Speech by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Below is a transcript of a speech by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks at “The Future of the Jewish Communities in Europe” Conference at The European Parliament on 27th September 2016 in Brussels.

 

The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. That is what I want us to understand today. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Hitler. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Stalin. It isn’t Jews alone who suffer under ISIS or Al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad. We make a great mistake if we think antisemitism is a threat only to Jews. It is a threat, first and foremost, to Europe and to the freedoms it took centuries to achieve.

 

Antisemitism is not about Jews. It is about anti-Semites. It is about people who cannot accept responsibility for their own failures and have instead to blame someone else. Historically, if you were a Christian at the time of the Crusades, or a German after the First World War, and saw that the world hadn’t turned out the way you believed it would, you blamed the Jews. That is what is happening today. And I cannot begin to say how dangerous it is. Not just to Jews but to everyone who values freedom, compassion and humanity.

 

The appearance of antisemitism in a culture is the first symptom of a disease, the early warning sign of collective breakdown. If Europe allows antisemitism to flourish, that will be the beginning of the end of Europe. And what I want to do in these brief remarks is simply to analyze a phenomenon full of vagueness and ambiguity, because we need precision and understanding to know what antisemitism is, why it happens, why anti-Semites are convinced that they are not anti-Semitic.

 

First let me define antisemitism. Not liking Jews is not antisemitism. We all have people we don’t like. That’s OK; that’s human; it isn’t dangerous. Second, criticizing Israel is not antisemitism. I was recently talking to some schoolchildren and they asked me: is criticizing Israel antisemitism? I said No and I explained the difference. I asked them: Do you believe you have a right to criticize the British government? They all put up their hands. Then I asked, which of you believes that Britain has no right to exist? No one put up their hands. Now you know the difference, I said, and they all did.

 

Antisemitism means denying the right of Jews to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as everyone else. It takes different forms in different ages. In the Middle-Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, the state of Israel. It takes different forms but it remains the same thing: the view that Jews have no right to exist as free and equal human beings.

 

If there is one thing I and my contemporaries did not expect, it was that antisemitism would reappear in Europe within living memory of the Holocaust. The reason we did not expect it was that Europe had undertaken the greatest collective effort in all of history to ensure that the virus of antisemitism would never again infect the body politic. It was a magnificent effort of antiracist legislation, Holocaust education and interfaith dialogue. Yet antisemitism has returned despite everything.

 

On 27 January 2000, representatives of 46 governments from around the world gathered in Stockholm to issue a collective declaration of Holocaust remembrance and the continuing fight against antisemitism, racism and prejudice. Then came 9/11, and within days conspiracy theories were flooding the internet claiming it was the work of Israel and its secret service, the Mossad. In April 2002, on Passover, I was in Florence with a Jewish couple from Paris when they received a phone call from their son, saying, “Mum, Dad, it’s time to leave France. It’s not safe for us here anymore.”

 

In May 2007, in a private meeting here in Brussels, I told the three leaders of Europe at the time, Angela Merkel, President of the European Council, Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, and Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament, that the Jews of Europe were beginning to ask whether there was a future for Jews in Europe.

That was more than nine years ago. Since then, things have become worse. Already in 2013, before some of the worst incidents, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that almost a third of Europe’s Jews were considering emigrating because of anti-Semitism. In France the figure was 46 percent; in Hungary 48 percent.

 

Let me ask you this. Whether you are Jewish or Christian, Muslim: would you stay in a country where you need armed police to guard you while you prayed? Where your children need armed guards to protect them at school? Where, if you wear a sign of your faith in public, you risk being abused or attacked? Where, when your children go to university, they are insulted and intimidated because of what is happening in some other part of the world? Where, when they present their own view of the situation they are howled down and silenced?

 

This is happening to Jews throughout Europe. In every single country of Europe, without exception, Jews are fearful for their or their children’s future. If this continues, Jews will continue to leave Europe, until, barring the frail and the elderly, Europe will finally have become Judenrein.

 

How did this happen? It happened the way viruses always defeat the human immune system, namely, by mutating. The new antisemitism is different from the old antisemitism, in three ways. I’ve already mentioned one. Once Jews were hated because of their religion. Then they were hated because of their race. Now they are hated because of their nation state. The second difference is that the epicenter of the old antisemitism was Europe. Today it’s the Middle East and it is communicated globally by the new electronic media.

 

The third is particularly disturbing. Let me explain. It is easy to hate, but difficult publicly to justify hate. Throughout history, when people have sought to justify anti-Semitism, they have done so by recourse to the highest source of authority available within the culture. In the Middle-Ages, it was religion. So we had religious anti-Judaism. In post-Enlightenment Europe it was science. So we had the twin foundations of Nazi ideology, Social Darwinism and the so-called Scientific Study of Race. Today the highest source of authority worldwide is human rights. That is why Israel—the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East with a free press and independent judiciary—is regularly accused of the five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide.

 

The new antisemitism has mutated so that any practitioner of it can deny that he or she is an anti-Semite. After all, they’ll say, I’m not a racist. I have no problem with Jews or Judaism. I only have a problem with the State of Israel. But in a world of 56 Muslim nations and 103 Christian ones, there is only one Jewish state, Israel, which constitutes one-quarter of one per cent of the land mass of the Middle East. Israel is the only one of the 193 member nations of the United Nations that has its right to exist regularly challenged, with one state, Iran, and many, many other groups, committed to its destruction.

 

Antisemitism means denying the right of Jews to exist as Jews with the same rights as everyone else. The form this takes today is anti-Zionism. Of course, there is a difference between Zionism and Judaism, and between Jews and Israelis, but this difference does not exist for the new anti-Semites themselves. It was Jews not Israelis who were murdered in terrorist attacks in Toulouse, Paris, Brussels and Copenhagen. Anti-Zionism is the antisemitism of our time.

 

In the Middle Ages Jews were accused of poisoning wells, spreading the plague, and killing Christian children to use their blood. In Nazi Germany they were accused of controlling both capitalist America and communist Russia. Today they are accused of running ISIS as well as America. All the old myths have been recycled, from the Blood Libel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The cartoons that flood the Middle East are clones of those published in Der Stürmer one of the primary vehicles of Nazi propaganda between 1923 and 1945.

 

The ultimate weapon of the new antisemitism is dazzling in its simplicity. It goes like this. The Holocaust must never happen again. But Israelis are the new Nazis; the Palestinians are the new Jews; all Jews are Zionists. Therefore the real anti-Semites of our time are none other than the Jews themselves. And these are not marginal views. They are widespread throughout the Muslim world, including communities in Europe, and they are slowly infecting the far left, the far right, academic circles, unions, and even some churches. Having cured itself of the virus of antisemitism, Europe is being re-infected by parts of the world that never went through the self-reckoning that Europe undertook once the facts of the Holocaust became known.

 

How do such absurdities come to be believed? This is a vast and complex subject, and I have written a book about it, but the simplest explanation is this. When bad things happen to a group, its members can ask one of two questions: “What did we do wrong?” or “Who did this to us?” The entire fate of the group will depend on which it chooses.

 

If it asks, “What did we do wrong?” it has begun the self-criticism essential to a free society. If it asks, “Who did this to us?” it has defined itself as a victim. It will then seek a scapegoat to blame for all its problems. Classically this has been the Jews.

 

Anti-Semitism is a form of cognitive failure, and it happens when groups feel that their world is spinning out of control. It began in the Middle Ages, when Christians saw that Islam had defeated them in places they regarded as their own, especially Jerusalem.

 

That was when, in 1096, on their way to the Holy Land, the Crusaders stopped first to massacre Jewish communities in Northern Europe. It was born in the Middle East in the 1920s with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Antisemitism re-emerged in Europe in the 1870s during a period of economic recession and resurgent nationalism. And it is re-appearing in Europe now for the same reasons: recession, nationalism, and a backlash against immigrants and other minorities. Antisemitism happens when the politics of hope gives way to the politics of fear, which quickly becomes the politics of hate.

 

This then reduces complex problems to simplicities. It divides the world into black and white, seeing all the fault on one side and all the victimhood on the other. It singles out one group among a hundred offenders for the blame. The argument is always the same. We are innocent; they are guilty. It follows that if we are to be free, they, the Jews or the state of Israel, must be destroyed. That is how the great crimes begin.

