Christian World | The German Evangelical Alliance expanded its 1946 confession on Pogrom Night's anniversary and asked Jews to forgive its leaders' failures under the Nazis

ACW | November 10, 2026 — The Evangelical Alliance in Germany asked the Jewish people for forgiveness on Monday, publishing an expanded version of its 1946 confession of guilt over its leaders' conduct under the Nazis.

Alliance representatives read the text together at a memorial service in its Berlin office, next to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the alliance said in a statement. The date marked the anniversary of the November 1938 pogrom, when synagogues across Germany were set on fire.

"We confess that our fathers became guilty before God and before the Jewish people," the statement says. Alliance leaders welcomed Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and its newsletter, the Allianzblatt, failed to condemn the exclusion and persecution of Jews, the text says.

Anti-Jewish measures were defended with arguments that only "seemed biblical," the alliance said. It pledged to oppose every form of hatred of Jews and Israel and to stand up for and protect Jewish people.

The text is "the position of the Evangelical Alliance," not just a working group's paper, executive director Reinhardt Schink said, according to Christian Daily International. Leaders at the time "were not only mistaken. They justified injustice," said Johann Matthies, the alliance's political representative in Berlin.

Background: The original confession appeared in 1946 in a publication marking 100 years since the Evangelical Alliance was founded in London. It admitted the German alliance had failed to recognise the errors of the time, but did not mention Jews or other victims, the alliance said.

Why it matters: Remembering this history brings a responsibility to stay alert, name injustice clearly and protect Jewish people, the Evangelical Alliance in Germany said in its statement.

ACW will continue to follow this story.

Sources: Evangelical Alliance in Germany — Supplement and expansion of the 1946 confession of guilt (German, official text); Evangelical Alliance in Germany — Press release, November 9, 2026 (German); Christian Daily International — Evangelical Alliance in Germany expands its 1946 confession of guilt

Photo: N0TABENE, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) — Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin (illustrative)