The school of life
With Aktion Sühnezeichen in St. Petersburg
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Political education is supposed to help overcome prejudices and to enable people to make use of their capacity for reason without being told what to think by someone else. No didactic material, however well prepared, can re-place the lessons one can learn from life. While performing his alternative service at the beginning of the 1990s with Aktion Sühnezeichen, the author helped to look after four elderly ladies who were able to relate a great deal about Stalinism and Nazism. A decade later, these issues are at the centre of a debate in historical studies.
(Osteuropa 8/2005, pp. 163–170)