 

Jews were hated because they were different. They were the most conspicuous non-Christian minority in a Christian Europe. Today they are the most conspicuous non-Muslim presence in an Islamic Middle East. Anti-Semitism has always been about the inability of a group to make space for difference. No group that adopts it will ever, can ever, create a free society.

 

So I end where I began. The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. Antisemitism is only secondarily about Jews. Primarily it is about the failure of groups to accept responsibility for their own failures, and to build their own future by their own endeavors. No society that has fostered antisemitism has ever sustained liberty or human rights or religious freedom. Every society driven by hate begins by seeking to destroy its enemies, but ends by destroying itself.

 

Europe today is not fundamentally anti-Semitic. But it has allowed antisemitism to enter via the new electronic media. It has failed to recognize that the new antisemitism is different from the old. We are not today back in the 1930s. But we are coming close to 1879, when Wilhelm Marr founded the League of Anti-Semites in Germany; to 1886 when Édouard Drumont published La France Juive; and 1897 when Karl Lueger became Mayor of Vienna. These were key moments in the spread of antisemitism, and all we have to do today is to remember that what was said then about Jews is being said today about the Jewish state.

 

The history of Jews in Europe has not always been a happy one. Europe’s treatment of the Jews added certain words to the human vocabulary: disputation, forced conversion, inquisition, expulsion, auto da fe, ghetto, pogrom and Holocaust, words written in Jewish tears and Jewish blood. Yet for all that, Jews loved Europe and contributed to it some of its greatest scientists, writers, academics, musicians, shapers of the modern mind.

 

If Europe lets itself be dragged down that road again, this will be the story told in times to come. First they came for the Jews. Then for the Christians. Then for the gays. Then for the atheists. Until there was nothing left of Europe’s soul but a distant, fading memory.

 

Today I have tried to give voice to those who have no voice. I have spoken on behalf of the murdered Roma, Sinti, gays, dissidents, the mentally and physically handicapped, and a million and a half Jewish children murdered because of their grandparents’ religion. In their name, I say to you: You know where the road ends. Don’t go down there again.

 

You are the leaders of Europe. Its future is in your hands. If you do nothing, Jews will leave, European liberty will die, and there will be a moral stain on Europe’s name that all eternity will not erase.

 

Stop it now while there is still time.

 

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THE GIFTS AND THE CALLING OF GOD ARE IRREVOCABLE

Martin M. van Brauman

 

On October 15, 1965, the Second Vatican Council ratified the Nostra Aetate (In Our Time), the Roman Catholic “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.”[1] The guiding spirit of change for the Second Vatican Council was Pope John XXIII (1958-1963), who helped Balkan Jews escape Nazi death contrary to the wishes of his superiors in the Vatican while he was the pope’s apostolic delegate to Turkey.[2]  Pope John gave the task of preparing a declaration on Jewish relationship to Augustine Cardinal Bea, the head of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Christian Unity.[3]

After the Pope’s death in June 1963, Cardinal Bea completed the papal charge of the Nostra Aetate.[4]  Pope Paul VI promulgated it as the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church on October 28, 1965 in spite of internal Church and Arab protests.[5]  The Nostra Aetate affirmed that God’s covenant continues with the Jewish people and that “the ongoing vitality of the Jewish religion is part of God’s plan.”[6]

Subsequent to Nostra Aetate, Catholic theologian Professors Didier Pollefeyt and Jürgen Manemann stated that for the Jews the Covenant of Torah is sufficient for redemption and for the Gentiles Jesus is necessary for salvation.[7]  Professor Didier Pollefeyt wrote in Christology after Auschwitz: A Catholic Perspective that the Christian church must acknowledge the reality, in which it exists, is understood only when Israel’s continuing covenant with God is both recognized and confessed as essential to it.

On December 10, 2015, the Commission For Religious Relations With The Jews published “A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of ‘Nostra Aetate’ (No. 4).” The document presents the current theological questions that have developed since the Second Vatican Council and the importance for a continuation of Jewish-Catholic dialogue.  God began by choosing a people through Abraham and setting them apart by taking them out of bondage in Egypt and revealing himself through the establishment of the covenant at Sinai.  At Sinai, the twelve tribes become a nation people and a witness to the world of the redeeming God.  This covenant means a relationship with God and God reveals himself in his Word with the history of the Jewish people.

The paper further states that the Torah is the instruction for a life in the proper relationship with God. Through Torah study, the Jew receives communion with God.  In the June 30, 2015 address to members of the International Council of Christians and Jews, Pope Francis stated:

The Christian confessions find their unity in Christ; Judaism finds its unity in the Torah.  Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Word of God made flesh in the world; for Jews the Word of God is present above all in the Torah. Both faith traditions find their foundation in the One God, the God of the Covenant, who reveals himself through his Word.  In seeking a right attitude towards God, Christians turn to Christ as the fount of new life, and Jews to the teaching of the Torah.

In response to whether God has repudiated the Jewish people, the paper quotes at the top of the title page from Romans 11:29 that “The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable” and states that “the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery.”  The paper follows with the quote from Romans 11:33:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways.   

How can the Christian belief in the universal salvation through Jesus be combined with the equally clear statement of faith in the irrevocable covenant of God with Israel through the Jewish people?  The Catholic Church is saying that it is not a matter of missionary efforts to convert Jews, but rather the expectation within the mysteries of God’s work that someday “all peoples will call on God with one voice and serve him shoulder to shoulder.”

 

 

[1] Jeremy Cohen, Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen, (1st ed. 2007), pp. 167, 173.

[2] Ibid., p. 173.

[3] Ibid., p. 172.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., p. 173.

[6] James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, (1st ed. 2001), p. 38.

[7] Berger, Alan L. and David Patterson, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Drawing Honey from the Rock, (1st ed. 2008), p. 23.

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JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION AND SALVATION

Martin M. van Brauman

 

 

And now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob; the One Who fashioned you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called [you] by name; you are Mine. Isaiah 43:1.

Judaism and Christianity share the beliefs of creation, revelation and redemption.  In Judaism, there is a doctrine of “grace,” a doctrine of repentance and of redemption back into the Covenant of God.[1]  The first tablets, the original Ten Commandments, marked the initial revelation to Israel at Sinai and were a gift of grace and a declaration of God’s covenant.  The making of the golden calf paved the way for the concept of repentance and return, the power of repentance and an everlasting covenant.  The event of the breaking of the first tablets ultimately led to the replacement by the second tablets, which were greater than the first.  One of the most important messages in the entire Torah is that regardless of how one may fall, there is always the power of repentance and the redemption of the relationship with God.

Christians think they need to pry Jews away from Judaism.  However, both Judaism and Christianity are religions of redemption and salvation, based upon faith in God and acceptance of His Divine Gift of Grace.  Resurrection is rooted in the belief and practice of Judaism, which is shared with Christianity.[2]  At creation in Genesis 2:7, “The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and He blew into his nostrils the soul of life” and in Ezekiel 37:5 God breathes life into the dead bones of Israel near the end of creation.[3]  The Jewish people have faith in the resurrecting God of Ezekiel, because they know of the creating God of Genesis.[4]

The prophet Ezekiel speaks of God’s future restoration of Israel and he speaks of redemption with God replacing their stony hearts with fleshy ones.[5]

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put my Spirit within you, . . . Ezekiel 36:24-27.

And I have loved you with an eternal love . . .  Jeremiah 31:2.

