After Auschwitz: The Difficult Legacies of the Gdr - Paperbackby Enrico Heitzer (Editor), Anetta Kahane (Editor), Martin Jander (Editor) From the moment of its inception, the East German state sought to cast itself as a clean break from the horrors of National Socialism. Nonetheless, the precipitous rise of xenophobic, far right parties across the present day German East is only the latest evidence that the GDR's legacy cannot be understood in isolation from the Nazi era nor the political upheavals of today.