“When the great-grandfather turned out to be a Nazi”: Germany opened the archives, and Russia is still waiting for its shock

In Germany, more than 80 years after the fall of the Third Reich, a topic has reopened that many families have preferred not to touch for decades. It is not about school textbooks, museum exhibits, or official speeches on commemorative dates, but about a much more personal question: who the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of today’s Germans really were. BBC wrote about this.

The occasion was the publication of a digitized database of former members of the NSDAP — the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, led by Adolf Hitler. Millions of cards, which had been lying in archives for decades, are now available for search. And thousands of people in Germany have started entering the surnames of their relatives.

For some, this turned out to be confirmation of long-standing family suspicions. For others, it was a blow to the picture of the past they had carried with them since childhood.

Family memory turned out to be not what was told at home

One of the heroines of the BBC material, a resident of Berlin named Rosa, grew up in the GDR — East Germany. At school, she, like many children of that time, was told that their country was the heir of anti-fascists, and the real culprits and “bad Germans” were supposedly on the other side of the wall, in the West.

As a child, Rosa was proud to consider her ancestors as freedom fighters. But at 16, she attended a meeting with a Jewish delegation from the USA. The topic was harsh: “Children of survivors speak with children of murderers.” Rosa initially thought she belonged to the first group. Only later did she realize that American Jews looked at her precisely as a descendant of German criminals.

This was a turning point. Rosa suddenly saw family stories differently. Stories of fleeing from the Red Army at the end of the war, the silence of the elders, certain phrases from her grandmother — it all formed a different picture.

The process of restoring her family history took her more than 30 years.

Many Germans are experiencing such an experience today. When the NSDAP archive became available online, people began checking relatives, neighbors, and surnames from family legends. And it often turned out that the past was not just “complex,” but directly connected with the party system of Nazism.

Why the NSDAP database was such a strong blow

Membership in the NSDAP during the Third Reich was a mass phenomenon. More than 10 million people passed through the party. But mass membership does not negate the question of responsibility.

For a long time, finding out whether a specific person was a member of the Nazi party was only possible through an official request to the Federal Archive of Germany. Then the US National Archives made digitized documents available to the public, and the newspaper Die Zeit created a convenient search database.

It was the simplicity of the search that changed the scale of the conversation. Previously, such an investigation required writing requests, waiting for responses, and dealing with archives. Now it is enough to know the name, date of birth, and place to try to find a card.

For part of German society, this became almost a family earthquake.

Not everyone was a criminal, but everyone supported the regime

One of the main debates around the database is what membership in the NSDAP itself means. Some families try to explain it by work, pressure of circumstances, or formality. This is especially often said about police officers, teachers, officials, and people for whom a party card could help in their careers.

But historians remind us: it was impossible to automatically join the NSDAP. A person had to apply, fill out a questionnaire, sign it, and wait for a decision. This does not prove personal involvement in specific crimes but shows a political choice.

This is where an important boundary lies.

Not every party member personally participated in murders, deportations, or robberies. But joining the NSDAP meant supporting a regime that unleashed war, organized the Holocaust, and built a system of mass violence. For the Israeli audience, this question sounds especially acute. Israel emerged in a world where the memory of the Jewish people’s catastrophe is not an abstract history. It is family destinies, names, cities, ghettos, trains, camps, destroyed communities, and the silence of those who survived.

Therefore, the German discussion about family responsibility is important not only for Germany. It shows that memory does not end with the date of capitulation. It lives in documents, surnames, photographs, archive cards, and in uncomfortable questions that children ask their parents too late.

Bialystok, police, and the shadow of the Holocaust

The heaviest fragment of Rosa’s story is connected with her great-grandfather Otto. He was a German policeman in the Polish city of Bialystok — a place where terrible crimes against Jews occurred during the war.

There was a ghetto in Bialystok.

Tens of thousands of Jews passed through it, most of whom were killed. In June 1941, a massacre known as “Red Friday” occurred there: the Nazis killed up to two thousand people, and hundreds of Jews were driven into the Great Synagogue and burned alive.

It is now almost impossible to determine exactly what Otto did. But the very service of a German policeman in such a place says a lot.

Rosa later found his card in the NSDAP database. It turned out that he joined the party back in 1933 — the year the Nazis came to power. For her, this was no longer a shock, but a final confirmation that the family history she had long been piecing together was true.

She speaks not of personal guilt for the actions of her ancestors, but of the responsibility to remember. This is a fundamental difference. The current person is not guilty of the crimes of their great-grandfather, but they are responsible for whether this history will be hidden, justified, or honestly named.

This is why for NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency this topic is important not as a German internal discussion, but as part of a larger conversation about memory, the Holocaust, war, family lies, and attempts by modern societies to “draw a line” under an inconvenient past.