The soul is the Divine utterance made of Torah, for God creates every soul from the letters of the holy tongue, Hebrew, by forming an utterance and the Divine word continually speaks it into being.[6]  The soul was created in God’s image at the time of creation.  Hebrew, as the language of Torah, is the holy tongue because it is “the language of creation, the language that makes all language, all life, all thought possible.”[7]  Professor Patterson wrote that with mankind’s effort to become as God come the loss of the soul and the loss of our humanity.[8]

The rebirth of Israel represents a revelatory event in Judaism’s history and Christianity must reassess its biblical foundations to accept Judaism’s ongoing life and God’s continuing covenant with the Jewish people for the ancient Covenant is not dead and was never replaced by the Christian church.[9]  Judaism has lived by its faithfulness to the Torah and to God.[10]  Judaism is a way of life that needs no physical building.  Judaism was never intended only as a faith and lifestyle for the individual, the family, or the congregation, but is to provide the underpinning for a society grounded in moral principles and to impact the world by providing a shining light to all humanity.[11]

Judaism itself is a pattern of meaning and direction for human history.  The central messages of Judaism and its development over the course of history are incorporated into the Jewish Holy Days.[12]  Just as Judaism and the Jewish people are not finished, neither is the role of Jewish holidays, such as out of the 20th century arose Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Commemoration Day) and Yom Ha’ Atzmaut (Israel Independence Day).[13]  The Holy Days are the unbroken master code of Judaism.[14]  The unifying message underlying all the Jewish holidays is redemption.[15]

Abraham Heschel has asked “What is the meaning of the State of Israel?”[16]  “Its sheer being is the message.”[17]  Israel was not destined to be only the classroom for the Diaspora on Jewish identity and Jewish life.[18]  Heschel said that the meaning of the State of Israel must be seen in terms of the vision of the prophets and the redemption of the world.[19]  The State of Israel is the realization of the Torah’s ultimate goal, as stated by the prophets.  Destroy Israel and you will destroy the very purpose of God, for Israel is and remains the apple of His eye.[20]

For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be still, until her righteousness emanates like bright light, and her salvation blazes like a torch.  Nations will perceive your righteousness and all the kings your honor; and you will be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord will pronounce.  Then you will be a crown of splendor in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the palm of your God. It will no longer be said of you “Forsaken One,” and of your land it will no longer be said “Desolate Place;” for you will be called “My Desire Is In Her,” and your land “Inhabited,” for the Lord’s desire is in you, and your land will become inhabited.  As a young man takes a maiden in marriage, so will your children settle in you; and like a bridegroom’s rejoicing over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.  Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, have I posted guardians; all the day and all the night, continuously, they will never be silent. You who remind the Lord, be not silent! Do not give Him silence, until He establishes and until He makes Jerusalem a source of praise in the Land.  The Lord has sworn by His right hand and by His powerful arm: I will no longer give your grain as food for your enemies; and the sons of strangers will not drink your wine for which you have toiled.  For those who have harvested it will eat it, and will praise the Lord; and those who have gathered it in will drink it in My holy courtyards. Isaiah 62:1-9.

Why have not the Jews after two thousand years of Jewish crucifixion simply assimilate into the world and forsake Judaism?  Is it the Jews’ faith in God and God wants the Jews and Judaism to survive to bring forth the Messiah?

Balaam spoke about seeing Jacob’s glory and his greatness in the future. I see it, but not now; I view it, but it is not near. Numbers 24:17.   Balaam further spoke that Jacob’s fortunes will rise and the Messiah shall come and rule from sea to sea and there shall be no remnant of the house of Esau, all the children of Seth, all of the nations, shall be conquered for Israel and the remnant of the city of Edom (Rome) shall be destroyed.  Since Amalek was the first of nations to wage war against Israel, Israel will destroy Amalek and wipe out the memory of Amalek.

A star shot forth from Jacob and a rod has risen from Israel, and he shall strike down the extremities of Moab and undermine all the children of Seth.  Edom shall be a conquest and Seir shall be a conquest [of] his enemies – and Israel will attain wealth.  One from Jacob shall rule and destroy the remnant of a city.  He saw Amalek and declaimed his parable and said: ‘Amalek is the first of nations, and its end is eternal destruction.’ Numbers 24:18-20.

Abraham Heschel has stated that “the religious duty of the Jew is to participate in the process of continued redemption, in seeing that justice prevails over power that awareness of God penetrates human understanding.”[21]  The Jews are God’s stake in human history, as the dawn and the dusk.[22]  The presence of Israel is the repudiation of despair and Israel demands a renewal of trust in God.

Why would a Christian upon discovering the Jewish background of his family want to embrace his Jewish roots and explore the Jewishness of his faith?  To acknowledge one’s Jewish roots would open up the inexperienced world of anti-Semitism.  However, I am a link, a remnant of a Jewish family name, in a chain of generations “stretching back to time immemorial, imbuing it with the divine.”[23]

In a dream, I heard “pick up My Cross and follow Me.”  Is that the Cross of Jewish crucifixion?   Do I hear a call by God for dissimilation leading me back to Jerusalem and reestablishing Jewish roots?  The Word of God proclaims that Jerusalem shall be the city that brings forth salvation to mankind and redemption for all nations, where heaven and earth meet.  Mount Moriah is the place where Abraham bound Isaac on the altar and where the Holy of Holies of the Temple stood. Jerusalem is where Jacob had a dream while laying down on Mount Moriah and saw a ladder reaching up to heaven and angels ascending and descending on it and God proclaimed to Jacob:

I am the Lord, God of Abraham your father and God of Isaac; the ground upon which you are lying, to you will I give it and to your descendants.  Your offspring shall be as the dust of the earth, and you shall spread out powerfully westward, eastward, northward and southward; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and by your offspring.  Behold, I am with you; I will guard you wherever you go, and I will return you to this soil; for I will not forsake you until I will have done what I have spoken about you  . . . Jacob awoke from his sleep and said . . . ‘How awesome is this place!  This is none other than the abode of God and this is the gate of the heavens!’ Genesis 28:13-17.

Few Christian denominations have fully recognized the salvific nature of the everlasting covenant made between God and the Jewish people and have fully embraced the fullness of the teachings of Jesus, such as love thy neighbor.[24]  The Jews built monuments to life: the family, education, the conversation between the generations and places of study and prayer – finding eternity in simple things.[25]  The Jewish doctrine of chosenness places upon Jews a special accountability to live by the values of the covenant that God has entered with them and the concept has nothing to do with racial superiority or privilege.[26]

The Jewish people see themselves as consisting of an extended family, not fragmented and alienated individuals, but an organic whole made up of individual families.[27]  Members of the Jewish family are connected in time and space, their bonds extending backwards to Abraham and forward to all future Jews.[28]  The extended Jewish family has a distinct duty and intimate relationship with God.[29]

To be Jewish is to possess a historical consciousness that transcends individual consciousness, because every Jew stood at Sinai, every Jew heard God’s Law proclaimed and our memory begins not with our own.[30]  Israel and the Jewish people bear witness to the living God and so to a living covenant that promises redemption.[31]

There would be no Christian church were not the covenant between Israel and God alive and working in the world.[32]  If the Christian church is faithful to God and His covenant with His people, the proper mission of the Christian church to the Jewish people would be to help Israel to be what it is in the covenant by God’s election and to help it perform its mission.[33]

With the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., Judaism changed from Temple worship to worship in the synagogue with Torah study and prayer.  The Temple and Jerusalem were destroyed because the Law was followed too harshly and carried out as ritual without the compassion and mercy of prayer.  In Matthew 23:13, Jesus said Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. God will remove obstacles that prevent dialogue between God and man, for God seeks engagement with man.

When Jesus entered the Temple area in the court of the Gentiles, during Passover and drove out those buying and selling at the animal pens and overturned the tables of the money changes, from Isaiah 56:7 Jesus exclaimed Is it not written: My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? Mark 11:15-17. From Jeremiah 7:11, Jesus further exclaimed But you have made it a den of robbers. Mark 11:17. Earlier the prophet Jeremiah called for repentance from the people of Israel, harking back to Shiloh and the time of the prophet Samuel and the corrupt priesthood:

Has this Temple, upon which My Name is proclaimed, become a cave of criminals in your eyes?  . . . For go to My shrine that is in Shiloh, where I caused My Name to dwell there at first, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel.  So now, since you do all these deeds – the word of the Lord – and I have spoken to you, speaking repeatedly, but you have not listened; I have called out to you but you did not respond, I shall do to the Temple – upon which My Name is proclaimed, upon which you place your trust – and to the place that I have given to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh.  I shall cast you from My presence, as I cast out all your brethren, all the seed of Ephraim. Jeremiah 7:11-15.

By allowing the Temple’s court of the Gentiles to become a boisterous, putrid marketplace, the Jewish religious leaders were obstructing God’s desire for a house of prayer for all nations.  Today, Judaism is based upon faith in God and the study of Torah with prayer.

