Repentance for the Holocaust

C. K. Martin Chung is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University.

• Introduction: The German Problem of VergangenheitsbewältigungPart I: The Jewish Devise of Repentance: From Individual, Divine-Human to Interhuman, Collective "Turning"Chapter 1: "Turning" in the God-human relationship Chapter 2: Interhuman and collective repentance )Part II: Mutual-Turning in German Vergangenheitsbewältigung: Responses and Correspondence1: "People, not devils"2: "Fascism was the great apostasy"3: "The French must love the German spirit now entrusted to them"4: "One cannot speak of injustice without raising the question of guilt"5: "You won't believe how thankful I am for what you have said"6: "Courage to say No and still more courage to say Yes" (P6) Chapter 7: "Raise our voice, both Jews and Germans"8: "The appropriateness of each proposition depends upon who utters it"9: "Hitler is in ourselves, too"10: "I am Germany"11: "Know before whom you will have to give an account"12: "We take over the guilt of the fathers"13: "Remember the evil, but do not forget the good"14: "We are not authorized to forgive"

In its attempt to model a desecularizing methodology his study draws renewed attention to received critical commonplaces surrounding German Vergangenheinbewaltigung, offering a rich bank of historical examples. The book also demonstrates how important, but also how difficult, it is to (re)admit not just the sociology of religion but also theology itself into the realm of contemporary interdisciplinarity.(The German Quarterly) The issues discussed in this book continue to have resonance in, for example, current German policy on refugees and on attitudes to Israel. The first part of the book is biblical scholarship; the second relates to postwar German history. It is quite possible to be interested in one of these parts without being interested in the other. Either way, Chung writes really well and explains difficult and controversial issues very clearly and fairly.(The European Legacy) Chung approaches the aftermath of the Holocaust from a theological angle. His work is structured clearly and with the reader in mind, enabling them to navigate what is quite a dense text with ease, reading it in either a linear fashion or cross-referencing between the biblical analysis and relevant study of the German response.(Journal of Jewish Studies)