November 3, AD 2023

The German Green Party Leader Addresses Germany's Historic Responsibility To Israel and Jews

I understand that addressing the responsibility for past national and government crimes can be a sensitive and complex issue. My argument for utilizing an understanding and acknowledgment of these particular crimes to solve present problems, rather than attempting to settle scores or indulge in resentment towards long-dead individuals, was displayed recently in the German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck's message of November 2, 2023.

As I said in my recent talk at the Anglicanism vs. Polarization conference hosted by the John Wesley Institute, we should not focus on the past to avoid dealing with the present. Performative catharsis over old sins does not fix current problems. Because of the historical crimes of Nazi Germany (1933-45), the present German government (1949-now) has a special relationship with Israel. The German Vice Chancellor used the Federal Republic of Germany’s unique responsibility to Israel, the Jewish state, to justify and explain the determination of the German government to oppose antisemitism today. It is worth a watch.

History is the handbook of the citizen. Sometimes you have an opportunity to redress grievances as Germany did in the 1952 Luxembourg Agreement to settle claims by Jewish victims of the Nazis and to provide economic compensation to Israel for resettling the Jewish refugee victims of the National Socialist regime. Sometimes, too much time has gone by, and the guilty are long dead. However, in either case, recognizing and addressing past wrongs through a determination to do better and to fix the present is how we can break the cycle of resentment and conflict and move towards a more just future. The history wars don't have to be forever wars.