In Search for a Theology Capable of Mourning: Observations and Interpretations after the Shoah

To what extent are the children of Holocaust perpetrators to feel remorseful or responsible for their parents' wrongdoing? Is the yearning by those offspring of Nazi sympathizers for forgiveness justified, or should they separate themselves from their parents or relatives and ignore the history?

Such dilemmas have gnawed at theologian Martin Rumscheidt ever since, at age eighteen, he discovered his father's complicity in using Jewish slave labor at his workplace, IG Farben. He has written an...