In "Guilt About the Past," based on guest lectures that Bernhard Schlink gave at Oxford University last year, the University of Berlin law professor describes the "long shadow" cast by the perpetrators of war crimes on their descendants.
"The act of not renouncing, not judging and not repudiating carries its own guilt with it," he states in the book published in January by University of Queensland Press.
Last week in this column I discussed issues of guilt and atonement as they relate to Germany and Japan. This week I will examine how concepts of responsibility and self-questioning apply to the United States of America.