Professor Dr. Heinz Kremers

When the second world war began, Heinz Kremers was 13 years old. He became a soldier. His awful experiences at the time of National-Socialist barbarianism and German crimes as well as the experiences he had as a prisoner of war inspired him to study theology.
He fought against the remilitarisation and nuclear arming of the young Federal Republic of Germany, and he established friendly terms with its subsequent Federal Presidents, Gustav Heinemann and Johannes Rau.
In 1958, he was appointed to the educational academy in Kettwig. Since 1972, Klappert served as the professor of Protestant Theology and Didactics at the university of Duisburg. The main focus of his scientific work was the revision of the negative picture of Israel in German school books. He encouraged several generations of teachers to correct their views on Judaism. He began to make excursions with students to Israel and so familiarized the younger generation with the vivid and vibrant Judaism in Israel and with the German debt of responsibility.

Heinz Kremers (1926 – 1988)
introduced by his friend, Prof. Bertold Klappert

In 1961, he became a member of the Foundation Committee of the Christian Settlement Nes Ammim. In turning away from the problematic tradition of missionizing Jews, Christians from Holland, Switzerland, the USA and from Germany meant to live together with the Israelis in spite of the serious political and economic miseries and the dangers involved in this.
It was his lifelong solidarity with Israel which made it possible for Heinz Kremers to settle in 1968 with his family in Nes Ammim as the first German inhabitants. At the same time, he was a visiting professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he gave lectures in Hebrew. He became friends with Y. Amir, S. Ben-Chorin, David Flusser, Shmuel Safrai, Shlomo Pines and others. He has always said that Nes Ammim was „a new attempt to build a bridge between Jews and Christians“. He made speeches at many symposia over the following years.

Since 1961, he has worked in a very dedicated manner in the workgroup „Christians and Jews“ at the German Protestant Church Congress. He is a close friend of Chief Rabbi R. R. Geis and, as a result of his speeches in Holland, a deep human and theological relationship exists between him and Professor Y. Ashkenasy of Amsterdam.

It was especially difficult for Yehuda Ashkenasy to go back to Germany. He went through the hell of Buchenwald and Auschwitz, thus he did not want to ever have any contact with Germany and the Germans again. When his first trip to Germany approached – (a trip he was undertaking at Heinz Kremer´s invitation), Yehuda wanted to get out of the car at the Dutch border. David Flusser and Heinz Kremers were sitting in the car too. After much discussion Yehuda told Heinz Kremers an old Jewish saying: „He who turns back, will be accommodated“.

„He who turns back, will be accommodated“.

From 1965 to 1980, Heinz Kremers fought for the renewal of the relationship between Christians and Jews within his Protestant Church in the Rhineland. In 1980 the Rhine Synod finally accepted its co-responsibility for the Church´s guilt for the Holocaust. It was the first and the biggest branch of the Church in Germany to accept this responsibility. When it confessed to the „lasting election of the Jewish people as the people of God“ and expressed its rejection of missionizing Jews, the huge man bursted into tears at the Synod. An important aim of his fight and of years of work had been achieved.

In 1983, he organized the only critical symposium about Luther in Luther´s commemorative year, 1983. The symposium stood under the patronage of Johannes Rau, and many famous Jewish scholars participated in it speaking about „Martin Luther and the Jews – the Jews and Martin Luther“. In 1986, he was honored with the Buber Rosenzweig medal. The laudatory speech was given by Johannes Rau. In his speech of thanks Heinz Kremers shares the medal with his friend, Professor Ashkenasy of Holland. In 1990, his pioneering articles were published in the book „Liebe und Gerechtigkeit“ („Love and Justice“).

In my study room there is a big photo on the wall, showing my friend Kremers together with Ashkenasy and Eberhard Bethge, a friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer has deeply affected Heinz Kremers' theology. In his research for a christology free of hostility against Jews, he often cited Bonhoeffer's sentence: „The Jew keeps the Christ question open, while the Christians have closed this question so often, driven by their hostility against Judaism.“ Our friend Heinz Kremers travelled his own road, in spite of much opposition, and he chose to return and to start a new beginning together with the people of Israel. Working at the side of the subsequent President of Germany Johannes Rau, he began very early on to struggle for the diplomatic recognition of Israel by the Federal Republic of Germany.

The photo in the study room of Prof. Klappert:
Eberhard Bethge, Yehuda Aschkenasy and Heinz Kremers

When he died too early, in 1988, Yehuda Ashkenasy spoke at the grave of our common friend Heinz Kremers concluding with the incomparable parting words „God takes the righteous to himself like he took Moses - with a kiss.“

Heinz Kremers must be designated one of the great pioneers of the Jewish-Christian dialogue and the German-Israeli agreement.
The memory of Heinz Kremers, our friend and co-founder of Nes Ammim, shall become a blessing to us and an example for us to follow.