A Roman Catholic professor of Judaic studies at the University of Duisburg in West Germany, disclosed here yesterday details of a new education program to help German students and teachers overcome their ignorance of or distorted information about Jews, Judaism, the Holocaust and the State of Israel.
Prof. Michael Brocke, addressing a luncheon meeting of the Notional Executive Council of the American Jewish Committee, said the program calls for the publication of religious and secular textbooks aimed at children between the ages of six and 19 which would be used throughout the German school system. He also reported that teams of scholars from the Duisburg Research Center have been carrying out a series of in depth analyses of the way Jews, Judaism, the Holocaust and Israel are presented by German teachers.
The program is a joint project of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on the History and Religion of Judaism at Duisburg University and the Interreligious Affairs Department of the AJCommittee.
Brocke, who is Hebrew-speaking, and Prof. Heinz Kremers, a Protestant scholar on evangelical theology and Biblical studies of the university, are codirector of the project. Consultants are Zachariah Shuster of Paris, the AJCommittee’s European expert on interreligious affairs, and Rabbi Marc Tannenboum, national interreligious affairs director of the AJCommittee.
BASIC OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT
“The basic objective of this comprehensive project,” Brocke said, “is to review all sources of information and knowledge which might perpetuate among German youth distorted views of Jews and Judaism….The purpose of these studies is not only to point to and identify deficiencies and misrepresen-
Brocke added, “In the field of Catholic and Protestant teaching, we hope to bring about a fundamental revision in the portrayal of Judaism in Christian preaching and cathechian.”
Brocke referred to a study conducted by Prof. Hans Jochum, a linguistic analysis specialist and a member of the Duisburg research team that revealed the ? of some of the problems found in German ? presently in use.
He discovered that the Holocaust is not a subject of special study in Catholic schools where knowledge of the subject is either taken for granted or relegated to brief references in the course of history lessons; that religious books generally take a defensive attitude with regard to the Holocaust and a number of them give the impression that the churches have, in comprehensive ways and with great success, helped persecuted Jews.
The problems of guilt or responsibility are either posed in the form of a question or are weakened by the listing of positive examples of Christians who aided Jews, the Jochum report said.
ELEMENTS IN THE NEW TEACHING MATERIALS
Brocke said the new teaching materials will incorporate the principle that Judaism is the area of Christianity, that the Old Testament is and remains the primordial source of belief of the people of Israel and that teaching about Jews in history textbooks should be mode an integral part of German history and represents on important element of European culture and history.
The first volume of the textbook studies is entitled “Jews, Judaism and Israel. ” It consists of seven major surveys of Catholic and Protestant textbooks used on various levels in public schools and also of basic books currently in use at theological faculties in German universities. Subsequent volumes are “The Jews and the Death of Jesus”; “A Reader in Theology after the Holocaust”; and “Textbook Analysis of Secondary schools,” ages 15-19.
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