Jewish-Catholic Relations and Germany’s Social Memory: Feat. Rainer Kampling

In this episode, Avraham Burg speaks with Dr. Rainer Kampling, professor of biblical theology and expert on Christian antisemitism at the Freie Universität Berlin. In a wide-ranging discussion that stretches from the early 20th century to the modern day, Burg and Kampling address antisemitism with the Catholic Church, its role in the Second World War, and the Church’s struggles to reinvent its relationship to Judaism today. Throughout the conversation, Kampling explores the Jewish-Christian relationship in Germany on the eve of the Second World War and the emotional scars that can still be felt. 

Transcript

Daniel Schwake: I'm Daniel Schwake, the director of Notre Dame's academic center in Jerusalem. And you're listening to Jerusalem Talks. In this episode, Avrum Burg speaks with Doctor Rainer Kampling, professor of biblical theology and expert on Christian antisemitism at the Freie Universität in Berlin. In a wide-ranging discussion that stretches from the early 20th century to the modern day. Rainer Kampling address antisemitism within the Catholic Church, its role in the Second World War, and the church's struggle to reinvent its relationship to Judaism today. Throughout the conversation, Kampling explores the Jewish-Christian relationship in Germany on the eve of the Second World War and the emotional scars that can still be felt.

Avrum Burg: Peace on you, Professor Doctor Rainer Kempling.

Rainer Kampling: Peace on you.

Avrum Burg: I wanted to talk to you about so many things, about the Old Testament and the New Testament and the Jewish-Christian dialogue, and about the Nostra Aetate and Germany and our mutual past and the Holy Land, both as a spiritual and political challenge. But I'd like to open in some other place, with your permission. Okay. Many hold the church, the universal church, as God's new Israel, right?

Rainer Kampling: This is an idea from the second century. Yes. Yeah.

Avrum Burg: Can I hold Berlin as the new, new Israel?

Rainer Kampling: No. No.

Avrum Burg: Explain to me my question.

Rainer Kampling: And maybe this is a center of hearts and center of joy. But it's not the new Israel at all. Even, and don't forget, Berlin, it is a very young town. No, no, especially not the heavenly Jerusalem.

Avrum Burg: But you know that I'm asking because despite the horrors of the previous century, Berlin is a very, very popular center of out of Israel Israeli-ness and out of Israel Jewishness. So, there is something there that attracts this kind of a dialogue.

Rainer Kampling: I think that personal, of course, it's a direct place between an airplane and you can go very fast. And there's a big joke now in New Berlin on the High Holidays. You hear more Hebrew in the streets of Berlin and synagogues. A long time, and even now the people I met from Israel or from the United States. Jewish people say it's a very peaceful place if you don't go to special part of the town. And so, it's very near. I think a lot of my friends in Berlin see it in another way, but I know it's really strange, but you have to remember now of course it's another history, another remembrance. Now we have the children of the children of the children. They're coming to Berlin, and they look in a little bit another way, I think.

Avrum Burg: So, I would like to take it to really your fields, which is the Christian Jewish dialogue, Nostra Aetate. And the package, when we go to the Nostra Aetate, which is 20, I mean, started 18 years, Vatican two, right after the end of the Second World War, and actually was declared 20 years afterwards. The impact of the war was still there.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: Talk to us a little bit about the relationship between Nostra Aetate of the 65 and the Second World War.

Rainer Kampling: I think first we have to remember it's like Nostra Aetate is not a product of the church Magistra magisterium. It came from the people in the churches, especially in Europe. And it is idea what was born, I would say perhaps very late in the twenties of the last century. And there are a lot of people in Europe wanting another situation between the Catholic Church especially, and the Jewish.

Avrum Burg: Why?

Rainer Kampling: Because they thought that Judah Isaac was right, the Shoah was part of the Catholic history at all. You must remember Hitler was born in Austria. The half of the German people were Catholics. And nothing happened against the Shoah. It was And of course, the church, the Magisterium, tried very hard to say We have nothing to do with it. And it was June of 45, the Catholic bishops of Germany wrote a letter and they said we didn't bow our knee before Ba’al. As a Catholic stands up against Hitler, it's absolutely it was a lie. Of course, it was a total lie. And so, the question was, is it possible that the Catholic religion is part of the Shoah? But the question what became a center for Nostra Aetate?

