“I celebrated　my bat mitzvah together with him 13 years later,” Meschede said. “In essence, I am living German-Jewish dialogue every day within myself.”

For the past three years, she has led a German-Jewish Dialogue group in Newton, where people ranging from the Holocaust generation to their grandchildren (no great-grandchildren have attended, as yet) meet monthly. It’s one of three such groups in the Boston area.

At the June meeting, the group heard from Judi Bohn, special projects coordinator for Facing History and Ourselves, the Brookline-based group that fosters education nationwide about the Holocaust and fighting hatred.

“History is knowing what happened in the past,” Bohn told the group. “Memory, however, is: what does this have to do with me?”

She said Facing History doesn’t just teach students about the horrors of the Holocaust and other genocides. “We ask why,” she said. “Why were there so many bystanders? Were perpetrators victims?”

Bohn acknowledged that such questions don’t have simple answers. She said that her organization urges young people to look at their own lives and consider how the underlying issues apply today, such as with bullying.

Bohn noted that each generation has its own challenges in coming to grips with the past. She said one survivor didn’t tell her story for 40 years, finally breaking her silence in a talk before a class.

“It was a breakthrough for her, and she now talks with her children and grandchildren about her past,” Bohn said.

As for successive descendants　of Holocaust survivors, she said, “We’re asking them to go to places they may not want to go.” She gave voice to grandchildren, who might be struggling with their own Holocaust identities: “If I get up in front of a group, who am I?” She also noted that nothing happens in one session. "You’d be amazed what comes out in time – they bring in excerpts from Grandma’s diary, or show other relics," she said.

“I think that it [the descendants coming forward] has to do with courage,” said attendee Ruth Fisher of Newton, a German-born Jew who said her father had been taken away to a concentration camp. “I was deprived of a normal childhood, but my children wanted to participate in my memories and experiences,”　she said. However, she said that they also felt inadequate. “They have told me that they are not survivors,” she said.

“So many times, people feel excluded from events that precede them,” said Bohn, in response. “We can’t expect the second or third generations (called “2Gs and 3Gs”) to do what their parents did [to understand their experiences firsthand].”

Another attendee commented that children in any situation are far less likely to follow in the footsteps of their parents as they were even one generation ago, when, for example, it was common for family businesses to be passed down, or for children to remain in their hometowns, while a 2G next to her spoke about taking his entire family back to Breslov. “I think that left an impression with them, by seeing and touching it all, seeing the gravestones,” he said. “Because Jews were targeted for extermination, they didn’t have an option,” said Bohn. Now, the Newton group understood, successive generations did, and hopefully, they would choose to perpetuate their survivor ancestors’ stories.

Bohn addressed why many survivors did not speak for decades, and how their children often didn’t ask. “Survivors put up a wall because they felt that no one wanted to listen,” she said. “Then, the second generation put up another wall.” One group member then said that she never dared to ask her grandmother about her experience during the Holocaust, because she sensed that her grandmother did not want her to.” She explained that her grandmother remained rooted in World War II, so frozen in her memories that she was unable to voice them. “They often don’t want kids to know,” said Bohn, explaining that a lack of caring in their progeny might frighten them. “They may fear indifference. It is their way of coping,” she said.

Bohn speculated that the third generation, as opposed to the second, might have it a little easier. The third generation, she explained, can often be more willing to listen and share the stories of their grandparents. “There was a different kind of anti-Semitism relevant to the children of survivors,” she said. “Their parents may have been more concerned with assimilation, shedding their accents, trying to fit in,” said Bohn. “This is what the second generation watched.” Their children, by contrast, could then bypass these challenges and go straight back to the past.

