Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, thousands of Germans are suddenly discovering something their families hid all their lives - that a grandmother, grandfather or parent was a member of the Nazi party. The reason is digital: millions of NSDAP membership cards have finally become searchable online.

The records were long locked behind strict German privacy laws. Their fate is almost cinematic - they were on their way to destruction in the final days of the war, until an American military intervention saved them. Since the US National Archives published them, major German media launched public search tools, and the response was massive - thousands of messages arrived from readers who found their ancestors in the lists.

Researcher Jürgen Falter discovered that his own mother, a liberal Catholic, joined in 1940 - a secret she kept all her life. „Millions of Germans wanted for decades to believe that their families were not involved in the violence and the crimes," reads one interpretation. „Now, eighty years after the war, many are beginning to re-examine that taboo subject and the family legends."

The date of joining says a lot - those before 1933 were probably ideologically convinced, while those after 1933 often sought a career or protection. But what matters most is the very willingness to look the truth in the eye. And there lies a question that concerns all of us in the Balkans: how easy is it for us to open our own archives, to admit what our own people did, rather than defend them as heroes? Someone else's past is always easier to judge. Your own takes a courage we rarely have.