BERLIN — The message is not new, but it still smarts in Germany: The Catholic Church stood by during the Holocaust, and full atonement is long past due.
That’s the message of American scholar Daniel Goldhagen’s latest controversial book, which is under attack from the church.
Acting on complaints that a photo caption was incorrect, a German court issued a recall of some of the books in Germany.
Goldhagen said the injunction was a ploy by the church.
“The photo was misidentified by the archive that provided it, Goldhagen said.
A new German edition is now in bookstores. The book is scheduled to appear in the United States at the end of this month.
Goldhagen is known for his book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” which argued that there was a unique German “eliminationist anti-Semitism” that allowed ordinary Germans to participate in the Holocaust.
Before a packed audience in a Berlin theater, Goldhagen said that if it wishes to repair centuries of injustice that culminated in the Holocaust, the church must make the fight against anti-Semitism “a core teaching” alongside its traditional messages of “love and goodness.”
His book examines church actions and inactions regarding the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany and proposes radical acts of atonement, including issuing new editions of the New Testament.
At a debate on Sunday, Hans Joachim Meyer, president of the board of the Central Committee of the Catholic Church, charged that “this is not an historical book” but “an agitator’s pamphlet.”
Both Goldhagen and his critics were heckled during the debate.
On stage with Goldhagen and Meyer were Julius Schoeps, director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies in Potsdam, and Georg Denzler, historian at the University of Bamberg. The discussion was moderated by Jan Ross, an editor for the newspaper Die Zeit.
“It is false to say the Shoah could have been stopped by the church,” said Meyer, who added that the church already had rejected its anti-Semitic teachings.
Schoeps agreed, but noted that German bishops successfully protested against the Nazi “euthanasia” program. Thus it is fair to say that the church could have done more to stop the destruction of European Jewry, he said.
Denzler, a prominent Catholic critic of the church, joined Meyer in condemning Goldhagen’s work.
Calling Goldhagen irresponsible for producing a work with “no source list,” Denzler asked whether the author really believed that ” the main message” of the Christian Bible “is to beat the Jews to death.”
“My conclusions are difficult to listen to,” Goldhagen said. He called the book “a moral, philosophical investigation” rather than a work of history.
“There is no argument about the need for a debate,” Meyer said. “But is this a book that encourages debate?”
“Without it, there would be no debate,” Schoeps replied, drawing cheers and boos from the audience.