Attendee Edgar Krasa of Newton, who survived Terezin, Auschwitz and other camps as well as being shot while on a death march, did not begin telling his story over 40 years after the war. He focused on his family and career instead, but it was music that brought him out. “I worked till 1991, and did very little speaking about the Holocaust,” he said. But in 1991 I was　at Mass. College　of Art to look at an exhibit of paintings and drawings created in Terezin.” In an adjacent room, a string quartet was playing musical works. “I recognized　the works as those composed in Terezin,” he said. He spoke with Mark Ludwig, director of the Terezin Music Foundation and a Boston Symphony Orchestra cellist who was playing that day in the quartet. “I joined up with him, and together we brought this music to schools, colleges and other institutions,” said Krasa.

Krasa also joined Facing History and Ourselves, which arranged for him to tell his story at schools. By word of mouth, he received other invitations to speak, and also worked with students on theses and dissertations on the music of Terezin. In 2005, he told his story to this writer for “I Refused to Die,” and again this year for another book, “The Music Man of Terezin,” about his experiences in musical productions conducted by Rafael Schaechter while in Terezin

At the Newton talk, he mentioned that he, like many survivors, continues to avoid distressing situations that spark remembrance. “I can’t watch violence between people,” he said. However, Krasa does speak regularly at synagogues, schools and other public venues, and.

“People resonate so much with what you say,” Bohn told Krasa, acknowledging that he had to move ahead in his life, because his connection to his past was so emotional.

Bohn spoke of another coping mechanism used by some survivors, which she termed: “dropping your past like trash.”

That was the case with survivor Rosian Zerner of Newton, a member of all three German-Jewish Dialogue groups. “It wasn’t trash, it just wasn’t there,” she said. “I simply blocked it all out until the year 2000.” She first joined the Belmont dialogue group and then the others in 2000. “It was a test of fire, not an easy step for a survivor,” she said. She became a leader of the Newton group, and is on the steering committee of the Belmont group. “It is interesting that there are three groups in this area - more than the entire rest of the country - and that they have been going so 19 years.” Indeed, there is no other U.S. city that hosts three such German-Jewish dialogue groups, let alone many other such groups at all. “I know of possibly two,” said Zerner.

Dani Krasa, whose mother, Hana, as well as his father, Edgar, are survivors, said that his parents also did not drop the past like trash, but focused on moving forward and building a new life. His parents, he said, never told him the complete story directly, but they did talk about their experiences amongst other survivors in his presence. It would have been impossible for them to block it out anyway, he explained, because they were surrounded by survivors while living in Israel after the war. “My grandmother, however, was stuck in the Holocaust,” he said, “because the age when you experienced the Holocaust may contribute to how you talk about it. My parents were in their early 20s and looking forward, but my grandmother was already in her 50s when the war ended.”

Dani Krasa is married to Meschede, the dialogue group leader. After graduating from high school　in Germany,　she spent a year in Israel “to meet Jewish people with the hope of portraying a different German than most Jews envisioned,” she said. “I had the best time of my life there, making long-lasting friendships, and learning about Jewish life.

She met Krasa at Israeli folk dancing at M.I.T., and works as a research director at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management　at Brandeis University.

The Advocate inquired further into her background in an interview. She was raised in Hannover, Germany. “My parents were children during the war,” she said. Her grandfathers were Nazi party members, she said, but were not involved in any atrocities. Did her in-laws, the Krasas, have any problems with their son marrying a German? “Of course they did,” she responded. “But when they met my family and got to know us, we developed a very strong relationship.” In fact, she explained, the Krasas visited her parents twice in Germany, and also twice in Prague, their place of origin.

Meschede’s parents, who were visiting from Hannover, were present at the Newton meeting.

“I was apprehensive when Dani talked with me about meeting with Tatjana’s parents,” said Edgar Krasa. “But I heard about her interest in Israeli social life during a year-long stay in Israel and also about her frequent　attendance at Israeli folk dancing, where Dani　met her,” he said. “Meeting her personally warmed me up, and when I met her parents, it left no doubt,” he said, adding that she recites Friday night candlelighting prayers and reads from the Torah. Their meetings, he said, were conducted in English.

