Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of "Civilizations: Culture, Ambition and the Transformation of Nature":
"A classic, candid memoir, a gripping historical document, and a moving tragedy of conflicting minds and hearts, identities and generations."

First published in Germany in 1979, Gauch's memoir of his relationship with his Nazi father was the first of many post-World War II accounts by the children of war criminals. He tells it quietly, in clear, short vignettes that mix memory with his present-tense reflections. As he arranges his father's funeral, Gauch remembers a caring dad and a frail old man. The telling is part of the meaning; it's as if he can't bear to confront what the reader wants to know--what did his dad do for the Nazis? Every now and then, a fact erupts. The honorable physician was once a "desk murderer" whose eugenic theories supported the slaughter of the Jews. He admired Hitler. He was Himmler's personal physician. Until his death he was an unrepentant anti-Semite who denied the Holocaust ever happened. Is the son guilty by proxy? Could he love his father but be horrified by what he did? There's neither self-righteousness nor resolution. What this wrenching story shows and tells is that the son can never free himself of his father's guilt. Hazel Rochman

Book Description
The classic novel of a young German trying to come to terms with his father's horrible past.

Back Cover copy
I recall the long solo car journeys when I would think about my father: the Oberfeldarzt (Retired), the Reichsamtsleiter in the SS, the adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, the author of New Foundations for Racial Research, the man described by the chief prosecutor in the Eichmann trial as a "desk murderer," the man I knew: my father.
In 1979 Sigfrid Gauch published the groundbreaking Vaterspuren (Traces of My Father), the first of the so-called father books about the relationships of postwar Germans with their parents. It inspired a new genre in German literature. Ever since, such writings have greatly contributed to Germany's ongoing struggle to overcome its past.
This autobiographical novel is Gauch's attempt to come to terms with his father, Herman Gauch-a physician who had joined the National Socialists in the 1920s, who wrote six books of "race research" as a member of the SS, and who to his dying day remained an unrepentant Nazi. The story alternates between the images of the elder Gauch's death and burial and the author's memories of childhood and adolescence.
Unlike many of the father books, however, Traces of My Father is less a political attack than a personal journey. Gauch, though honest about his father's monstrous actions and ideas, does not shirk their shared emotional bond. The result is a poignant attempt by a son to relive his father's notorious life and in so doing free himself from the man's influence.

About the author
Sigfrid Gauch was born in 1945 in Offenbach am Glan, Germany. He has published six collections of poetry, and his prose books include Goethes Foto (Pfalzische Verlagsanstalt, 1992) Winterhafen (Gollenstein Verlag, 1999), Zweiter Hand (Gollenstein Verlag, 1997). He resides in Mainz where he is the director of the literature department of the Ministry of Culture. Traces of My Father is now in its fifth printing in Germany, and the book was recently translated and published in Hebrew.
William Radice is a poet, translator, and head of the department of South and South East Asia and senior lecturer in Bengali at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. His twenty books include six collections of his own poetry and translations of the poems and stories of Rabindranath Tagore for Penguin Modern Classics. His most recent books are Particles, Jottings, Sparks: The Collected Brief Poems of Rabindranath Tagore (HarperCollins, 2000), Myths and Legends of India (The Folio Society, 2001) and Gifts: Poems 1992-99 (Grevatt & Grevatt, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2002). He lives in the United Kingdom.
Antony Copley is a historian, and honorary reader and senior research fellow at the University of Kent (UK). His books include Gandhi: Against the Tide (Blackwell, 1987), and Sexual Moralities in France 1780-1980 (Routledge, 1989). He is currently completeing a study of Edward Carpenter, E. M. Forster and Christopher Isherwood and their engagement with Indian spirituality

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Online: http://www.sigfrid-gauch.de