Germans and Jews since 1945: the politics of absolution, amends, and ambivalence

Germany's collective consciousness and much of its public discourse since 1945 have been marked by the mass murder of Jews. Some scholars, while condemning the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, have assigned some of the blame to Jews. In order to limit expressions of historical revisionism, the Bundestag in 1986 enacted a law criminalizing the public denial of the Holocaust. After the founding of the Bonn Republic, German leaders began to seek a way of 'making up' for the crimes against the Jews and adopted a policy of reparations. A complicating factor in German attitudes is the gradually increasing number of Jews in the Federal Republic. They were mostly from the former Soviet Union. As their country gains power will Germans rewrite history so that the consciousness of Nazi crimes will be effaced?