. The ‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’ are commemorating them here. | Image: Marcos Adandia / Keystone

In his youth, Willy Brandt had been compelled to flee his native Germany to escape the Nazis. Nearly 40 years later, in December 1970, he was the Chancellor of West Germany and on a visit to Warsaw where he placed a wreath before the memorial to the victims of the Ghetto Uprising. He suddenly sank to his knees, creating an image that went all around the world. He remained kneeling for a moment, his hands clasped.

Whether this simple gesture was spontaneous or planned in advance, it was understood as a plea for forgiveness for the crimes committed by the Nazis during the Second World War. It also symbolised an acknowledgement of German guilt.

“Switzerland’s complicity was suppressed for a long time and obscured by a mythical, national narrative”.Jakob Tanner

Switzerland had close economic ties to the Nazi regime, but it took a long time for it to face up to what it did both before the Second World War and during it. Its complicity was suppressed for a long time and “obscured by a mythical, national narrative”, says Jakob Tanner of the University of Zurich. He is a retired professor of history and was a member of the Bergier Commission that was set up in 1996, under pressure from the USA, to investigate Switzerland’s involvement in Germany’s wartime economy and its policy of extermination.

Before that date, says Tanner, it was impossible to embark on any kind of reappraisal or open debate about the topic. There was no sense of any guilt in Switzerland, and this situation was compounded by positive memories of its armed neutrality and by the political necessities of the Cold War. There was a widespread belief that Switzerland had owed its survival solely to its ‘steadfast spirit of defence’. It was not until 2023 that the Federal Council spoke out in favour of establishing a national memorial in Bern.

The laborious process of acknowledging guilt

According to Tanner, there are three ways in which we must recognise past injustice: Emotionally, by admitting that there were perpetrators who exercised violence and coercion. Cognitively, through scholarly research into the past. And materially, through making financial contributions and paying compensation – though this cannot be regarded as ‘reparations’ in the true sense of the word. “Coming to terms with history demands a lot from those who’re involved. They have to acquire knowledge, engage in critical analysis, and pose questions of themselves”, says Tanner. “Memory and remembrance don’t just come automatically of their own accord”.

A constructive policy of remembrance would have to listen to victim groups and also draw younger generations into the process, says Tanner. In countries such as Russia or China, in contrast, a nationalistic policy of remembrance is imposed from above, because any search for historical truth could prove a threat to those currently in power. Collective acts of memory can also fail if an ostensibly democratic country starts to glorify its own past and spreads a ‘great-again’ narrative of the kind that’s booming today in the USA and in right-wing European parties. “History then shrivels down to the level of reactionary nostalgia of a kind that primarily appeals to those who feel threatened”.

“The state itself was complicit because it failed to punish former warlords, allowing them instead to run for public office”.Cassandra Mark-Thiesen

This lack of any state culture of remembrance about past crimes is in fact a global phenomenon. Cassandra Mark-Thiesen is a historian who used to work at the University of Basel and is now at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. She was born in Liberia in West Africa, one of the poorest countries in the world, and is currently researching into how that country is dealing with its burdensome legacy. Liberia first endured a military coup, then two long, brutal civil wars that claimed up to 250,000 lives between 1989 and 2003 and displaced half of the overall population.

The state itself was complicit, says Mark-Thiesen, because it failed to punish former warlords, allowing them instead to run for public office. But the victims have not ceased to call for justice. Mark-Thiesen is convinced that processing the past is something that primarily has to take place in schools and universities, and in the public sphere. But Liberia lacks both the resources and the political stability necessary for the state itself to initiate a culture of remembrance and commemoration. What’s more, she says, “While the state remained silent about the recent civil wars, it focused on remembering the country’s colonial history”.

When perpetrators and victims remain

The simplified version of this story tells how Liberia was founded by emancipated Black slaves from the USA in the 19th century, while the American Colonisation Society was actually behind it. But last spring, the Liberian government announced that it would set up an office for war crimes and economic crimes, including a special court for crimes committed in the civil wars.