The basic Jewish function of prayer is not its practical consequences, but the metaphysical formation of a fellowship consisting of God and man. Prayer is not a series of requests to God, but prayer is an engagement, even a confrontation, with God.[34]  God initiated dialogue with man at Sinai.  Through the Scriptures, God speaks to us and we speak to God through prayer and this dialogue is created by the linking of Bible study and prayer.

During the inauguration of the first Temple, King Solomon described future exiles of the Jewish people, but assured future generations that confessional prayer will replace the Temple for the atonement for all sin.

When they sin against You – for there is no man who never sins – and You become angry with them, and You deliver them to an enemy, and their captors take them captive to the enemy’s land, faraway or nearby, and they take it to heart in the land where they were taken captive and they repent and supplicate to You in the land of their captors, saying, ‘We have sinned; we have been iniquitous; we have been wicked,’ and they return to You with all their heart and with all their soul . . . and pray to You by way of their land that You gave to their forefathers, and [by way of] the city that You have chosen and [through] the Temple that I built for Your Name – may You hear their prayer and their supplication from Heaven, the foundation of Your abode, and carry out their judgment, and forgive Your people who sinned against You, and all their transgressions that they transgressed against You, and let them inspire mercy before their captors, so that they will treat them mercifully.  

For they are Your people and Your heritage, whom You have taken out of Egypt, from the midst of the iron furnace; may Your eyes thus be open to the supplication of Your servant and the supplication of Your people Israel, to listen to them whenever they call out to You.  For You have separated them for Yourself as a heritage from all the peoples of the earth, as You spoke through Your servant Moses, when You took our forefathers out of Egypt, O my Lord, the Lord/God.1Kings 8:46-53.

The Jewish “chosenness” is not a privilege, but a mission to open for all people the invisible and sacred doors that illuminate redemption.[35]  The Torah is the Tree of Life only to those who accept it as the immutable Word of God.[36]  Under the Christian Gospels for the non-Jew, Jesus is the manifestation of the living Word of God, the tree of life made flesh.

 For from Zion will the Torah come forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Isaiah 2:3.

I thank You for You have answered me and become my salvation.  The stone the builders despised has become the cornerstone.  This emanated from the Lord; it is wondrous in our eyes.  This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad on it. Please, Lord, save now! Please, Lord, bring success now!  Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord; we bless you from the House of the Lord. Psalm 118:21-26.

Are the Jewish people, the elder brothers and sisters, fellow travelers under Judaism with the followers of Jesus on the way to the Kingdom of God?  In serving the Jewish people both externally and internally and becoming the defender of the Jewish people, the Christian church bears witness to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.[37]  In its witness to the unity of God, the Christian church owes its service to Israel and the Jewish people to show the oneness of the God of Israel.[38]  As the Catholic theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether wrote “the Christian messianic experience in Jesus was a Jewish experience, created out of Jewish hope.”[39]  The history of Israel did not end in 70 A.D., but it continued in the numerous Diaspora, permitting Israel to carry to the world a witness of its faith to the one God while preserving the memory of the Land in their hearts.

 Judaism and Christianity are both religions of redemption and salvation, which rests upon the saving grace of God.  Judaism and Christianity share the view of the world under the aspect of Creation-Revelation-Redemption.[40]  The Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig (1888-1929) considered both Judaism and Christianity having distinct but equally important roles in the spiritual structure of the world and saw in both biblical religions approaches toward a comprehension of reality.[41]  Rosenzweig stated that “God did not, after all create religion; he created the world.”[42]

Judaism, staying with God (the “eternal life”), contrasts with Christianity, being sent out to conquer the unredeemed world by forever marching toward God (the “eternal way”).[43]  Rosenzweig saw Judaism as the “Star of Redemption” and Christianity as the rays of that Star.  Since both Judaism and Christianity will exist to the end of time, Rosenzweig asked in The Star of Redemption whether Judaism and Christianity together constitute the Truth.[44]  Rosenzweig answered that:

Man can become aware of the Love of God (Revelation), he can fill the moments of his life with eternity (Redemption), but Truth is beyond man.  Only God is Truth, Man (Jew, Christian) is given a part in truth insofar as he realizes in active life his share in truth. The distant vision of truth does not lead into the beyond, but ‘into life.’[45]

The Jewish people are a testimony to the reality of God, which is affirmed by the truth of human history.  The Jewish community’s salvation is the binding power of faith and God’s covenant with His people.  In Jeremiah 31:32, a new covenant, unlike the Mosaic covenant when God brought them out of Egypt, has been given to Israel and the Jewish people through the divine Spirit of God, in which the Torah shall be written on their hearts when Torah study and prayer replaces Temple worship.

However, Jewish and Christians relations remain captive to church dogma, anticipating the eventual conversion of the Jewish community and the withering away of Judaism.[46]  The Christian church seems to continue to define the Jews’ place in history for them and refuses to recognize Judaism as a religion in its own right and maintains a provisional tolerance based on the expectation of the Jews’ coming conversion to Christianity.[47]

The Christian church still defines Judaism in terms of the Jewish legalism during the Second Temple period.  Christians assume that Jews believe righteousness results only from keeping the commandments, but Judaism stresses that righteousness is a gift from God.  Christians present Christianity as the contrast to or superior to Judaism; however, Judaism and the people that Jesus knew as his own were not his theological contrast but his historical context.  Second Temple Judaism was Jesus’ historical context not his theological contrast.

Commonly, in Christian sermons a pastor will portray Jesus as against the Jews (as if Jesus and his followers were not Jewish) and as attacking the strict rules of the Jewish religious establishment at the time by Jesus delivering quotations from the Torah.  Then, the pastor may connect the conflict to some illusion to Jews today like a joke about Jewish legalism so strict that a husband can divorce his wife over burnt bagels.  The message implies that Judaism was and still is today based upon the strict, legalistic rituals enforced by the Jewish religious authorities, who ignored the teachings of the Torah.  Even pastors who say they support Israel during church services will also imply subtly in their messages that the Old Testament (the Torah), being incorporated into the teachings of Jesus, was and is no longer part of Judaism.  Without realizing it, the pastor delivers and the congregation receives an anti-Semitic message that continues to reinforce the false stereotype images of the Jews and Judaism.

The mainline Protestant churches still preach a general replacement theology that is based upon the international church replacing the nation of Israel as God’s people on earth, inheriting all the promised blessings.  Replacement or supersessionist theology calls Christians the “true Jews” and the church the “new Israel.”  Some traditional churches may preach also a “fulfillment” theology based upon Israel reduced to a remnant of one true Israelite in the person of Jesus, in which all the promises made to the people of Israel were fulfilled and then extended to all who believe in Jesus.

During the 19th century, John Nelson Darby originated the system of biblical interpretation known as “dispensationalism,” which divided biblical history into seven dispensational ages.  Between the first coming of Jesus to his second coming is referred to as the “church age.”  The dispensationalists teach that the church has taken over Israel’s calling and mission in the present church age, but Israel will take them back after the “rapture,” when the church is removed from the earth.  However, all of these replacement or dispensational theologies preach the need for the conversion of the Jews for them to receive God’s grace of redemption and salvation.

Also, classical dispensationalism does not anticipate the rebirth of a Jewish State ahead of the coming of the Messiah,[48]which can somewhat explain the hatred that the mainline churches hold against the State of Israel.  Christian leaders of the Presbyterian, Methodist and Lutheran churches campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctioning of Israel and betray the Jewish people’s right to defend themselves against the threats of Palestinian terrorists who seek Jewish extermination.  Protestant-founded universities deny Jewish professionals from participating in university sponsored educational seminars, while fawning over Muslim terrorists.  The Nazis also began with boycotts of Jewish businesses and professionals and lending support to Muslim terrorists such as the Grand Mufti el-Husseini, Hitler’s disciple who incited murder against the Jews in the British Mandate Palestine and throughout the Muslim world.

