Shankar Vedantam

Hanno is from Germany.

The last time Hanno saw his maternal grandfather alive, his grandfather hinted that he had a shocking secret, that he was an officer in the Nazi forced labor service during the Holocaust, and that he had witnessed or even joined in the ethnic cleansing of Jews.

So Leslie, Hanno went on to say how troubled he is by learning the secret.

He now feels a terrible sense of responsibility for the actions of his family members, people who are long since deceased.

Hanno is obviously not responsible for the actions of his grandfather.

Would he have been better off not learning this terrible secret?

In some ways, Hanno's story reminds me that there are some secrets that are actually held not by just individuals and not just by families, but by entire groups of people.

I want to stay with Hanno's story for a second.

I'm struck by the fact that many Germans to this day, you know, still feel the shame of the Holocaust.

Many keep secrets like Hanno's family does.

But it's also striking that many Jewish Holocaust survivors prefer not to discuss the horrors that they witnessed or that they experienced.

They don't talk to their friends and family about what happened.

I'm wondering what this tells you about the nature of secrets, Leslie.

Yeah.

When we come back, could keeping a secret ever be a good thing?

You're listening to Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedant.

Leslie John is a psychologist at Harvard University.