A repentance service in one of Germany's oldest Gothic churches, on January 27, 2002, was the latest in a series of public acts of confession with the theme 'Changing the Future by Confronting the Past'. To the ringing of bells, ministers from various Christian traditions formed a procession to the altar of the Protestant St. Elizabeth's Church in the university town of Marburg. The initiative came from Lutheran Bishop Zippert, one of the clergy to lead last year's Yom HaShoah repentance service in Jerusalem hosted by the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, a community founded by Mother Basilea Schlink in Darmstadt. When the Marburg service commenced, there was standing room only in the medieval church, which has a seating-capacity of up to 600. It was a solemn occasion as Protestants and Catholics confessed the sins of the past in the presence of members of the Jewish community. Sitting in the front row was a survivor of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, who was warmly greeted.

Referring to the 57th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which coincided with the service, Marburg's mayor observed, ‘We need to raise our voices in warning and continue doing so: otherwise history will repeat itself.'

In her introduction, Sister Pista quoted, as the mayor did, from Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel's speech to the German parliament in January 2000: ‘Until the end of times … Auschwitz will remain a part of your history, just as it will continue to be a part of mine.'

Visibly moved, the president of the local Jewish community announced that the signed declaration repudiating antisemitism would be preserved in the synagogue's Torah shrine. There was a deep sense of conviction as he recalled the exact day and hour when the last members of the Jewish community were deported in 1942.

The service, following the Jerusalem liturgy, included scripture readings, amazingly relevant in their prophetic nature. ‘The enemy has damaged everything in the sanctuary … They said in their hearts, "Let us destroy them altogether." They have burned up all the meeting places of God in the land' (Psalm 74: 3,8). It was impossible not to think of that night in1938 when synagogues were set on fire up and down the country. After the service, a local Marburg woman was weeping when she returned home: ‘I saw the synagogue burning.'

Many stories are told of Elizabeth of Hungary, after whom the church is named. Once she took in a leper, washed and fed him, finally laying him in her marriage bed for further care. Knowing how contagious the disease was, her mother-in-law protested to her son, the count, who had been out hunting, ‘She will be the death of us all with her excessive and thoughtless piety.' Alarmed, the count rushed into the bed chamber and drew back the bedclothes. At that moment he had a vision of the crucified Lord and was reminded of the words of Matthew 25 – ‘As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'

For many Christians today it comes as a revelation that the Jewish people, exiled, despised, and hunted down throughout the centuries, bear a striking resemblance to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. During the service Psalm verses recalling the agony of the death camps were recited: ‘My days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace. Because of my loud groaning my bones cleave to my flesh' (Psalm 102:3,5).

Had it not been for centuries of anti-Jewish prejudice and persecution, the Holocaust could not have happened. ‘I am only doing what the Church itself has been preaching and practising against the Jews,' claimed Hitler. Is it any wonder that the Jewish people regard Christians as their greatest enemies? 

Two days after the service, an Israeli raised in a Jewish Orthodox family related the following. Grandmother, he recalled, was always sad, even when she smiled. As a young mother in wartime Romania she regularly left her children at home while looking for food in the nearby town. On one occasion she never returned.

Hours later, the terrified children heard loud banging on the door. Neighbours, with whom they had been on good terms only yesterday, were shouting, ‘Where is that murderous woman? She killed our God. Let's kill her.' The mob broke their way into the house, ransacking it. Mercifully they didn't find the children, who were hiding in the cellar. Shortly afterwards the children were taken by the Jewish Agency out of the country and eventually reached the coast of Palestine, only to be turned back to Cyprus, where they were interned until 1948.

Meanwhile their mother was taken to Auschwitz. Grandfather, who was consigned to a labour camp, was one of the nine survivors of a freight train crammed with hundreds of prisoners after the camp was evacuated. Three days and three nights they were herded together without food, water or sanitation. All he could do was pray. He was convinced that prayer helped him to retain his sanity.

Grandmother's message to her grandson was brief and to the point: ‘Don't ever trust Christians.'

Now a grown man, this Israeli believes the time has come for Jews and Christians to reach out to each other – especially in Germany. But one of his first and last questions was: ‘Why, why do the Christians hate us? Why this hatred two thousand years long?' It was not an accusation. Rather was it a cry from the heart.

Yes, why this persistent hatred? One reason is bad theology: the blaming of the death of Jesus on the Jews, although the Bible says that both Jews and Gentiles were responsible for His death (Acts 4:26–27) and that our sins were the ultimate cause of Jesus' death (1 John 2:2). But antisemitism has other roots as well. Addressing her fellow Germans, our late founder Mother Basilea Schlink named envy and rebellion: envy that Israel and not our own nation was chosen for a world mission, and rebellion against God for making us accountable to Him. Why else would Hitler have said to his aide Rauschning: ‘Conscience is a Jewish invention!' and, ‘There is no room for two chosen peoples!'