The covenant, God’s oath to Abraham in Genesis 17:7, refers to God’s special relationship with Israel in which His bounty flows directly to His people without intermediaries.[49]  The Jew, in his baruch ata (Blessed are You), already is with God, requiring no intermediary, and he gathers into his soul a deeper understanding with every Shabbat, with every Yom Kippur and with repeated rehearsals of redemption.[50]  Franz Rosenzweig wrote that the Jews live as a “metahistorical people” – a people present and beyond this present time.[51]

The Christians claim that the Jews are blind to Jesus.  However, Christian eyes are blind to the fact that the Jewish people have been and still are God’s witnesses on earth, the eternal people.  They have never been placed aside by God.  The Christian churches may want to support Israel, but I suppose they are expecting a Christian Israel with or without the Jews.  They do not understand that there can be no Israel without the Jews, no Jerusalem without the Jews.  Jerusalem is the heart of Israel, the heart of the Jewish people.  Rosenzweig wrote that:

This existence of the Jew constantly subjects Christianity to the idea that it is not attaining the goal, the truth, that it ever remains – on the way.  That is the profoundest reason for the Christian hatred of the Jew, which is heir to the pagan hatred of the Jew.[52]

To the people who say show me proof that God exists, I say look to God’s witnesses on earth – look at the history of the Jewish people after more than two thousand years of persecution and the Holocaust and you will see proof that God exists.

You are My witnesses – the word of the Lord – and My servant whom I have chosen, so that you will know and believe in Me, and understand that I am He; before Me nothing was created by a god nor will there be after Me! Isaiah 43:10.

Am Yisrael Chai! –  The outcry of “The people of Israel live!” is a summons to simchat Torah, a “rejoicing in Torah,” a summons to testimony, and a summons to action to make a choice for I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you may live. Deuteronomy 30:19.[53]

Franz Rosenzweig wrote of the permanency of the Sinai covenant between God and the Jewish people as it related to both Judaism and Christianity when he stated:

We agree on what Christ and his Church mean in the world: no one comes to the Father but through him (John 14:6). No one comes to the Father – but it is different when somebody does not have to come to the Father because he is already with him.  And this is so for the people of Israel.[54]

Catholic theologian Professors Didier Pollefeyt and Jürgen Manemann have stated that for the Jews the Covenant of Torah is sufficient for redemption and for the Gentiles Jesus is necessary for salvation.[55] Rosenzweig in The Star of Redemption stated that:

The patriarch Abraham heard the call of God and answered it with his ‘Here I am,’ and the individual only in Abraham’s loins.  Henceforth the individual is born a Jew.  He no longer needs to become one in some decisive moment of his individual life.  The decisive moment, the great Now, the miracle of rebirth, lies before the individual life. In the individual life there is found only the great Here, the viewpoint, the station, the house and the circuit, in short all that is granted to man in the mystery of his first birth.

. . .

It is just the contrary with the Christian. In his personal life there occurs to him at a given point the miracle of rebirth, and it occurs to him as an individual. Direction is thereby injected into the life of one born heathen by nature.  ‘A Christian is made, not born.’[56]

Rosenzweig commented that “Everyone is to know that the Eternal brought him personally out of Egypt . . .  [and] The present Here dissolves in the great Now of the remembered experience.”[57]  Rather than the past being made present, the present is brought back into the past.[58]  Although born a Jew, a Jew must first live and experience for himself his “Jewishness” and Jewish life leads the Jew deeper into his Jewish identity.[59]  Rosenzweig wrote that the “Jew must live his own role in God’s world” and questioned himself when considering conversion to Christianity:

Shall I become converted, I who was born ‘chosen’?  Does the alternative of conversion even exist for me?[60]

The American Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that the attempt to convert Jews “was theologically unnecessary and incompatible with Christianity, as well as spiritually insulting to Jews.”[61]  When a Jew is born, “his birth makes him part of the holy nation and gives him a part in eternity, in redemption.”[62]  The Jewish person who lives in the light of the Torah, the Word of God, has a relationship with God and will come to redemption.  From the Star of Redemption, Rosenzweig has written that:

For “there is only one community . . . that cannot pronounce the ‘we’ of its unity without hearing deep within the complementary ‘are eternal.’” All other nations are mortal in that they are tied to a specific land, a specific earthly home, for which the blood of their sons flows. “We alone trusted the blood and left the land . . . and were alone of all the nations on earth in redeeming our life from any fellowship with death.”  The land belongs “to the Jew in the deepest sense as only the land of his yearning, as – the Holy Land.”  The blood-fellowship alone makes the Jew a Jew, whereas every Christian, by reason of adhering to his earthly homeland, is pagan by birth, reaching Christianity only through an inner conversion, through the conversion in the sign of the cross.[63]

The continued existence of the Jewish people stands as surety for the truth of Christianity.[64]  In spite of that surety, the Christian church cannot accept the fact that God has never left the Jewish people and has never stopped listening and answering their prayers.  The Christian church cannot accept the fact that God is bringing back a Jewish Israel to its ancient homeland as He promised.  Christians need to recognize that their mission of preparing for the coming of the Kingdom of God is shared with the Jewish people and the Jewish people have their own fulfillment in faithfulness to the divine covenant promised by God in Genesis.  Israel has a divinely ordained mission to bring knowledge of the true God and the Word of God, the Torah, to the nations of the world.

I will bless those who bless you and curse him that curses you; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you. Genesis 12:3.

By Myself I swear [Just as I am eternal, so My oath is eternal] – the word of the Lord – . . . I shall surely bless you and greatly increase your offspring like the stars of the heavens and like the sand on the seashore; and your offspring shall inherit the gate of its enemy [The solemn assurance of Israel’s ultimate redemption]. And all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your offspring, because you have listened to My voice. Genesis 22:16-18.

James Parkes in The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism stated that “what Christ is to the Christian, Torah is to the Jew.”[65]   He said that the Torah is the

‘Incarnation’ of the Divine, for it expresses the whole of the Divine will for, and thought about man.”  It contained far more than mere ‘precept’ or laws, although even the precepts, by being Divine ordinances, brought men to God in the performance of them.  Thus to have many precepts was not a burden; it only gave men so many more opportunities for doing expressly His will, and even if some of the precepts seemed trivial, it was not for man to judge the importance of what God had ordained . . . Torah itself was the complete revelation of the life of the holy community or nation through which the individual in every act could fulfill the purpose of God in His creation . . . Torah was a living creative force expressing itself through the Holy Community to the world as a whole.[66]  

Parkes further stated that “the Christian through Jesus, the Jew through Torah, sought the same thing – ‘the immediate intuition of God in the individual soul and conscience.’”[67]  Parkes commented that Jesus attacked the scribes and the religious leaders at that time, because they obscured that direct relationship between man and God by falsifying the nature of Torah as only an observance of laws.[68]

Rabbi Leon Klenicki of the Anti-Defamation League in New York stated that true interreligious encounter between Judaism and Christianity can only occur when the parties recognize and affirm each other’s existence as independent essentials in God’s plan of salvation and the realization that Sinai and Calvary are two interrelated but independent covenantal events.[69]  However, Rosenzweig and other theologians have discerned not two covenants, but only one covenant with two forms.[70]

The Jewish covenant refers to the welfare and salvation of the Jewish people, in which the world is given a moral and religious revelation, and Jesus is the link between this original covenant and the rest of humanity.[71]  Christianity is an extension of the divine invitation towards humanity and another form of the same covenant of Sinai, which broadens the revelation on Sinai to the Gentiles.[72]

Rabbi Irving Greenberg wrote that Christianity must reject its claims of superseding Judaism and Jews must recognize Christianity as an outgrowth of the original covenant, which demonstrates that the original covenant continues to bear fruit and bring life.[73]  Greenberg holds that since the Abrahamic covenant is open, it is open to further revelations in history and new redemptive events confirm the covenant and move the world closer to the Messianic age.[74]  Greenberg contends that through the unfolding covenant, many Gentiles are brought into the messianic process and become partners in the covenant of God and humanity.[75]

The Sadducees represented the Temple priesthood and the Jewish governmental authority.  The Pharisees professed the openness of the covenant to interpretation through the written and oral Torah and held that all of Israel could be priests and every home table could be an altar where food could be served and eaten as an offering before God.  The table, upon which food is served, is sanctified through blessings and prayers and replaced the Temple altar where sacrifices would secure atonement for an individual.[76]

The Sadducees believed that the destruction of the Temple and the Roman expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem severed Israel from the main channels of communication with God and the end of the Jewish religion.  Along the same thinking, Jewish followers of Jesus concluded that the Abrahamic covenant was broken.  The Sadducees and their followers over the next two centuries attempted to restore the Temple, but they vanished after the revolt against Rome in 117 A.D. and the revolt in Judea in 132 A.D.[77]

Rabbi Greenberg concludes that the rabbis, the descendants of the Pharisees, understood this absolute destruction as God calling the Jews to a new level of covenantal relationship.  Greenberg wrote that the destruction of the Temple “was a call from God for a fundamental shift in the paradigm of the human role in the covenant.”[78]

Although the Temple had been destroyed, the Divine Presence was everywhere, yearning for the Jews to come back to God through Torah study and to discern the will of God.  When Moses read the Covenant to the people, and they said, ‘Everything that the Lord has said, we will do and we will obey,’ the Jews declared their acceptance to “do and obey” whatever God would command – even before the commandments were given. The entire people responded together (Exodus 19:8) . . . and the entire people responded with one voice (Exodus 24:3).  The declaration has remained for all time the anthem of Israel’s faith in God and devotion to His word.  After the destruction of the Temple, the concept of prayer and the synagogue was developed by the rabbis to carry on the covenantal dialogue.