Avrum Burg: Let me try to understand it. Okay.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: We have the horrors of the Second World War, even if we take the package of both wars, because both were very, very horrific and was accompanied with crimes against humanity and atrocities, etc. both wars, in a way, were secular wars, because you see the way how the Nazis went after Catholic especially, I mean, in Poland and in other places. So, the church could have said, listen, it's not our business. It's because these people who departed or left the church. So why all of a sudden people at the bottom expanded their responsibility and said, it's our responsibility.

Rainer Kampling: One point, I think, is really the people were tired of the lies. For example, we have a letter by Konrad Adenauer.

Avrum Burg: He was the chancellor, the prime minister of the time.

Rainer Kampling: And a Catholic.

Avrum Burg: And a Catholic. That's right.

Rainer Kampling: He wrote 1947, but in a private letter, of course, the bishops doesn't anything to help the Jews. And if you are looking in, and I know it's easier to understand a schul in Habad, but to understand Catholic Church you have 1924 it was declared that anti-Semitism is a sin, a strict sin.

Avrum Burg: But this is in the Weimar Republic. That was the last eruption of liberalism before Nazis took over.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, but it was 1924 declared in a papal letter. The words are, and as we all know, what is called antisemitism is a sin because it's hate. So first it's sin. And you have to see that the German bishops, like any bishop in the Catholic system, have to lead the Catholic people to heaven. But they never said they have to stop to be sinner like it is. And they stopped them. Not before killing of Jews or even Polish priests. The people always say, why did Pope Pius the 12th didn't say anything? He did anything to kill the killing of the Polish priests. So, it's a problem. And so, looking back, the Catholic bishop did nothing against the devil of the Nazi time.

Avrum Burg: Can I offer you a little bit of a different reading? Okay.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: Let's say that the bishop and the priest and the clergy is a human among humans. And if the society goes this way, they go that way. They're not much different, though. They have maybe a heavier ethical responsibility, but maybe the feeling, the guilt feeling that led or generated the Nostra Aetate was even if Europe is so secular since Spinoza and since Kant and since Hume and since whatever, even if Europe is so secular, it's a Christian space. So, something so horrific happens amongst us. So, whether we did it ourselves or not, whether we supported it or were indifferent, this is secondary to the fact that it happened here and that we have to take a position.

Rainer Kampling: Yes, it's true, but you have to see that I wouldn't use the word guilt. This is a problem that you will find nobody who says he has guilt.

Avrum Burg: But shame? What will you use as a emotional term, conscience term?

Rainer Kampling: So how to say it? If I only can say it as a historian, as Theologian. The laying of the German guilt start at the 8th May of 45, 1945. There will be, of course, it was a Nazi, a Protestant bishop, telling the people now it's enough. You have to talk about it. Nothing happened. But what is with our German soldiers in Russia or something like that?

Avrum Burg: What about.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah. What about? 

Avrum Burg: Yeah. What aboutism. yeah

Rainer Kampling:  there's a lady writing for the New York Times. I don't remember her name yet. Really great. She made beautiful photos, and she wrote in a letter to her mom, I think, believe it or not, I don't met any Nazi at all.

Avrum Burg: And the year is 45?

Rainer Kampling: In the May of 45? You must remember one of the doctors in Auschwitz, he were captured by the British Army, then put to Poland, and he wrote his wife from the jail in Poland. I don't understand why I'm in jail, I didn't anything. And if you are looking at the Eichmann protocols, I don't think that it is bad. He was. He doesn't feel guilt at all.

Avrum Burg: This is what Hannah Arendt said.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, but Hannah Arendt has a wrong word for it. I'm a little bit more like Gershom Scholem. She was talking at the very, very devilish of humankind can be in the banality of the humankind. So this is different.