Mark-Thiesen is examining how historical memory can be used to the benefit of politics and the reconstruction of a nation state. If reconciliation is the goal of a culture of remembrance, this usually means promising forgiveness for past injustices. But it’s difficult, she says, to commemorate events if people are still suffering from their consequences. She has three specific questions in this regard: “How does it feel to live side by side with former perpetrators, or even to have them in a position of power over you? What if those perpetrators are unknowing, or refuse to admit their guilt? And what does it mean for a state when it’s engaged in protecting those perpetrators when its real task ought to be to protect its ordinary citizens?”

Rwanda has used its traditional, pre-colonial, ‘gacaca’ courts to embark on a path of its own in trying to come to terms with the past.

Rwanda offers us an example of an attempt to reconcile survivors and perpetrators – people on both sides who were directly affected by what happened between them. Spring 2024 marked the 30th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, when up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. One of the very first measures taken was to remove any reference to ethnicity from people’s identity documents.

Rwanda then used its traditional, pre-colonial, ‘gacaca’ courts to embark on a path of its own in trying to come to terms with the past. These community-based tribunals were held at the site of the offences and compelled those accused to answer to the local population. According to experts, however, the results achieved were ambivalent.

“The crimes committed in Argentina often had the backing of corporations, political parties, the media and right-wing organisations, all of which remain active today”.Jens Andermann

Latin American countries – e.g., Chile and Argentina – have adopted yet another stance in dealing with their past, their military dictatorships and civil wars. Their victims are remembered in many different ways. Jens Andermann is a literary scholar and a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University who used to teach at Zurich University. He lists various forms of expression that are used for remembrance in South America: There are initiatives that originate among the broader population, such as rallies, but there are also state-run truth commissions, memorials in former torture centres, and so-called ‘Stolpersteine’, cobblestone-sized memorials in the ground in places where those who ‘disappeared’ lived last, or where they were abducted.

Entire landscape installations have even been set up to try and come to terms with the horrors perpetrated: The Chilean author Raul Zurita, for example, had a line of poetry about the victims of the dictatorship dug into the Atacama Desert: ‘Ni pena ni miedo’ (‘Neither pain nor fear’). This memorial can only be read when you fly over it.

The dangers of assigning collective guilt

According to Andermann, the problem is that the crimes committed back then “often had the backing of corporations, political parties, the media and right-wing organisations, all of which remain active today”. This makes it very difficult to achieve any kind of social consensus that state-organised violations of human rights may not be tolerated.

Nevertheless – despite their dreadful experiences of suffering and loss – the victims and their relatives across the entire region have been campaigning for a societal reckoning with what happened, not for retribution: “Thousands of people were murdered in Chile and Argentina in a bestial manner, but there hasn’t been a single case where extrajudicial vengeance has been taken against any of the perpetrators”.

“It is not clear how collective guilt differs from individual guilt and whether people can be guilty for all the deeds of a state”.Benjamin Matheson

This is why Andermann believes that these two countries provide us with examples of a successful culture of remembrance. The opponents of their criminal regimes have produced powerful images and symbols that are used today all over the world – e.g., banners with the passport photos of those who disappeared, or white silhouettes that visualise their absence in the form of chalk drawings on pavements.

These examples of collective memory and guilt are extremely diverse. Dealing with historical memory on a theoretical level could provide a means of orientation. This is exactly what the philosopher Benjamin Matheson does at the University of Bern: “My aim is to make suggestions on how people can deal with and overcome collective guilt and shame”. Many discussions focus on how governments can make amends for past injustices. However, the way in which individuals think about a burdensome past has hardly been clarified, says Matheson.

Developing a theory of guilt

Nor is it clear how collective guilt differs from individual guilt and whether, and to what extent, people can be guilty for all the deeds of a state, or only for some of them. And whether or not redemption from guilt means that you are no longer responsible for something for which you were previously responsible.

Matheson also wants to know whether and when it is appropriate to blame an entire group for an injustice. On the face of it, such collective blame harbours dangers: “People can be implicated in crimes that they did not commit”. Even more dangerous is the possibility that attributing collective guilt for genocide could lead to new genocides and thus to a spiral of violence: people might justify killing others on the grounds that they were responsible for a previous offence.

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