Since Christian theology has to depend to some extent upon Judaism without losing its own identity, some theologians have preferred incorrectly to speak of a “two-covenant” theory based on a divine arrangement of “equality in separation,” rather than the “one covenant having two forms.”[79]  Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity are the same covenantal mission to the world having two forms, one to deepen the Sinai meaning as witnesses and the other to bring God to the world.[80]

He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit, Galatians 3:14.

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (that done in the body by the hands of men) – remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. . .

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. Ephesians 2:11-22.

Rosenzweig wrote that Judaism and Christianity are divine revelations and approaches to God, ways to God, and both faiths share revelation, God, prayer and the final redemption.[81]  Rosenzweig considered both having a mission to testify for God, in which the Christian mission is to bring God and God’s teaching-commandment to the world and the Jewish mission is the witnessing of God’s name and eternal covenant.[82]

Jews and Christians must walk by the light of God,[83] because we are in a time of great attack against God, the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.

At that time Michael (the guardian angel of Israel) will stand, the great [heavenly] prince who stands in support of the members of your people, and there will be a time of trouble such as there had never been since there was a nation until that time.  But at that time your people will escape; everything that is found written in this book [will occur]. Many of those who sleep in the dusty earth will awaken: these for everlasting life and these for shame, for everlasting abhorrence.  The wise will shine like the radiance of the firmament, and those who teach righteousness to the multitudes [will shine] like the stars, forever and ever. Daniel 12:1-4.   

The book of Daniel talks in the End Times of the rescue of the Jewish people from their oppression, to the vindication of those who held fast to the tradition against those who cast their lot with the foreign tormentors, and to the coming Messiah.

I was watching in night visions and behold! with the clouds of heaven, one like a man came; he came up to the One of Ancient Days, and they brought him before Him. He was given dominion, honor and kingship, so that all peoples, nations and languages would serve him; his dominion would be an everlasting dominion that would never pass, and his kingship would never be destroyed. Daniel 7:13-14. 

The prophet Daniel describes the process of redemption when the strength of the Jewish nation will come to an end, then the suffering will end and the redemption will arrive.[84]  Redemption is dependent upon repentance (teshuva), prayer (tefilla) and charity (tzedoka) and will only come through following and acting in accordance with the ways of the Torah and to fear the exalted and awesome Name of God.

During a reading of a Haggadah in a recent Passover Seder service that I attended, a contemporary Dayeinu ends by saying that God has strengthened the State of Israel and has planted within our hearts the covenant of one people. The Jews have a dual destiny to be both a nation that dwells alone and a light to the nations.  To achieve this dual destiny, God bestowed by His grace on the Jewish people the Word of God (the Torah), Jewish nationhood and the Land of Israel.  The return to the Land of Israel is the beginning sign for the redemption of the Jewish people and for the world.  Judaism is flourishing in Israel and it is energizing the Jewish communities in the United States and the world as never before during the past 2,000 years as Diaspora Jews reconnect to Israel.

I will take you from [among] the nations and gather you from all the lands, and I will bring you to your own soil.  Then I will sprinkle pure water upon you, that you may become cleansed; I will cleanse you from all your contamination and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put my Spirit within you . . . Ezekiel 36:24-27.

The time is now for the eschatological unification of all God’s people.  For the day is coming that all peoples will sit at the banquet on the mountain of the Lord, who will wipe away all tears from all eyes (Isaiah 25:6-9; Revelation 21:4).[85]

Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us [all]? Malachi 2:10.

 

 

[1] James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A study in the origins of antisemitism, (1st ed. 1934), p. 373.

[2] Kevin J. Madigan and Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews, (1st ed. 2008), pp. 2-3.

[3] Ibid., pp. 228-229.

[4] Ibid., p. 229.

[5] Ibid., p. 252.

[6] David Patterson, Overcoming Alienation: A Kabbalistic Reflection on the Five Levels of the Soul, (1st ed. 2008), p. 29.

[7] Ibid., p. 158.

[8] Ibid., pp. 140-141

[9] John K. Roth and Michael Berenbaum, Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications, (1st ed. 1989), p. 326.

[10] Paul M. van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, Part 2, A Christian Theology of the People Israel, (1st ed. 1987), p. 12.

[11] Judea Pearl and Ruth Pearl, I Am Jewish, Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl, (1st ed. 2004), p. 151.

[12] Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays, (2nd ed. 1998), p. 17.

[13] Ibid., p. 18.

[14] Ibid., p. 17.

[15] Ibid., p. 18.

[16] Abraham J. Heschel, Israel: An Echo of Eternity, (1st ed., 3rd Printing 1969), p. 224.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Judea and Ruth Pearl, p. 116.

[19] Heschel, Israel: An Echo of Eternity, p. 225.

[20] Zechariah 2:12.

[21] Heschel, Israel: An Echo of Eternity, p. 225.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Gerda Weissmann Klein, All But My Life,(1st rev.’d ed. 1995), p 253.

[24] Kevin P. Spicer, Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2007), pp. x-xi.

[25] Roth and Berenbaum, p. 108.

[26] Ibid., p. 110.

[27] Jocelyn Hellig, The Holocaust and Antisemitism, A Short History, (1st ed. 2003), p. 111.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Elie Wiesel, A Jew Today, (1st ed. 1978), pp. 159-160.

[31] Van Buren, p. 295.

[32] Ibid., p. 331.

[33] Ibid., p. 333.

[34] Patterson, Overcoming Alienation: A Kabbalistic Reflection on the Five Levels of the Soul, p. 167.

[35] Judea and Ruth Pearl, pp. 183-184.

[36] Ibid. p. 209.

[37] Ibid., p. 346.

[38] Ibid.

[39] James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History, (1st ed. 2001), p. 104.

[40] Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, p. xxv.

[41] Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, (1st English ed. 1971), p. xiv.

[42] Ibid., p. xv.

[43] Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, (1st ed. 1953), p. xxv.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid., pp. xxv-xxvi.

[46] Harry James Cargas, When God and Man Failed: Non-Jewish Views of the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1981), p. 155.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Paul Charles Merkley, Those That Bless You, I Will Bless: Christian Zionism in Historical Perspective, (1st ed. 2011), p. 230.

[49] The Chumash , Deuteronomy 7:12-16 [commentary].

[50] Alan Udoff and Barbara E. Galli, Franz Rosenzweig’s “The New Thinking,” (1st ed. 1999), p. 22.

[51] Ibid., pp. 20-21.

[52] Rosenzweig, p. 413.

[53] Patterson, Emil L. Fackenheim: A Jewish Philosopher’s Response to the Holocaust, p. 191.

[54] James Rudin, Christian & Jews Faith to Faith: Tragic History, Promising Present, Fragile Future, (1st ed. 2011), p. 121.

[55] Alan L. Berger and David Patterson, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Drawing Honey From the Rock, (1st ed. 2008), p. 23.

[56] Rosenzweig, p. 396.

[57] Ibid., p. 397.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Ibid., p. 408.

[60] Ibid., p. xii.

[61] Rudin, p. 207.

[62] Udoff, p. 144.

[63] Ibid., pp. 144-145.

[64] Rosenzweig, p. 415.

[65] Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue, p. 35.

[66] Ibid., pp. 35-36.

[67] Ibid., p. 37.

[68] Ibid.

[69] Didier Pollefeyt, Jews and Christians: Rivals or Partners for the Kingdom of God?: In Search of an Alternative for the Theology of Substitution, (1st ed. 1997), pp. 7-8.

