Discovering the Other Auschwitz Group: An Exercise that Could Make Our World Much Better

I closed yesterday’s email, Lessons about Good and Evil from a Concentration Camp, by asking you to do this:

Identify the people that did good or evil acts.

Identify the groups to which they belonged.

Those groups were SS officers, SS soldiers, kopos and prisoners (mostly Jews or non-Jewish Polish and German citizens). In the five stories in the previous email, everyone doing good or evil acts belonged to those groups.

But there was another group that I didn’t mention in the previous email. It is the big elephant in the room. Below are some facts that will help you identify the group.

● Roman Catholics made up 40% of the total German population and 65% of the total population of Poland.

● Christian Orthodox & Protestants made up 54% of the total German population and 32% of the total population of Poland.

● The total population of Germany was 94% Christian, while the total population of Poland was 97% Christian.

Most of the people doing the evil things in the stories in the previous email were Christians! While they were doing those things, many were also attending church services, praying regularly, celebrating Easter and Christmas and participating in Christian rituals. There were Christian chaplains in the Nazi military and at Auscwhitz.

Roman Catholic, Christian Orthodox and Protestant

clergy and leading theologians openly supported the Nazi regime.

Despite open antisemitism, many Christians in Germany viewed Nazism as an affirmation of Christian values.

There were individual Catholics and Protestants who spoke out

on behalf of Jews, and small groups within both churches

that became involved in rescue and resistance activities

(for example, the White Rose and Herman Maas).

But Christian institutions -- Roman Catholic, Christian Orthodox and Protestant – did not come together nor individually take an open and forceful stand against Nazism. Why?

That question has been the elephant in the room since 1945.

Today, with what we have learned by Exploring Our Biblical Heritages, there are two more questions those of us with Christian biblical heritages want answered.

How did such acts of evil and cruelty originate in a democracy

with a 94% Christian population that belonged to religions

that shared a common origin - a Jewish movement --

“committed to protecting and preserving all human lives”?

What can we do to prevent it from happening again?

Discovering and sharing answers to these questions drive our work at the TOV Center and the Biblical Heritage Center. Thank you for reading this. Please share and discuss it with others.

May Your Life be Blessed By Acts of TOV,
Jim Myers

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* SOURCES & RECOMMENDED READING

● The Holocaust, The Church, and the Law of Unintended Consequences by Anthony J. Sciolino © 2012 iUniverse, Bloomington, IN.

● https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-churches-and-the-nazi-state