Ep. 50 "Learning from the Germans - Race and the Memory of Evil" with Susan Neiman

This interview with Susan Neiman—Philosopher, Author, and
Director of the Einstein Forum—and Dr. Nils Roemer was recorded
in April 2021. The two discuss her book "Learning from the
Germans" which delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a
country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. It has
been edited to better fit a podcast format.


-- In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate
over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate
monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s
Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective
on how a country can come to terms with its historical
wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil
rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her
adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she
combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and
interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with
the evils of their own national histories. Through discussions
with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the
breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich
Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the
story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their
effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United
States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for
equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to
the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice
activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the
work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent
history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider
the nuanced forms that evil can assume, so that we can recognize
and avoid them in the future.