[70] Pollefeyt, p. 30.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Ibid., p. 31.

[73] Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays, p. 72.

[74] Ibid.

[75] Ibid.

[76] Hayim Halevy Donin, To Be A Jew: A Guide to Jewish Observance in Contemporary Life, (1st ed. 1972), p. 101.

[77] Greenberg, The Jewish Way, p. 79.

[78] Ibid., p. 289.

[79] Pollefeyt, p. 31.

[80] Ibid., p. 87.

[81] Ibid., p. 74.

[82] Ibid., p. 75.

[83] Isaiah 2:5.

[84] Alexander A. Mandelbaum, Redemption Unfolding, The Last Exile, the Final Redemption, and Our Role in These Fateful Times, (3rd ed. 2007), p. 166.

[85] Pollefeyt, p. 138.

 

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A REMNANT RETURNS TO GOD

Martin M. van Brauman

 

The martyr dies to give us, the Remnant, an atoned future, a new day, wonderful like every morning in which God renews His creation.[1]  Franz Rosenzweig considered Jewish history as the history of the Remnant of Israel:

From Israel to the Messiah, from the people that stood on Sinai to the day when the Temple in Jerusalem ‘shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,’ [Isaiah 56:7] a concept can be traced that originated with the prophets and has been governing our inner history ever since: the concept of the remnant. The remnant of Israel, of those who remained faithful, of the true people within the people, guarantees at every moment that there is a bridge between the two poles.  Though in all other instances Jewish consciousness may fluctuate wildly between the two poles of life established in the first inner turning of the pagan man into man open to and resolved upon revelation, the pole of the inner-most experience of divine love and that of a devoted activation of love in holy living, the idea of the remnant represents both together: acceptance of the ‘yoke of the commandments’ and acceptance of the ‘yoke of the kingdom of God.’[2]

The Holocaust may have driven the Jews to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, but only God has the power to keep them there.  Neither the secular nor the religious Jew would have found a home in Israel were it not for God’s purpose.

 Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan,  . . . the Lord  said to Abram . . , “Raise now your eyes look out from where you are: northward, southward, eastward and westward. For all the land that you see, to you will I give it, and to your descendants forever.  I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth so that if one can count the dust of the earth, then your offspring, too, can be counted.  Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth!  For to you will I give it.” Genesis 13:12-15.

 Although the Jews did not always possess the Land during the centuries of exile, the nationhood of Israel and the Land of Israel have always been destined under God’s Promise.[3]  As it is impossible to “count the dust of the earth,” it is impossible to count the total Jewish population from all of the generations of the eternal nation that has and will flourish throughout history.[4]  As “the dust” outlives all who tread upon it, so God promised Abraham that his offspring would outlive all the nations that would persecute the Jewish people.[5]

 Thus said the Lord, Who gives the sun as a light by day and the laws of the moon and the stars as a light by night; Who agitates the sea so that its waves roar; the Lord, Master of Legions, is His Name: If these laws could be removed from before Me – the word of the Lord – so could the seed of Israel cease from being a people before Me forever.  Thus, said the Lord: If the heavens above could be measured or the foundations of the earth plumbed below, so too would I reject the entire seed of Israel because of everything they did – the word of the Lord. Jeremiah 31:34-36.

God did not cause the Holocaust, but man’s free will.  The Holocaust relied entirely on human savagery.[6]  Evil is grounded in the freedom that God has given man to choose between good and evil, “free will.”[7]  Evil is a human choice, not a divine choice.[8]  Man is born to sin and sin will bring Divine punishment.  The commandment that You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your possessions is not possible without “free will,” otherwise, man would not have the choice to love God or not. Love does not exist without that freedom and God created man with free will, because He wants our true love.

Just as Cain killed Abel, the evil of man devoid of God is more than enough to invite Satan to rule in the world.  The design of man’s heart is evil from his youth.[9] God knows the actions of men before they are born and the prophecies from the Word of God also foretell the future actions of the evil that men will do, not God.

The question is not where was God during the Holocaust, but where was humanity?  Richard Rubenstein wrote that “the Holocaust bears witness to the advance of civilization.”[10]  The Holocaust was “a state-sponsored program of population elimination made possible by modern technology, political organization, and highly educated intelligence.”[11]  The Holocaust occurred by “one of the most scientifically advanced, technologically competent, philosophically sophisticated, and even theologically steeped cultures of all human history.”[12]

The Nazis used the new IBM Hollerith machines, the computer of the 1930s and 40s, to identify, isolate, target and destroy the Jewish people and its culture off the face of the earth.[13]  After the Nuremberg racial laws were passed in 1935, the Nazi government requested the churches to prepare demographic data for the Hollerith machines to identify those who were and were not Christian and who had converted from Judaism.[14]  The cooperation of the churches implicated them in Nazi segregation, persecution and destruction of the Jewish people.[15]  The Hollerith machines were “an advance in civilization.” Where was humanity and where is it now?

When God asked Cain, “Where is your brother?” in Genesis 4:9, God was asking Cain, “Where is your soul?”[16]  When God asked Cain, “What have you done?” in Genesis 4:10, God was asking Cain, “What have you made of your soul?”[17]  Cain set out to kill God by killing his brother and in killing Abel killed his substance and identity, his soul, and evil is unmasked and it is ego.[18]

There is an eternal struggle by Amalek, the consummate evil.[19]  Amalek’s enmity against Israel is based upon its legacy as the grandson of Esau and from what the Amalek’s nation represents.[20]

Now Esau harbored hatred toward Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him; and Esau thought, “May the days of mourning for my father draw near, then I will kill my brother Jacob. Genesis 27:41.  Edom’s . . . anger tore perpetually and he kept his wrath forever. Amos 1:11.

The prophet Balaam considered Amalek as the first among nations in Numbers 24:20, in which Amalek is the leading force of evil in the world and the struggle of Israel and Amelek is the eternal struggle of good versus evil.[21]  The only reason for Amalek’s cowardly and unprovoked attacks on the nation of Israel, traveling out of Egypt during the Exodus, is to “show its brazen denial of God and His power, which is a perpetuation of the ancient legacy of Esau’s hatred for Jacob.”[22]

The Amalekites were the Nazis who wish to obliterate every trace of morality from the world and now are the Islamic suicide bombers who target innocent civilians in cowardly and unprovoked attacks.  For God maintains a war against Amalek from generation to generation until the eternal swords of the enemy [Amalek] have come to an end, the name and memory of Amalek is completely eradicated by God’s wrath and God’s Judgment Throne is complete.[23]  For Balaam declared in his prophecies, Amalek is the first among nations, but its end will be eternal destruction. Numbers 24:20. I shall surely erase the memory of Amalek from under the heavens. Exodus 17:14.

As Rabbi Irving Greenberg said that it one thing to kill Jews, but it is something else to cut in half the gas supply per chamber in 1944 to bring down the cost to less than one-half cent per person to gas Jews while taking twice as long to kill in agony and then to save that one-half cent, they threw Jewish children alive into the crematorium.[24]  Such decisions go beyond murder to deny the image of God and testify to life’s worthlessness.[25]

How would the world have judged the Jewish people, if the survivors of the Holocaust had gone the path of complete assimilation with Jewish life ending after Auschwitz?[26]  The assimilation would be a turning away from God and Judaism.[27]  The Jewish faith in God at that moment in history did not end, but at that moment in history Isaac was indeed sacrificed and his blood shed by the hand of man.[28]  In 1944, traveling in a cattle car from a Czechoslovakian Jewish community to Auschwitz, a daughter asked her Papa, where are they taking us and Papa said to his family:

My children, once there was an altar on Mount Moriah in the holy city of Jerusalem.  God commanded a father to take his only, beloved son and sacrifice him upon that altar, in order to test his faith in God.  As the father was about to fulfill God’s command and lifted the knife, the Lord God spoke to Abraham and said, ‘Lay not thy hand upon the lad.’

Today, my children, there is another huge altar, not on a sacred mountain but in a profane valley of death. There, man is testing his own inhumanity toward his fellow man.  The children of Abraham are again a burnt offering, this time by the command of men.  But man, unlike God, will not stop the knife. To the contrary, he will sharpen it and fan the altar flames so that they may totally consume their sacrifice.  A man-made fire, a knife held by man, must be stopped by man, by a human voice, a human hand.  My children, be human in this inhuman valley of death.  May the merit of our Father Abraham protect you, for whoever saves one Jewish soul, it is as if he saves an entire universe.

