All Protestant churches in the Berlin-Brandenburg area presented their congregants today with a text indicting all adult Germans as possible accomplices to the Nazi mass-murder of Jews.
The Protestant Church officials for the area, which includes a section of East Germany, ordered the reading of the text which begins: “All Germans who were old enough to recognize the National Socialist atrocities and the extermination of the Jewish people–even if they themselves helped their Jewish fellow-citizens–must admit that they too made themselves accomplices because of their lack of watchful and self-sacrificing love. “
The text ends with this sentence: “With God’s mercy we must confess to having lived for a long time in grave aberration. From now on, we turn to our Jewish fellow-citizens with feelings and deeds such that they may confide in us again. “
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
