There was silence both in the families of victims of the National Socialist regime and of perpetrators. Without relativizing the responsibility for the crimes, parallels can be established in terms of the effects. The historian and journalist Johannes Reitter reconstructs the biographies of ancestors whose involvement in the events of that time was shrouded in silence for decades. The focus is on the questions of who these ancestors were, when and under what circumstances the silence was broken and what similarities and differences can be identified. 20 individual cases are processed with the help of archives, oral history interviews and documents belonging to the families. The biography of one of the author's ancestors who was executed in 1940 is also outlined. Patterns, causes and consequences of the secrecy of Nazi crimes, followers and persecution are examined.