Avrum Burg: Hang on, hang on, hang on. You. You fly too high for me. Let's touch down for few seconds. Okay. Yeah. Say, if I understand you correctly, you actually say two things. On one hand, the Nostra Aetate was a kind of inner Christian dialogue about assuming some responsibility, regardless of the Jews. It's not that the Jewish lobby put a pressure on the church, do something unlike what happened 20 years ago. It's an inner debate within the church, and the second inner way I use the word you didn't like because I don't have any better one. It gave birth, the Nostra Aetate of 65 gave birth to theology, maybe not theology of guilt, but theology of responsibility.

Rainer Kampling: I forgot to say there was a problem. The feeling against the hate against the Jews came mostly from the Bible. So told the Magisterium a hundred of years. And you see, we have a biblical revolution in the last century and the 50 years, the last 50 years. And even Catholics can't believe that the whole total populace was the whole Jewish people were standing in front of Pontius Pilate. It was a problem of legitimation. And I have to tell I always tell stories, it's a problem of my learning Hebrew. It was only five years telling stories because he didn't like to teach Hebrew. So, my Hebrew was very bad, but I know a lot of jokes. But so, you must imagine, 1958, a commission of the Pope wrote, we need new theology of Judaism. 

Avrum Burg: Towards Judaism?

Rainer Kampling: Toward Judaism, and about Judaism. And of course, the text is on Latin, so it's hard to explain. The Yudia means all, and then they have a very clever Catholic idea. They say the Catholic Church was never against Jews. This is an invention of the Protestant church, and every Catholic who has something against the Jews are heretics because they behave like Protestants. This is a typical Catholic's ideas in these times, you always bashing Protestants, always a problem. And it was a very clever text, especially about Roman 9 till 11 but they were not allowed to publish it. Oh, they were not invited to the council. Nothing. And so, it was like not allowed Scripture, and they make it by their own in the private houses and put it through the houses of the church until 1975, they were not mentioned. And then there was the celebration is a problem against or about? It is an inner Christian problem. For example, you have to see John 23. He helped Jews in Istanbul during the war.

Avrum Burg: He was the nuncio.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: He was the papal emissary to the region.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, to the region. And he knows a lot of Jews in Istanbul and elsewhere. And he knows, of course, the Jews from Venice. He was Patriarch of Venice. So, it's always a person. And then you see, the next great step is not Paul VI visiting Israel, but John Paul, a man becoming pope who played as a child, football, soccer, with a Jewish.

Avrum Burg: In Warsaw.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, with a Jewish boy. The first, perhaps like Petrus, but I don't believe there were a lot of Jews becoming Pope. So, what I want to say is, I call it the fight against anti-Judaism, against hate, against the Jews is part of the self-liberation of the Catholic Church.

Avrum Burg: From? Liberation from? Be exact.

Rainer Kampling: From unbelieving. And now, of course, he is talking theology.

Avrum Burg: So, let's take it for a second, okay? What happened? Because of the atmosphere and the zeit of, of the time, the zeit of.

Rainer Kampling: The German zeit.

Avrum Burg: Of the mid 20th century, it was essential to get liberated from the pathological relationship between the old church and the new church, between the old Israelites and the new Israelites.

Rainer Kampling: This is pathology is a very, very good word for it.

Avrum Burg: So, this was the time there is a coffee in Jerusalem called Azza Berlin, which in the junction of the Gaza Street, in which I was born. And, you know, my family, we were born there and rehov baharav Berlin. So, the beautiful name of the coffee is Gaza, Berlin or Berlin Gaza. So, I ask you now, at the time in which we know what Gaza means in in 21st century, should this liberation should liberate the little bit more beyond just liberation with the Jews, but be expanded to a different kind of a conversation with the Muslim world as well, or at least the Palestinian one.

Rainer Kampling: The Catholic Church are very, very great contacts to the Muslim world. You must remember, of course it's visiting mosque, and...

Avrum Burg: I mean, I'm sorry, Rainer. Not the gesture of the Pope. I mean, the theological level, the abstract level. Because the Nostra Aetate, as much as Ratzinger tried to walk away a little bit from it, was a theological statement later became the implementation by gestures of popes, visiting schuls, synagogues, visiting mosques, etc. I say on a theological level, should there be a Nostra Aetate towards the Muslim world?