‘Every Jew,' writes Mother Basilea in her book Israel, My Chosen People, ‘is a reminder that God is the holy God, the God of the Ten Commandments. Every Jew is a reminder that God lives … Ultimately every Jew stands for God.'

If there is to be a change in attitude towards Israel, we need to see what we have done to God in attacking the people through whom we received our Saviour Jesus Christ, who was born and died a Jew.

In November 2001, Australia's Archbishop Peter Jensen wrote in the Southern Cross Anglican News: ‘We must be aware that the attitudes and activities which helped to create the horror of the Holocaust are still to be found close at hand, even, at times, within our own sinful hearts – and in our Christian churches … We all need to search our hearts, and to do so with deep regret, not merely for ourselves personally, but for the terrible distortions of our own Christian culture down through history.'

In the desire to come to grips with the past, repentance services, many using the Darmstadt and Jerusalem liturgy, have been held in recent years in London, Dublin, Zurich, in East-European countries like Estonia and Poland, including former concentration camp sites, and even across the Atlantic, as in Phoenix, Arizona, and in Washington D.C.

Some of the services were of historical significance, like the one in Recife, in north-east Brazil, near the Equator, where Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition made their home 350 years ago.

The Sydney service drew participants from various parts of Australia and even New Zealand. ‘Holocaust survivors said, with tears in their eyes, that they could not believe they would live to see such a day,' reported the Australian Jewish News. In an article entitled ‘A moment of healing I will never forget', a Jewish participant wrote, ‘That service was the second miracle of my life. The first was that I survived the Holocaust in Poland.'

A videotape of the Jerusalem service, aired nationwide before the event in Sydney, drew heart-warming responses. An Australian judge and Q.C., seeing it on television, requested a copy: ‘As one who has worked in so many social justice causes over the years, including representing the Jewish people with the ecumenical authorities in the Vatican, this service was the most moving I have ever witnessed.'

In America, where it was televised over 100 times, a viewer wrote: ‘As a survivor of the Holocaust, who lost his parents, all his grandparents, and cousins as well as all their respective families, over 60 people, although already 60 years ago, it was a very emotional moment for me and my family to view this document. It proves that there are still humans without hate and who care for other human beings.'

Foreign-language versions opened the way for it to be broadcast in other parts of the world. A couple bought 15 copies for Holocaust survivors and friends in the Jewish community, while others plan to show it to their churches or prayer fellowships or to donate copies to Holocaust Museums.

For those who speak German, a documentary film was made of the meeting of mayors and other delegates representing German towns at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's Holocaust Memorial, during the Convention. Coming from the heart, the speeches offer perhaps one of the best counter arguments against the Holocaust Denial theory. English and Hebrew versions are in preparation.

Yet, to quote Sister Pista, ‘Our national crime is so great that even if we were to hold repentance services for the rest of our lives for the six million who died a horrific death, it would still not be enough' (Changing the Future by Confronting the Past: Talks and Testimonies).

Sadly, antisemitism has not died out. In December 2001, 1,300 Neo-Nazis marched in Berlin to demonstrate against the building of a Holocaust museum. Where will we be standing when it costs us something to support the Jewish people? This is the question asked in the newly published book on the talks at the Jerusalem 2001 Convention.

Repentance is more than words. Repentance entails action. It means if we are going in the wrong direction, we start going in the opposite direction. Elizabeth of Hungary, repulsed by the greed and tyranny of the ruling classes in both her native Hungary and her adopted country, is credited with saying she wanted to make amends for all her family's wrong actions by doing the opposite and to bring about healing. Historian Walter Nigg observes: ‘These deep words show the only way to come to terms with the past. Instead of going with the flow of decadence, we should deliberately take a different stance. Then only can we hope to heal and make amends for a sick generation.' As Sister Pista concluded in her talk at the Marburg repentance service: ‘For those born after the persecution of the Middle Ages and the Holocaust, perhaps this is the key to identifying with the guilt of our forebears and coming to terms with what happened during the Third Reich.'

At one of our overseas branches, the sisters wrote after Jewish guests visited, ‘These people are very concerned because of the antisemitism that is growing here. The mother of one of them is from Poland and survived the Holocaust. She says that the "climate" right now is like it was in the 1930s before the persecution began … These people are frightened and asking for help. They say: "We feel so alone" – "Nobody cares" – "We're afraid of what is going to happen to our children."'

In the light of such remarks, there can never be enough repentance for the past. ‘Changing the Future by Confronting the Past' was the theme of both the Marburg and Jerusalem service. But only with the help of God, observed Bishop Zippert, can we hope to make a new start, in keeping with the scripture: ‘Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, till he comes and rains righteousness on you' (Hosea 10:12).

How encouraging were the words of the president of the Jewish community in Marburg. ‘With this day a new light shines upon our people and upon the co-existence of Jews and Christians: light and the hope that you will always stand by our people.' That was always the vision of Mother Basilea: ‘As … hatred flares up against God more than ever, there will be a bringing together of those who belong together because they fear the living God and give Him glory – Jews and Christians.'

The Sisters of Mary