Helmut Ortner | Gnadenlos Deutsch. Perpetrators, helpers, spectators – and the disposal of the Nazi era

Germany in the post-war years: A „denazified“ nation struggled to forget what it had concealed: its willingness to participate in a system of barbarism. In the collective repression and forgetting, the horror and uniqueness of the Holocaust’s rupture of civilisation and the wars of extermination were lost. National Socialist madness became an interchangeable metaphor for evil, personal guilt was relativised. In this way, all the indifferent, accomplices and helpers disappeared from the historical field of vision – and thus also from co-liability and co-responsibility for a criminal system of rule. A people on the run from its own past. Helmut Ortner’s essays and reportages are a plea against any trivialisation and relativisation of the Nazi past. Because there is an obligation: to remember. At a time when right-wing populists and the AfD want to put an end to the culture of remembrance, Helmut Ortner opposes the disposal of the Nazi era. It is about the present of the past, because the Nazi past is not time-barred.

Helmut Ortner writes for numerous newspapers and magazines, including Frankfurter Rundschau, Cicero, Focus and The European. His most recent publications include: Ohne Gnade – Eine Geschichte der Todesstrafe (2020), Das klerikale Kartell. Why the separation of church and state is overdue and Heimatkunde. False truths. Real lies (both 2024). His books have been translated into 14 languages to date. Helmut Ortner is a member of PEN Berlin.

„Today’s blameless generation has only one obligation: to remember!“(Excerpt from an interview with Helmut Ortner)

Helmut Ortner: Mercilessly German. Perpetrators, helpers, bystanders – and the disposal of the Nazi era
Completely revised and expanded new edition
approx. 320 pages | paperback | Euro approx. 24.-
ISBN 978-3-86569-450-8

Published by Alibri Verlag in February 2026. You can also purchase the book at the event.

An event organised by the Fritz Bauer Forum.