Blood guilt

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blood guilt or kin liability is the attribution of responsibility for the alleged transgressions of one's relatives, kin, somewhat related to guilt by association, which is determined by physical or communicative proximity rather than genetic or familial proximity.

[edit] In Nazi Germany

The concept of blood guilt was the basis for the laws called sippenhaft. The sippenhaft laws were once used by Nazi Germany to arrest and occasionally execute the families of political dissidents, namely those involved or connected to the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

[edit] In the Soviet Union

Joseph Stalin's regime also practiced a form of the blood guilt. Close relatives of enemies of the people were regularly labeled as "traitor of Motherland family members" and prosecuted.