The Council of the Evangelical Church in West Germany issued a public warning to Germans today that “Christians must not stay away from and be indifferent to the trials involving Nazi crimes” taking place in West Germany.
The Council said that the courts had to do their duty and added that it had to be recognized that “a part” of the German people “lack understanding in this respect. ” The statement also asserted that Nazi crimes had to be discussed in the country’s schools and in religious education and that young Germans “had to become aware that this subject did not concern only the past.”
Dr. Hermann Dietzfelbinger, Evangelical Bishop of Bavaria, stressed that “if we meet in honesty the question of guilt (for the excesses of the Nazi regime) we shall help in the recovery of our people. ” He declared that “as Christians and as a people, we are bound to our past” and expressed regret that “there has been so little solidarity in respect of our guilt.”
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