Compromised Identities? Reflections on Perpetration and Complicity under Nazism

Why did so many remain passively on the side lines, turning a blind eye until it was too late? And how did those who witnessed or became involved in acts of perpetration later live with their past? How have cultural representations of ‘perpetrators’ affected individuals, and how do we respond to such images today?

Using historical and cultural sources, this discussion – based on an AHRC-funded research project, ‘Compromised Identities? Reflections on Perpetration and Complicity under Nazism’ – reflects on the ways in which people engage in moral compromises, or seek to justify or disassociate themselves from behaviours which compromised their identities in their own eyes or in the view of others.

Image: Germans forced to see bodies exhumed from a mass grave, Suttrop, North Rhine-Westphalia, May 3, 1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 08197 © Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park.