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This volume describes the preparation and the work of three consecutive Group Relations Conferences between 1994 and 2000 concerning German-Israeli relations in the post-Holocaust era. This is pioneer work: difficult, painful and brave, from the sides of the organizers, authors and participants, who were psychoanalysts from Germany and Israel. After the three conferences that are described in this book, the work has continued in including other groupings affected by the Holocaust, like Diaspora Jews and Palestinians. This has resulted in a new organization, Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities (PCCA), whose aim is to learn from the Holocaust about dealing with other atrocities.
The authors underline the importance of the actual presence of the other in producing desirable change in one's identity, which is why they chose the format of a Group Relations Conference, which was modified for this special aim. In the first post-war decades, there was an inability to mourn as a group in the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPV), even if there was individual grief: “Individual awareness anticipated the collective one by a decade”. In the second stage, from the early 1980s, German analysts acknowledged their personal responsibility with the help of Hillel Klein and Rafael Moses. This occurred in moving group experiences in, among other places, Wiesbaden, in 1984. It also meant the painful realization, in R. Vogt's words (quoted in the book) that “Hitler's heirs are embarking upon the heritage of Freud. The one heritage mixes with the other like fire and water.”
In these conferences, the German analysts could fathom their heritage of the Holocaust only in the presence of Jewish colleagues. The Conference experience, grouped under different thematic headlines, is beautifully described in a collage written by 28 participants and staff. Identity issues dominate over emotional contents; this also applies to the image of the other, the “not-me”. Another painful and striking f