Rainer Kampling: There is a part of Nostra Aetate to the Muslim world? The center of the text is, sorry, but I have to say it first of Latin cum estimata with a great joy.

Avrum Burg: Estimation, appreciation.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, with a great joy. It's hard to translate. We are in modern times. Even the young Catholics don't understand Latin at all. If you are not a Catholic, you will never notice that Nostra Aetate about Catholic Church and the Jews is the same but begins with what was described in the Catholic imagination the sacrament of marriage, and you know, a Catholic marriage is not to be dissolved. So, and with the Jews. It's of course not the question, but a really surprising thing about the Muslims is to say we are praying to the same God. This is a problem, as you perhaps know, because the Muslims don't see it in this way. This is the first, but.

Avrum Burg: I put it like this, leave aside the issue of one God or Trinity. Leave this aside. The commonality between Jews and Christians is that both accept the Old Testament and argue about the new one. The disagreement between Christianity and Judaism, and Christianity versus Islam, that Islam does not accept the Old Testament. So there is no common text.

Rainer Kampling: Sorry, Avrum. I'm a fight my whole life in this field.

Avrum Burg: I know. 

Rainer Kampling: There wouldn't be any Christianity without Judaism. There wouldn't be any. Because without Judaism and the so-called Old Testament, but is part of the Catholic Bible, the Greek Old Testament. So, you perhaps remember the Maccabees are part of the Catholic Bible, but not of the Jewish Bible.

Avrum Burg: It's an external book in Judaism.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah. I only say Hanukkah. Hanukkah. Yeah, this is not the same. Even if you only look in history. There is Christianity without Muslims. But it's not the same. It's absolutely not the same. It's impossible to be the same because Judaism and this is what you call pathology. This is a problem. This is a problem since Peter left Jerusalem. Where's the different to Judaism? Nobody can see it in the antique world. And until now, Christianity is full of Jewish beliefs, in the psalm, the one God. We are don't believe first and all in one God. If you are looking at the so-called credo. And so, it's perhaps a little bit typical. Of course there are discussion. If you only look at the situation here in Berlin or in other cities in Germany, there are mostly practical questions the Christians talking with the Muslims about because this is not a problem at all.

Avrum Burg: Stay here for a second, okay?

Rainer Kampling: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: The 15th century. 50 1453 Constantinople. 1492. The Iberian Peninsula. Europe became a strangers free. I mean, Muslims free. So, Europe had the privilege of some 500 years to develop in its own. Now all of a sudden, after 500 years or more, you have a very serious Muslim component within Europe that some of them are second or third or even fourth generation Europeans. So, it requires a kind of a concept, not just a practical thing. I mean I closed the street on Friday, opened the street on Sunday. It requires an attitude, especially the majority of the Christian philosophy.

Rainer Kampling: I have to love you. I see you have a greater meaning. First than all the Catholic. If you go to Saint Peter, you can see, in St. Peter's dome, the word of the Gospel of Matthew. And the Hell will not destroy you. You will sign always as a victor Ecclesia Militante. So, there were hundreds of hundreds of years as a church was not interested in any question outside of themselves. One thing I have to mention as a European and even nowadays never forget Bosnia Herzegovina.

Avrum Burg: Which means.

Rainer Kampling: Albania. There were always Muslims.

Avrum Burg: That's for sure.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, this is a crazy situation, especially in Austria, because we have a lot of anti-Muslim feelings in Austria. But in Austria there is in the schools there is something like we call in German radial, also teaching about the religion even for the Muslims since 1912, I think. But you are right. First of all, I would say the people are not very interested in religion at all nowadays. I'm living in a town. Only 40% of the town are members of anything. The rest of the people are nothing. It's nothing they don't believe.

