Taiwan Church News

3381 Edition

December 12 - 18, 2016

Church Ministry

The Past Is Never Simply The Past - The Second Speech Of Mr Martin Eberts On Transitional Justice In Germany

Reported by Chen Yi-fan

On December 10, the second speech of Mr Martin Eberts(director general of German institute Taipei) on theexperiences of transitional justice in Germany was held at the chapel of Tainan Theological College and Seminary. Moderated by the associate professor Liao Kuei-hsiang(director of Department of German Language and Culture) and translated by Ms Wu Hsin-ru( president of South and North Press), the speech of Mr Martin Eberts was responded by Rev Wang Jen-wen(church history lecturer at TTCS) and Ms Kawlo Iyun Pacisal(NPP lawmaker).

Eberts expressed that for German government it was never an easy job being engaged in such a super-complicated engineering like transitional justice. The famous Nuremberg trials after World War II were only the very beginning of German government's dealing with the war crimes of Nazi, said Eberts, adding that a systematic of de-Nazification was not yet started until 1949 by a new German government then. Even, up to date, the transitional justice for the victims under Nazi atrocities is still under way, remarked Eberts.

As to crimes committed by the communist regimes of eastern Germany, lots of problems still had not been properlysolved after the unification of east and west Germany in 1990s. Except the issue of compensation for the victims, for example, a more embarrassing problem is about unequal treatment between the former oppressive officials in east Germany and the exploited victims under the communist regimes of eastern Germany. "Everybody wants to forget about such embarrassment and get back to normal life as soon as possible. But such rush mentality to forget is just abnormal and incorrect!", observed Eberts.

Therefore the transitional justice should not only focus on the punishment of the individual criminal, a reconciliation with thevictims is also an important proceeding as well, remarked Eberts, as not all injustice could be solved by an ideally judicial procedure. This is the reason why it is so important, to build up a valuable culture of commemoration about the past, for the voice of the victims would be heard for sure and not fallen into oblivion by the next generations, said Eberts.

Eberts remarked that every society has to find her own way to go though her past, yet if a systematic method couldbe done in dealing with transitional justice, many errors happened in other countries could be avoided.

Only when the complaints and stand-offs within a traumatized society are decreased, the success of transitional justice would have the chance to come, envisioned Eberts, advising that it is critically important to separate the crimes of individual person from the collective society and deal with them carefully; a major reason that Europe could proceed a peaceful reconciliation is that the German people were never put into a trial by the whole Europe, concluded Eberts.

Translated by Peter Wolfe