Why Germany is debating the “final line”

In German, there is a word Schlussstrich — “final line.” It refers to the desire of part of society to end the conversation about the Nazi past and never return to it.

This debate is not new. It began almost immediately after 1945. Many Germans wanted to live on without asking who their neighbors, teachers, officials, police officers, doctors, judges, factory workers, and party functionaries were. But the problem is that the Nazi system was not only held up by the top. It existed thanks to millions of ordinary people.

This is why the NSDAP database caused not only interest but also irritation. Some readers thanked Die Zeit for the opportunity to check family history. Others demanded to “leave the dead in peace.” There were also those who saw the publication as an attempt to make Germans feel guilty again.

But the question is not about imposing guilt on grandchildren. The question is about not allowing society to replace history with a convenient legend.

Why this concerns not only Germany

The material expresses an important thought: such an experience is needed by other countries as well. Especially those where state memory is built on the myth of eternal victimhood and eternal righteousness.

For Israelis and Ukrainians, this sounds almost literal. Russia has portrayed itself for decades as the main heir of the victory over Nazism, but at the same time does not want to honestly talk about its own crimes, deportations, imperial violence, wars, and destruction it brought to its neighbors. In Putin’s version of history, the memory of World War II often turns not into a lesson but into a tool of aggression.

Germany, despite all internal debates, shows another way: not to automatically glorify ancestors, but to check documents; not to turn a blind eye to inconvenient facts, but to bring them into the public field; not to turn memory into a slogan, but to connect it with personal responsibility.

This does not make society perfect. Historians honestly say: knowing the facts alone does not guarantee that people will not vote for radical parties. But without knowing the facts, it is even harder to resist myths.

Family history is not just an album with photographs and good stories at the table. Sometimes it is an NSDAP party card, service in an occupied city, silence after the war, and the phrase “we didn’t know anything,” which does not withstand archival scrutiny.

And this is the main meaning of the new German discussion. The past does not disappear if it is not opened. It simply transitions into the next era in the form of omissions, self-justification, and political myths.

For Israel, where the memory of the Holocaust is part of national and family identity, such archives have special significance. They remind us: crimes are committed not only by dictators. They are executed, supported, serviced, and justified by specific people with names, professions, addresses, and descendants.

And if these names become known after 80 years, it is not revenge on the dead. It is a late but necessary conversation of the living with their own history.

Why a similar conversation inevitably awaits many families in Russia

The German experience is also important because a similar conversation will inevitably await many citizens of Russia sooner or later. Not today, not in the moment of propaganda euphoria, and not when the state continues to demand silence from society. But later — when archives open, databases appear, documents, correspondence, orders, unit lists, award sheets, court materials, and testimonies of people who survived the war become available.

Russia is already living inside a big family lie. Some relatives serve in the army that came to Ukraine. Others work in security structures. Still, others write denunciations, support repressions, service the military machine, justify strikes on cities, or pretend they “are not interested in politics.”

But history rarely leaves such things without a trace.

As in Germany after 1945, many families in Russia will later say: “We didn’t know,” “he was just doing his job,” “he was forced,” “he was an ordinary person,” “she was only teaching,” “he was only processing papers,” “he was only guarding,” “he was only driving.” These explanations are already familiar from the experience of the 20th century. They are not always completely false, but almost always incomplete.

Because criminal systems are not only held up by dictators. They are held up by millions of people who perform small functions within a large mechanism: signing documents, keeping records, guarding, transporting, teaching, filming stories, repeating slogans, intimidating neighbors, staying silent at work, voting “as needed,” rejoicing in others’ misfortunes, or simply choosing not to see.

This is why future Russian family memory may turn out to be as painful as the German one. Children and grandchildren will search not only for heroic stories but for real facts: where did the great-grandfather serve, in which units, in which cities of Ukraine was he, what did he write on social media, whom did he support, what orders did he carry out, what signatures did he put, what decisions did he justify.

For Ukrainians and Israelis, this is not an abstract topic.

Ukraine is already collecting a huge array of evidence of war crimes, deportations, city destructions, filtration camps, child abductions, and strikes on civilian infrastructure. Israeli society, built around the memory of the Holocaust, understands well: if a crime is not documented, there will inevitably be those who say that “everything was not so clear-cut.”

Therefore, the question is not about collective guilt by passport. Not every citizen of Russia is a criminal. But many people within Russian society will one day face a specific, personal, and very unpleasant check: what did my father, grandfather, brother, mother, teacher, boss, neighbor do when their state waged a criminal war?

And then, as today in Germany, an archival line may turn out to be stronger than a family legend.

Because memory does not ask if it is convenient to open it. It returns through documents, names, photographs, videos, testimonies, and lists. And the longer society pretends that nothing happened, the harder the moment will be when this truth still becomes available.