Avrum Burg: There was an article published in Haaretz this weekend, which is our New York Times. Whatever it is, I don't know. What is it, the what do you compare it to, which actually describe the kind of a more traditionalism in the younger generation.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: And it brought to my mind. I once spoke with Martin Schulz, my friend Martin Schulz candidate for chancellery, the president of the European Parliament, etc. and he said Avrum compared to my daughter. He said I'm Attila the Hun. She thinks that I'm a right-wing fascist, but she marries at the church. She's extreme left, but she wants to marry traditionally in a church. So maybe the formats of expressing faith are different, but the need for some spiritual input into life is back to life.

Rainer Kampling: I'm more than skeptical. Now, we have to look at the special Jewish history in Berlin in the 20s of the last century, the really lost century. I remember all Gershom Shalem, when all the other boys from.

Avrum Burg: Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin.

Rainer Kampling: All this.

Avrum Burg: Isaiah Leibovich and my late father.

Rainer Kampling: Leibovich. Very well. Leibovich.

Avrum Burg: He was born in Riga in Russia.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, but of course she was in Berlin, and they were from normal families.

Avrum Burg: Sure.

Rainer Kampling: And suddenly they became religious. I always want to write an article about this night, the dark night in December in Berlin. And suddenly Gershom Scholem went to schul and is praying. And the people at home are celebrating Weihnachten. And you have this story, you have ten. And so, it's a typical, Of course, Shelem is another field. But even not believing people are going to church to marry, they visit the church like a concert there. You can't be you have to be religious to take part in some things. And this is the same with a lot of young Muslims. Of course, I know a little bit of the Quran, but I am absolutely sure that most people, young people telling me they are strict Muslims never ever looked in the Quran. It's a feeling. And of course, friends of mine, old Democrats, old socialists and even communists were sitting here on my in my kitchen saying, “you don't believe it, my children go to the mosque. I don't understand the world anymore.” They came. So, this is a specialty. Look at the United States. They believe people who are absolutely anti-Christians believe they are true Christians. I'm very Yeah. Excuse me. Killing children in some camps at the border is not Christian at all. And may I say, touching women everywhere like Mr. Trump isn't Christian at all. So, we have a.

Avrum Burg: I think that Mr. Trump is a theology by himself, but that's a different program.

Rainer Kampling: I would say he is one of the riders of apocalypse.

Avrum Burg: He's the fifth Horseman.

Rainer Kampling: He's the fifth horseman, or he's the Antichrist himself. I don't know it, but this is a very, very

Avrum Burg: You will say that traditionalists more than they are orthodox, so to say. They're a devoted practicing.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: So, let me take it to a different place, with your permission. 

Rainer Kampling: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: Nostra Aetate, our Nostra Aetate that we talk about is very, very Rome centered. But Rome is insignificant in the larger Europe. It's less significant in the larger European dialogue. In a sense, if I want to understand the European dialogue, I must understand Germany. I mean, Europe without Germany is not like Europe without Italy. Okay, let's say wise, politically wise.

Rainer Kampling: And nowadays I'm afraid not. Mrs. Meloni is very successful.

Avrum Burg: We'll talk about it in 25 years’ time. And we see. But I will say that, economically speaking power speaking Germany is the powerhouse of Europe or the most significant one. So, I cannot just say, listen, Nostra Aetate, chapter four or annex four is appendix four is about the dialogue with the non-church, not Catholics and not Catholic Church, and ignored the place in which politics is happening. So I must ask myself, what happens vis-a-vis this concept of dialogue, of reconciliation, of assuming responsibility? What happens in the place of power? What happens not in Rome, but what happens in Germany and Berlin? Is Berlin a good place for a dialogue?

Rainer Kampling: I would say yes, because it is always a problem. I'm not a Protestant, so I always think from the Catholic system.

Avrum Burg: That's the conversation.

Rainer Kampling: Of course, you see, we have you can say months, the last three, four events about Catholic Jews and something like that. It's very active. But is it real? This is a question. Activity is not reality. I think this is very necessary to remember in our times. But there is a dialogue. I would say there is a very, very special feeling. And now I came to a problem after Nostra Aetate. I'm a little bit more critical than the other people about it, because the Catholic Church is like a very, very old ship going through the sea for 100 and hundred years. And in the way the Catholic Church needed the Jews in centuries ago, they need an enemy. You can't be a Catholic without enemy. It's impossible.

