tral Archive for Empirical Social Research at the University of Cologne,
which had hosted my project and provided me with an office, threw a going-
away party for us. In addition to the usual well-wishing, eating, drinking,
and reminiscing that take place at such affairs, I was asked to sit for an hour
or so in "the hot-seat" at the front of a large seminar table. According to
German custom, each of my friends and colleagues was then to be given the
opportunity to ask one question that person had always wanted to ask, and
I would be obliged to answer. Perhaps the most important question I was
asked was to sum up in a nutshell what my experience in Germany over the
last several years had meant to me. This was impossible to answer ade-
quately at the time, and I still find it impossible to answer adequately now.
My time in Germany had meant too much to me for any facile words. Still,
I did give something of a response.

I began saying that I had benefited enormously both personally and
professionally from my nearly six years in Cologne and would always trea-
sure the time I had spent with German colleagues who became close friends
over the years and who made both me and my family feel at home. I then
explained that I was grateful to all of these people because they had been so
gracious and kind to someone who was working on a subject that had caused
intense pain and difficulty for their country and sometimes for them per-
sonally. After this I apologized for the difficulties and discomfort I may have
caused them, for I knew that their phones had rung off the hook from angry
callers during the surveys I had conducted, that I had burdened them with
scores of embarrassing questions, and that I had probably made them
squirm in their seats at times during formal lectures I had delivered and in
the course of private conversations with them. Finally, I said that I could
only hope that my German friends and colleagues could conduct research
on one of my own country's most disturbing and traumatic historical prob-
lems and receive such decent treatment as I had received in their country.

Another question I have often been asked and will probably be asked in
the future is why I would spend so much time and energy on such a de-
pressing topic as Nazi terror, especially when I seem to be neither Jewish
nor German. Occasionally I have bristled when answering this question, as
I did when a young assistant editor at a respected publishing house in New

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