“We … could not ask for better in-laws,” Hana Krasa said. “When we visited them in Germany, we were welcomed with open arms. To hold blame, I feel, is ridiculous.”

The Krasas’ attitude is by no means universal. Bohn showed the group the 1995 book “Parallel Journeys,” by Eleanor Ayer, a biography of Holocaust survivor Helen Waterford and of former Hitler Youth member Alfons Heck that chronicles their unlikely, ten-year speaking partnership, which began in 1980, when Waterford read a newspaper column by Heck about his former life, and contacted him.

Waterford invited him to join her at a gathering of Holocaust survivors. There, they were ostracized. Nonetheless, they launched a joint lecture tour that garnered notice that included appearances on “Good Morning America” and “CBS Nightwatch,” and articles in the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune, and other major press.

“They were ostracized by some,” said Bohn, “but other survivors said to them, ‘what good does it do us if what we bring forward is the same hate that brought us to the ovens?’”

Bohn next showed a clip from a documentary, " Ghosts of the Third Reich," which features German descendants of Nazis who are determined to set a new example. One woman　in the film related how her grandmother had said it was all lies. “My brother and I were very angry,” she said in the clip.

Bohn said that the documentary portrayed the guilt suffered by some descendants of Holocaust perpetrators. “Their lives are still shattered,” she said. “Some might even be reluctant to have children, because they might pass on some of the poison.”

Attendee Cary Aufseeser,　a son of Holocaust survivors from Newton and a former leader of the group, spoke about meeting German filmmaker Malte Ludin, who made a documentary about his Nazi officer father called “2 or 3 Things I know About Him.” Aufseeser said that he had asked Ludin why he made the film. “He answered that his family had simply thrown out the past, and he felt an obligation.”

Yet attendee Anja Bernier of Newton, who was born and raised in Germany, said she was less personally affected. “My grandfather was involved, but he was one of so many,” she said. “I feel that my country has a responsibility and is guilty, but I myself, no.” Meschede said that Bernier attends regularly because she is interested in the dialogue.

The dialogue group was founded by Helmut Lang,　then-deputy consul of Germany in Boston, and Julie Gotschalk, a　therapist, when they began a group nearly 20 years ago. Subsequently, two other groups were formed in Belmont, and at Brandeis. Zerner said that she had always heard that the Belmont group was formed because the Newton group was full, and not accepting new members. Sabine von Mering, Director of the Center for German and European Studies at Brandeis University, facilitates the Brandeis group.

Meschede said the German consulate remains closely involved and current deputy consul Claudia Schuett has attended many meetings. The American Jewish Committee has been supportive in the past; former AJC Executive Director Larry Lowenthal remains on the Steering Committee of the Belmont group.

“For years, Germany invited two Jewish members of each group to participate in an all-expenses paid, two-week educational trip to Berlin at the European Academy,” said Zerner, who said that the program is no longer offered.

Meschede said the group is made up mainly of Holocaust survivors and their children, along with area native-born Germans. “The Newton group at present has more survivors, the Belmont group more Germans,” she said. “When we hold joint meetings, it is quote equal.”

Recent speakers have included a German pastor, who discussed Jewish Christian Dialogue groups in Germany; an 8th grader from the German International School in Boston who talked about the school’s Holocaust education program; a local filmmaker who documented Germans who converted to Judaism, and Texas author Bryan Mark Rigg, who wrote "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers.” by　Bryan Mark Rigg, as well as presentations about Jewish life in Germany today.

In an interview, Bohn said that in New England, New York 　and Memphis, Facing History is piloting programs to train descendants of Holocaust survivors to research their family’s past and give talks in classrooms.

“Participants become part of the Facing History learning community as they begin their own journey of wrestling with their place in this history,” she said. “You want them to feel it here, in their hearts. Not to shed the past, but to pass it on.”