Avrum Burg: Like Jean-Paul Sartre said, that the anti-Semite defines who is a Jew. You say the Jew defines who is a Catholic?

Rainer Kampling: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: Wow.

Rainer Kampling: This is a very, very Christian problem. Being a Jew, it's enough if I understand Judaism in the right way. You can say, of course they are not Jews. But God knows the heathen are children of God, so God will look for them. Impossible for Christianity. Everybody has to be a Christian. And so, Christianity has a not a positive but a negative definition. To be a Christian is not to be like the others and the other for hundreds and hundreds of Jews, for example. Even when the Muslims came up, the first idea was they were Jews. Some think they were Christians, but not so. This is not our problem in this way. Nowadays, sometimes you have. I have the feeling that they need the Jew, the poor, Jews nowadays to feel good.

Avrum Burg: Wait a second. Let's assume the Holocaust and the guilt and what is, and then politics, remove the Jews from the equation, so what does that mean? That in order to be a Christian by negative definition, you need a new enemy? Or it means that you have to change the definition to a positive one instead of saying, I'm not him, I'm not her to say I am A, B, and C, what's the challenge here?

Rainer Kampling: The challenge is the second. This is a.

Avrum Burg: Positive definition.

Rainer Kampling: But you must remember the time when in England were published the most books against Jews or Shakespeare and all this. There was no Jews to anymore. there don't have to be a Jew or a synagogue or something like that to be against Jews.

Avrum Burg: Up until Cromwell and Menasseh Ben Israel, the Jews were expelled from Britain, Great Britain for centuries.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, but it was a great, great hate against Jews. Sure. And they were everywhere. Then, of course, you have the absolutely crazy idea that the Pope was a Jew. And so, you have the Tudors. They were meshuga complete meshuga the whole family, and always thinking they were killed. And this was right by their own. But the Jew of Catholicism is an invention, because they really think that Jews are always thinking about Christianity. They can't accept that there is people having the same books.

Avrum Burg: Will you argue that those in the church who still need the Jews the old way as the Antichrist or as the devil? I mean, the alternative, they know Judaism of 400, 500, 600 years ago, and they do not know modern Judaism. They fight a demon which does not exist anymore.

Rainer Kampling: No they don't know Judaism at all. For example, Avrum, you have always to think that people have if you are talking about religion, facts are not a system of religion.

Avrum Burg: No, no, on the contrary.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, I know I.

Avrum Burg: Ask Immanuel Kant.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah. 

Avrum Burg: Or David Hume.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, yeah. Look at them, look at them. And do you really want to live a life like Immanuel Kant? The whole life in Königsberg? No. Go away. No.

Avrum Burg: Facts are not a ground for faith. Okay, I understand.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, but some facts, I think, are a ground for faith. Because feeling lonely, feeling without help, like it is written, the Psalms. “Who will help me?” I think it is 63 that the Psalm starts with about. “It's enough.” And this is it's a very, very human fact. The human life is mostly, “it's enough,” and sometimes it's beautiful. But you see, I'm like an old, old, old man coming from one field to the other, but not to say very clear. There were no really interest in the life of Jewish people in the real life, because the Jewish life was this. What was the Catholic imaginary, for example? They're not they don't ask their neighbors. But most of the priests, I would say the neighbors. What was different? But this look at the text, you see a community and you can ask, how can they exist? So, it's all imaginary. There is no real Jew in any Catholic text at all, until nowadays.

Avrum Burg: Yes and no. Rainer, let me push back a little bit. Okay. Merkel as a chancellor, went after multi-culti. Okay. She was against the, all this mumbo jumbo multiculturalism. Fine. But when you walk the streets of the big cities in Germany, Take Hamburg, take Hannover, take Berlin, take Dresden, take Munchin, but especially Berlin. It's a fascinating city because all the histories and all the pasts are presented in the street. I mean, all the memories. So maybe it's not multi-culti, but it's multi-memory.

Rainer Kampling: Multi-memory? Yes.

