The following paper traces the ways Nazis elided knowledge of the true nature of the atrocities they committed, both during events and afterword. It examines their methodical distortion of reality, creation of a language of euphemisms, and their evasion of the emotional and moral consequences of their deeds. Rats and lice were killed, not people; Jews were relocated to new work places, not sent to death camps; prisoners were put through showers, not into gas chambers; and dead bodies were Stucke (German for “pieces”), not human corpses. Even after the war, truth continued to be avoided through a plethora of detailed screen memories that created a series of myths, such as the belief that no one except the top leadership knew what had transpired, and that Jews chose to die, bore no resentment, were all forgiving and were completely unaffected by the genocide.

Perpetrator defenses constituted a rigid, closed belief system, which allowed for no dissonance or new information and which shaped the sociocultural heritage of subsequent generations, casting shadows on our theories and lives and impacting the analytic dyad. Defenses and screens against knowing have been dissolving over time.

Conscious perception of past and present reality must be examined in light of the distorting potential of the sociocultural legacy of traumatization, which is hidden in the lacunae of our narratives of the catastrophes of history.