Géraldine Schwarz

In 2017 Géraldine Schwarz published Les Amnésiques at Flammarion, an autobiographic and historical essay, which was translated into more than ten languages, among them German Die Gedächtnislosen, Erinnerung einer Europäerin.

The author one day discovers that in 1938 her German grandfather Karl Schwarz had aryanised[3] a business owned by two Jewish families Löbmann and Wertheimer in Mannheim for a low price.

Her German grandmother Lydia was seduced by the life Hitler afforded Aryan women and also took advantage of the Jewish exodus from Mannheim in 1940, decorating her dining room with personal belongings from the homes of fleeing Jews.

The sons Fritz Löbmann and Otto Wertheimer were among the children of Izieu, who were traced and found in their hideout near Lyon and also deported to Auschwitz by command of Gestapo leader Klaus Barbie.

It shows, from Assmann's point of view, "that it is possible to keep up sentiments and family loyalty, and still face historical facts", and thus make from memory an irreplaceable foundation of civic education and the self-image of a nation.

[10] Samantha Power wrote in The Washington Post: "Schwarz embeds her appeal to citizens and nations to do memory work in a gripping detective story centered on her own family's history.

She has a gift for finding the single scene or exchange of dialogue that drives home her points ... Schwarz's book deserves to be read and discussed widely in the United States principally for all it has to teach us about the urgency of confronting the darkest dimensions of our own history.

"[12] In Spain Juan Luis Cebrián wrote in El País: "We are facing a similar memory struggle today and it is reflected in the controversy about transferring the corpse of dictator Francisco Franco as well as in the fraudulent invention of Katalonian history by supporters of independence".