Avrum Burg: And multi-memory is something very, very challenging because you cannot cancel a chapter from the past. So, a common Catholic in Berlin has to face the presence of the Jews and the presence of the Protestants and the presence of this and that. You cannot avoid it. So now when you say people in a way canceled the other, I say in now remembering societies and remembering big cities, metropolitan cities in Germany, it's difficult to forget elements. How do you face this multi-memory reality?

Rainer Kampling: This is a personal question and a theoretical question.

Avrum Burg: Go for the personal.

Rainer Kampling: The personal is, if you are going to German cities, you see a lot. I have to say it perhaps is not wrong. In German, I would say lire emptiness. The German cities are full of emptiness.

Avrum Burg: Emptiness of content, emptiness of meaning.

Rainer Kampling: Of history, of memory, and knowing there is something very, very wrong. Germany, if for me, it's always, since I was a young pupil, when I went to school, there was a feeling like how to describe it. Something died and nobody's talking about it. It is empty. The place is empty. So, the remembrance, remembering the not being there.

Avrum Burg: It's the memory of the absence.

Rainer Kampling: Yes, this is a memory of the absence. You're going to the town. And for me, I go to the hamburger street. And of course there's a sign. There's the Mendelssohn grave.

Avrum Burg: Moses Mendelssohn grave is the only grave left standing in what was once a cemetery next to the Jewish quarter.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, but I remember is that the German terrorists don't even stopped 45 during the bomb. On this place, there were a lot of killed, and I have to say, God is right, they were killed SS people, and they were buried there. So, this is a sign. And I give another example, in the Hamburger Strasse there is a place where no house at all. This is...

Avrum Burg: The missing house.

Rainer Kampling: The missing house. All the people...

Avrum Burg: Let me just describe it to the people.

Rainer Kampling: Oh yes.

Avrum Burg: You have one home here, one house here. And in the middle, there is a space that used to be the middle house. And they put on the wall the names of the families, Jewish families, that were living in the missing house.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah. Yes.

Avrum Burg: Is that the one we're talking about?

Rainer Kampling: Yeah, but you said, right, but they are not only Jewish people living there, but if you are talking about that is first of all, it is the sign of, of the war, if you want in this way, you have streets in Berlin near in. I'm looking of very new buildings after the Second World War. I'm living in a house which was built with the money from the Great German Trench War. So, you have all races. But this house, if you ask people, all the people say it's a monument for the Jews, but it's not a monument for the Jews. It's a monument of, like you say, emptiness like this is an absence. It's not, of course. We have the hamburger graves and then we have this house. But what I mean is, for me, this is Germany. Now I say, see, all the young Jews from Russia, or even the young Jews from France, Great Britain, even United States, or of course, Israel. But this is another part. Of course, there were some Oriental Jews in the 19th century in Berlin, but nowadays it's normal. You can you. And now it's a complete other generation. What I want to say is in the absence is a knowing about this, what happened. And this is part of the memory and how you interpret, you know very well that this is a German system to say it is not allowed to happen again. Auschwitz Niemals wieder.

Avrum Burg: Never again, never again.

Rainer Kampling: It was a great, now I forget the name because I remember him always with some great Italian author who said about Auschwitz it happened, and so it can happen again.

Avrum Burg: Primo Levi.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah. Primo Levi, of course. And this is a way how you look at it.

Avrum Burg: So, let's move towards the end of our conversation, we started by exploring the negative contribution of the German, of the time of the previous century, to generate, eventually, a new paradigm, new dogma of the church called Nostra Aetate at our time, very accurate, very contemporary, a papal statement. Now we're back to Germany. What we describe as the memory of the absence that you feel kind of hollowness behind all of these monuments and all of these signs. But I will ask a further question. We were born into a generation that had back-to-back with a generation of the Second World War and Holocaust. Our parents, grandparents, our elders knew the reality. Our children heard it from us. Now it's the fourth or fifth generation, then after. With the politics of the time, with the reality, with the realpolitik of the time. Is there a real commitment at the fifth or sixth generation of Germans after the Second World War, to continue this kind of a dialogue, or is it just a hobby of like us, people who are still committed to the horrors and to the never again?

