BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s government decided Wednesday to reintroduce military rabbis, backing a proposal by the Central Council of Jews to restore religious counseling for Jews serving in the armed forces after more than a century without such assistance.
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“Today, we set an important example for our Jewish soldiers,” German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer tweeted after the decision by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet.
Kramp-Karrenbauer said the addition of military rabbis was a clear commitment to Jewish life in Germany.
The German army does not document the religious affiliations of its members. But according to estimates about 300 Jews, 1,400 Muslims and 94,000 Christians are in the Bundeswehr armed forces, German media reported.
The German army has only Catholic and Lutheran chaplains, but there are plans to also introduce Muslim religious counseling in the Bundeswehr, the government said.
During World War I, many Jews fought for Germany. Rabbis were relatively common in the military until Adolf Hitler’s Nazis came to power in 1933 and excluded Jews from all spheres of public life.
It is maDness and tabula rasa for the six millions
Are you implying that the 300 Jewish soldiers in the Bundeswehr should get religious counselling from Christian (or Muslim) chaplains, because they shouldn’t be serving in a German army in the first place?
This article is inaccurate; according to Professor Bryan Mark Rigg, Professor of History at the American Military University in Virginia, as many as 150,000 Jews served in the Wehrmacht or regular German Army, during World War Two. He estimated that there were 60,000 Jews with at one Jewish parent, and another 90,000 with a Jewish grandparent. He pointed out that not everybody who wore a uniform was a Nazi, and not every person of Jewish descent was persecuted. Professor Rigg served in both the U.S. Marines, and the Israeli Defense Forces.