As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behaviour of another person or a collective of persons. Since the end of World War Two I have not become weary of publicly arguing against the collective guilt concept. Sometimes, however, it takes a lot of didactic tricks to detach people from their supersitions. An American woman once confronted me with the reporach, “How can you still write some of your books in German, Adolf Hitler’s language?” In response, I asked her if she had knives in her kitchen, and when she answered that she did, I acted dismayed and shocked, exclaiming, “How can you still use knives after so many killers have used them to stab and murder their victims?” She stopped objecting to my writing books in German.
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946.