Rainer Kampling: Avrum, it's late, I didn't have a coffee. How should I ask this question like this? First at all, yes, and it is true. This is a remembering. The first things came when all the internet things came up. I looked where my father was in the Second World War.

Avrum Burg: You didn't know? You didn't speak about it at home?

Rainer Kampling: Of course not.

Avrum Burg: Of course not?

Rainer Kampling: In Germany, if you were born, of course you are talking always about the Second World War, how hard it was, and so. But talking about Jews? Impossible. Nobody knows anyone. And this was a problem because there was a she was called in the 50s. She was a bastard. Nobody wanted to know her. But the problem was she was the existing, the only good German because she was really helping a Jewish family.

Avrum Burg: Who is she? You're talking about whom?

Rainer Kampling: She was the sister of my father. My grandfather? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but nobody talked about her. Because even now, in the 50s, they don't want to talk. Now, you must imagine the first time I was really talking about Judaism and Shoah, and something like that was very startling in the 70s during my studies.

Avrum Burg: Wow.

Rainer Kampling: Of course, I know Jewish history because I read a lot. I was a very lonely child, so I read a lot. You must imagine every morning when I went to school, I went on the street and there was a stone remembrance, the synagogue who was destroyed. But if you ask someone of the people, nobody remembers there was the synagogue. So, this is the first story of the being the generation. Nowadays there is really, I must say, in Germany, for example, I can say there are very, very few students I was teaching, believing that the Jews crucified Jesus. Now in the other way they say, how could the other people, the earlier people, believe the Jews crucified jesus is not in the text, the Romans did it. So, you have. Perhaps you know what it is just looking for your enemy, the Catholic antisemitism looking at there is not there, because the people always learns the Nostra Aetata that this is a problem for me because I lost my enemy. So, you see, I'm a Catholic and so it's normal, normality. The people, even not like in the 50s, when suddenly a lot of Catholics studied old Hebrew. This is all. Nowadays it is normal. The people know Judaism is a religion. And so I would say, of course, but I, the energies, the joy of research is not the same, I think. Perhaps this, you are right. There must be a biographical picture, so you can do it this way. Because I did it for 50 years or 40 years. And it was of course, it was hard, but it was a part of joy.

Avrum Burg: Rainer, I'll tell you. Put it like this. I do not volunteer to be your enemy in order to help you with your identity. Okay.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah. Nobody.

Avrum Burg: And this is not because I do not like to disagree with you or to have polemics with you. But that's because I really admire your way, you walk between all the structures the theological, the theory, the practical, the person, the German. I mean, you have so many components in your identity, and I see how you struggle to create the equilibrium between all of these components. And if there is one thing I'm grateful for, this chapter, is the one thing I did not prepare myself for. I was ready to meet a serious, you are serious, German philosopher, historian, researcher and in a way, I had a feeling that the conversation was between human beings rather than between the theorists and the listener. And I'm grateful for this human dimension of the conversation.

Rainer Kampling: So, I am. But I have to say, Jews were never my enemies, but always the Catholics.

Avrum Burg: So, let's cut it here. No, I understand what you say. And this is to say, Rainer, I really hope it's the beginning of a of further conversations about this. It was fascinating, and I'm grateful.

Rainer Kampling: Give my love to Jerusalem.

Avrum Burg: Yeah. Find me a good prayer for this tortured city nowadays. Let's pray together.

Rainer Kampling: Yeah. This is what I always do. And give my greetings to all my beloved ones there.

Avrum Burg: I promise, by the way.

Rainer Kampling: Thanks a lot. Bye.

Avrum Burg: Thanks very much. Bye-bye.

Rainer Kampling: Shalom.

Gabriel Mitchell: Jerusalem Talks is brought to you by the University of Notre Dame's Academic Center in Jerusalem, and was made possible by the efforts of Avraham Burg, Daniel Shwake, Gabriel Mitchell, David Turgeman, Ben Wallach, and Nathan Steinmeyer. Learn more about us at Jerusalem.ND.edu.