How Beliefs Paved the Way for the Holocaust

While working on a project today, I went back and reviewed some notes I had taken when reading these books (I would recommend them to everyone):

(1) The Holocaust, The Church, and the Law of Unintended Consequences by Anthony J. Sciolino

(2) Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945 by Raul Hilberg

(3) Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

In The Holocaust, The Church, and the Law of Unintended Consequences, Anthony J. Sciolino recorded the following events. I placed them in chronological order so you will be able to follow the beliefs about the Jews as they evolved through Christianity. While you read them, consider how many of the actions promoted found their way into the Nazi plans against the Jews:

● Origen (185-254) -- “The blood of Jesus falls not only on the Jews of that time, but on all generations of Jews up to the end of the world.” (p. 15)

● Council of Elvira (306) – “Christians and Jews are forbidden to engage in sexual intercourse, intermarry, or even eat together.” (p. 26)

● First Council of Nicea (325) -- “Easter and Passover would be celebrated on different days.”

● In 337 – “marriage of a Jewish man to a Christian woman became punishable by death.” (p. 26)

● In 339 – “converting to Judaism became a criminal offense.” (p. 27)

● Gregory of Nyssa (380) -- “Murderers of the Lord, assassins of the prophets, rebels and detesters of God . . . companions of the devil, a race of vipers, informers, malicious utterers of false statements, darkeners of the mind, pharisaic leaven, Sanhedrin of demons, accursed, detested . . . enemies of all that is beautiful.” (p. 15)

● John Chrysostom (347-407) archbishop of Constantinople and Doctor of the Church – “The Synagogue is a brothel, a hiding place for unclean beasts . . . Jews are the most worthless of all men (who) are lustful, greedy and gluttonous . . . deceitful murderers of Christ and for killing God there is no expiation possible, no indulgence or pardon. Christians may never cease vengeance . . . Jews must live in servitude forever . . . God always hated Jews. It is incumbent upon all Christians to hate Jews.”

● Third Synod of Orleans (538) – “Jews were not permitted to show themselves on the streets during Holy Week.” (p. 27)

● Synod of Toledo (681) – “ordered the burning of the Talmud and other Jewish books.” (p. 27)

● Trulanic Synod (692) – “Christians forbidden to patronize Jewish doctors.” (p. 27)

● Third Lateran Council (1179) – “Jews could not be plaintiffs or witnesses against Christians in court cases and forbade them to disinherit their descendants who had converted to Christianity.” (p. 27)

● Fourth Lateran Council (1213) – “required Jews to wear distinctive markings on their clothing.” (p. 28)

● Council of Oxford (1222) – “prohibited the construction of new synagogues.” (p. 27)

● Synod of Breslau (1267) – “instituted compulsory ghettos for Jews.” (p. 27)

● Thomas Aquinas (1270) – “Jews sin more in their unbelief than do pagans because they have abandoned the way of justice after knowing it in some way.” (p. 27)

● Synod of Often (1279) – “forbade Christians from selling or renting real estate to Jews.” (p. 27)

● Synod of Mainz (1310) – “declared that Jewish converts who reverted to the practice of Judaism were guilty of heresy.” (p. 27)

● Council of Basel (1434) – “Jews could not obtain university decrees.” (p. 27)

● Martin Luther (1543) – “Jews are Christ killers and criminals bent on ruling the world. . . Jews were a “base, whoring people, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth. . . They were full of the devil’s feces . . . which they wallow in like swine . . . The synagogue was a defiled bride . . . an incorrigible whore and an evil slut. . . their synagogues and schools be set fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, their homes razed, and their property confiscated. . . they should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and these poisonous envenomed worms should be drafted into forced labor or expelled like mad dogs from the land for all time.” (pp. 39-41)

● Adolph Hitler (1923) – “Today, I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew. I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” (p. 83)

In Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust Daniel Jonah Goldhagen wrote:

The beliefs that were already the common property of the German people upon Hitler’s assumption of power and which led the German people to assent and contribute to the eliminationist measures of the 1930s were the beliefs that prepared not just the Germans who by circumstances, chance, or choice ended up as perpetrators but also the vast majority of the German people to understand, assent to, and, when possible, do their part to further the extermination, root and branch, of the Jewish people. The inescapable truth is that, regarding Jews, German political culture had evolved to the point where an enormous number of ordinary, representative Germans became — and most of the rest of their fellow Germans were fit to be — Hitler’s willing executioners. (p. 454)

Now let’s return to The Holocaust, The Church, and the Law of Unintended Consequences by Anthony J. Sciolino:

Religious affiliation in Nazi Germany 40 percent Roman Catholic and 54 percent Protestant – a nation that was 94 percent Christian. Nazi Germany was more Christian than the United States of America. . . How could one of the worst catastrophes in human history have started in one of the most Christian countries of Christian Europe, birthplace of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation? . . .Father Michael McGarry, a Paulist priest and rector of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem articulates this most disconcerting reality:

`We Christians need to remember that studying the Shoah (Holocaust) is not simply reading about what happened to the Jews, but what some Christians – some still worshiping, others long drop-outs from the Church – did to the Jews. The Shoah is part of Christian history. It is part of our history if we are Christian. This is frightening, this is sickening, this is, for many, unbelievable. But the first thing we Christians need to recognize is that we study the Shoah because it is part of our history, as well as part of Jewish history. Not only do we study what happened to them but what happened to us Christians.’ (pp. xix, 2)

What can we learn from this? What beliefs that promote hatred against others are simmering in American Belief Systems today? Will a charismatic leader like Adolph Hitler come forth and fan the flames of those beliefs -- and inspire another generation of willing executioners?

The answer will be “Absolutely Not!!!” – “If our highest values are “protecting life, preserving life, making life more functional and improving the quality of life.”  

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Shalom,

Jim Myers