Repentance for the Holocaust

In Repentance for the Holocaust, C. K. Martin Chung develops the biblical idea of "turning" (tshuvah) into a conceptual framework to analyze a particular area of contemporary German history, commonly referred to as Vergangenheitsbewältigung or "coming to terms with the past." Chung examines a selection of German responses to the Nazi past, their interaction with the victims' responses, such as those from Jewish individuals, and their correspondence with biblical repentance. In demonstrating the victims' influence on German responses, Chung asserts that the phenomenon of Vergangenheitsbewältigung can best be understood in a relational, rather than a national, paradigm.

By establishing the conformity between those responses to past atrocities and the idea of "turning," Chung argues that the religious texts from the Old Testament encapsulating this idea (especially the Psalms of Repentance) are viable intellectual resources for dialogues among victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and their descendants in the discussion of guilt and responsibility, justice and reparation, remembrance and reconciliation. It is a great irony that after Nazi Germany sought to eliminate each and every single Jew within its reach, postwar Germans have depended on the Jewish device of repentance as a feasible way out of their unparalleled national catastrophe and unprecedented spiritual ruin.

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

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.

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.

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.

Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College, author of The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany:

With Repentance for the Holocaust, C. K. Martin Chung has accomplished a truly remarkable feat of scholarship and theological understanding, moving through biblical and rabbinic texts with ease and then addressing complex issues of modern Jewish thought as well as Christian theology. But what is extraordinary about the book is its overall argument. The idea that there are theological resources within Judaism, unique to Judaism, that have something important to say to Germans after the Holocaust is something I have never heard articulated by anyone, Jew or Christian. I am simply amazed by the audacity and brilliance. Chung's book will spark wonderful discussions among scholars, and I can't wait to participate in them.

Jeffrey S. Librett, University of Oregon, author of Orientalism and the Figure of the Jew:

C. K. Martin Chung considers the Jewish-German relationship after the Holocaust with a high level of ethical sensitivity and subtlety, an unwavering compassion, and a sense for the necessity of justice as well as mercy in dealing with this history. His approach calls to mind the orientation of G. E. Lessing or much more recently Emmanuel Levinas, both of whom stress, within widely divergent discourses, the priority of the ethical over the epistemological. Chung has written a history of post-Holocaust repentance that reveals what might become universally available guidelines for reconciliation processes in various global contexts.