The following is an attempt to describe how my Holocaust research and my German heritage intersect. I claim a space for my work with the video testimonies of Holocaust survivors, which is not created by my guilt feelings, but as an intellectual pursuit. This pursuit is nonetheless haunted by overwhelming feelings and deep silence. It tries to integrate the nameless affect via a careful analysis of countertransference responses and to invent a new language emanating from survivors’ memories and images. I also discuss some biographical details and the difficulty of living with the absence of a dialogue, one that never happened, between the Jews and Germans of the first generation.