Facing an Imperfect Past with Responsibility, Courage, and Hope
20 October 2025
The Frightening Past The past can be a painful place to visit or dwell in. It can be more comfortable to avoid it, be ignorant of it, rewrite it, or reshape it to reinforce whatever we need it to - or worse, make it fit an ideology. Today political justifications and villainization of the other thrive on reductionist and often wrong (yet attractively simplistic) narratives. Fascist, Nazi, and Communist histories are reduced and weaponized. Teachers, charged with helping students to thoughtfully investigate the past in order to build a better future, are threatened. History is deemed “divisive” if it raises questions of the past that might undermine a narrative that feeds one groups’ identity, power, and ideology. Much of this is based on identity needs and fear that is easily manipulated. That is why the work that we did at the Cohen Center for the past twenty-four years were guided by the insightful charge of its founder, Dr. Charles Hildebrandt, “to remember…and to teach.” Memory needed to be examined, confronted, questioned, and reflected upon. To help each other, we needed to face difficult history. To resist manipulation, we needed to make sure that we confronted history and the constructions of memory with informed, courageous, and responsible questions.
The Son of a Perpetrator Martin Rumscheidt came into my life because of Hank Knight and Franklin Littell’s Scholars’ Conference on the Churches and the Holocaust. Martin exemplified the courage that many of our contemporaries lack. Rather than shun history, Martin had to confront his own, very personal history. Martin grew up in a privileged Nazi home in Leuna in central Germany where his interpretation of history and his own identity was shaped by Nazi frameworks. Years after the war and after his father’s death he discovered that his father, an IG Farben executive, had been a perpetrator. His father’s wartime diary revealed his trips to Auschwitz. His own playmates had been the children of officers in Auschwitz III. His brother had been killed fighting for Germany and he and his mother barely escaped a strafing of their town by American aircraft. How could his father, even his country, be wrong? He had accepted his father’s explanations that those facing judgement in postwar trials, the family friends, were victims of “victors’ justice”. And yet, the narratives he was brought up did not ring true after the war. He fell in love with a young woman only to be astonished that she was a Jew. The stereotypes and fears evaporated, and questions were raised when his loving family, always friendly, forbid her entering their home. The more questions he asked his father, the more their relationship was in peril. Martin continued to love his imperfect father, but questioned “how much of him is in me?”
Shame not Guilt Martin had no guilt for what had happened, but he felt responsible for the shame of his father’s actions. He was a humble penitent, able to make that distinction between guilt and shame. He began to recognize the deep-seated Jew hate he had been taught and described himself as an “antisemite in remission”. He wondered if he had any right to or even should try to rectify the past. Survivors told him, while holding his hands, that he must speak. He accepted the responsibility for a difficult past, worked with survivors, became a theologian questioning Christian antisemitism, and was a beloved speaker at our summer institutes helping teachers as their guide and companion.
The German Brings the Jew Back to Auschwitz Martin did not reject facing difficult things. Asked by the Jewish daughter of a survivor (if memory serves), he accompanied her in a trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau site. Upon arrival, she hesitated, Martin held her hand and assured her that they would do this together. As the day grew darker, they found themselves separated in the ruins of the camp, each facing their own encounters with the past. Martin was in the part of the camp that his father had visited. He was unable to move. This time, she was the one to find him, to hold his hand, to help him find his way out. He would remember that day as the day “the German brought the Jew to Auschwitz and the Jew brought the German out.” I often think about this painful, yet deeply humane moment. His framing continues to puncture my safe space, that part of me that wants to face things alone, perhaps to keep it inside and not to burden others. And yet, we cannot do this alone. We all need companions along the road. We also need to get out of ourselves and our own deeply felt concerns and worries by listening to, and walking with, an other. If we can think about the face of the other as well as our own, we both become safer, more free. As a Christian theologian, Martin would talk about how the ability to mourn for others allowed for his own resurrection.
Legacy of Courage It has taken time, but Germans now continue this courageous confrontation with the past. Katharina Matro, a third generation German and high school teacher in Bethesda, Maryland talks of how, when being educated in Germany, she was exposed to her country’s history without mercy. Instead of guilt or despair, she discovered that she became a more informed citizen, a more critical thinker, more aware of social injustice, and a patriot who, as the German president stated, loves [her] country with a broken heart. She argues that this makes her a better democratic citizen as the past shapes her responsibility to people today.
Franklin Littell.
My Turn Few countries try to face their own difficult history and that includes the United States. That can change. If Martin and Katharina can face the responsibility towards a Nazi past and come out stronger, then who are we to be afraid? Confident, courageous, and responsible people and societies are not afraid of the past. Healthy democracies, building a better world for all its citizens, rely and thrive on it. We can mourn what was done in our name. We can recognize human imperfections, worry less about guilt and more about responsibility, and let ourselves escape the trap of “victimization”, fear-induced narratives that restrict our freedom, confidence, and hope. We will not be weaker by raising important questions of the past. Rather, we will gain the strength and confidence to hold each other’s hands while finding a way out of darkness and despair.