On the eve of the holiday of Shavuot, Ida and her family arrived in Auschwitz.  The skies above Auschwitz were red.  Ida’s father spoke as if to himself: ‘On this day, millenniums ago, God came down to man in fire and smoke and gave his commandments.  Today, man is commanding in fire and smoke, Thou shalt kill!’[29]

 

Abraham Heschel said that we all died in Auschwitz, yet our faith survived; otherwise, repudiation of God would have continued the holocaust.[30] I have placed life and death before you . . . and you shall choose life, so that you will live, you and your offspring – to love the Lord, your God. Deuteronomy 30:19-20. To choose life, means “we understand death to be part of the process of sanctifying life through words and deeds of loving kindness” and death is “a moment in the life of the nefesh [soul]” that “abides beyond death.”[31]  Heschel’s theology, rooted in biblical vision and 2,000 years of rabbinical wisdom, emphasized that “[t]he central thought of Judaism is the living God” and the “craving for God has never subsided in the Jewish soul.”[32]

During the Holocaust, Jews were killed for the simple reason that they were born Jewish.  After Auschwitz, there are only religious reasons to remain or claim to be a Jew and raise one’s children as Jews.[33]  Without God and the Torah at the center of a Jew’s identity and as the basis of his values, being a Jew still is not just another ethnic identity but an identity that brings anti-Semitic violence from the most evil people and the most evil religions and governments in each generation.[34]

Elie Wiesel has commented that “there are Christians who like Jews only on the cross.”[35]  The demonic hatred of the Jews and their suffering can only have a theological explanation that as the chosen people of God they are the sign of the Suffering Servant, of the Jesus Christ who endured the hatred of all men and the wrath of God for all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men for all men both Jews and Gentiles.[36] He was persecuted and afflicted, but he did not open his mouth; like a sheep being led to the slaughter or a ewe that is silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth. Isaiah 53:7.

John Cornwell, a well-known author on Catholic and Vatican affairs, wrote that during the Holocaust, the isolation of the Jews parallels with Jesus alone in Gethsemane, Jesus alone on Golgotha.[37]  Elie Wiesel wrote “alone with no allies, no friends, totally, desperately alone . . . The world knew and kept silent . . . Mankind let them suffer and agonize and perish alone.  And yet, and yet they did not die alone, for something in all of us died with them.”[38]

 Instead of choosing to assimilate at all costs from anti-Semitism, Jewish people all over the world continue to renew and intensify their Jewish existence and to have and raise Jewish children.  Knowing of the fate to which this decision exposes them and aware of how little the world really cares, such an act can only come from faith and trust in God.  To be Jewish is to be part of a four-thousand year old community of memory that recognizes what we owe to those who have come before us.[39]  The recognition that one is Jewish unavoidably implies that one has obligations.[40]

Elie Wiesel has stated to be a Jew in the post-Holocaust world is to be a witness, for Jewish eyes have seen and Jewish ears have heard the awe-inspiring revelation at Sinai and the overwhelming anti-revelation at Auschwitz.[41]  The role of witness is not limited to the actual victims or actual survivors, but all Jews are victims and survivors.[42]  For under the tradition of the Passover Haggadah, in every generation each Jew must regard himself or herself as personally going forth out of Egypt.[43]

Christians have long preferred a spiritualized “Judaism” instead of having to deal with the Jewish people.[44]  The anti-Semitism of traditional Christian replacement theology fights against the legitimacy of an independent Jewish political existence in Israel as a Jewish state and resents the Jew no longer being subordinate to but rather a master of his fate.[45]

The rebirth and survival of the State of Israel is the assurance of the messianic fulfillment of history.  The survival of the Jewish people and of Judaism in spite of 2,000 years of persecutions and exterminations is the mystery of all ages.  Dr. Eliezer Berkovits stated in God, Man and History: A Jewish Interpretation that “Israel’s suffering is the measure of man’s failure to become a ‘partner’ with God in the task of human salvation.”[46]  Israel’s survival is by itself the proof that God’s purpose in history will not be defeated and the day of redemption and salvation is coming.

The mainline Christian churches lost their moral authority long ago by their apathy and indifference to Jewish suffering and their moral decline is reflected in their dwindling members. For these churches, the Holy Bible is read through the prism of church dogma and cannons.  If, after Auschwitz, Christians still cling to the continuing responsibility for the conversion of the Jews, then it is questionable whether they have learn anything from the events of history.[47]

These prophets prophesy falsehood in My Name! I did not send them nor command them nor speak to them. A false vision, divination, emptiness, and the deception of their heart are they prophesying to you. Jeremiah 14:14.

In Exodus 34:9, Moses’ request to God called his people a stiff-necked people, and You shall forgive our iniquity and error, and make us Your heritage for the time will pass when their stubbornness will attach to their faith in God.  Rabbi Yitzchak Nissenbaum, who died in the Warsaw ghetto, wrote of Moses’ words:

Almighty God, look upon this people with favour, because what is now their greatest vice will one day be their most heroic virtue.  They are indeed an obstinate people.  When they have everything to thank You for, they complain.  Mere weeks after hearing Your voice they make a Golden Calf.  But just as now they are stiff-necked in their disobedience, so one day they will be equally stiff-necked in their loyalty.  Nations will call on them to assimilate, but they will refuse.  Mightier religions will urge them to convert, but they will resist.  They will suffer humiliation, persecution, even torture and death because of the name they bear and the faith they profess, but they will stay true to the covenant their ancestors made with You.  They will go to their deaths saying Ani ma’amin, ‘I believe.’  This is a people awesome in its obstinacy – and though now it is their failing, there will be times far into the future when it will be their noblest strength.[48] 

The Holocaust was a direct refutation of much of the Enlightenment philosophy that has shaped Western society.[49]  The Enlightenment of the 19th century was a lie exposed by Auschwitz, which transformed the human being and the Divine image into the Nazi creation of the Muselmann.[50]  When the Auschwitz inmate discovered the corpse of his friend, “he saw the value of all humanity’s teachings, ethics and beliefs, from the dawn of mankind to this day     . . . He bent down, stretched out his hand and caressed the head of the Twentieth Century.”[51]  In the end, Franz Rosenzweig stated in The Star of Redemption that Western philosophical tradition can recommend only suicide after replacing God with Man.[52]

The roots of the Holocaust lay in the mainstream of liberal Western culture to create a person truly liberated from all physical, mental and cultural deficiencies, a universal ideal for all humanity with man replacing God.[53]  The Holocaust was aimed to free humankind from the shackles of a “God concept” and its attended notions of moral responsibility, redemption, sin and revelation and transfer theological ideas into anthropological and political concepts.[54]  Jean-Francois Lyotard stated that “the Jews were murdered in Auschwitz not because of their ‘race’ but because of their constant remainder to Western religious and political thought of its failure in the effort to deny human dependence on the Holy One.”[55]

European enlightenment was an assault on both the living God of Torah and the revealed Word of Torah and since 1948 the Jewish movement of return to the Holy Land because of Torah infuriates the enlightened modernist and enlightened postmodernist, who still attack the living God and the Word of Torah as it denies their egocentric theories and their freedom from a living God.[56] The universalism of the Age of Reason conflicts with the particularism of Judaism. Left-wing intellectuals and the liberal media hate Israel and what it represents – the existence of God.

Can one erase two thousand years of persecution endured under the shadow of the Christian cross?  Elie Wiesel answered No, one cannot; nor should one.[57]  Only if we forget nothing will we succeed in abolishing what divides Christians and Jews.[58] With discussions of the Holocaust, the Catholic Church and other traditional churches have only partly admitted to the sins of certain church leaders, but not of their church dogma itself.  There has been no such repentance or major change in anti-Semitic church dogma.  Otherwise, such actions would fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah in which “[t]he sons of your oppressors will go to you submissively, and all who scorned you will prostrate themselves at the soles of your feet.” Isaiah 60:14.

However, it has been the evangelical Christians, who have sought to fulfill that prophetic role by facing up to the Christian church’s history of anti-Semitism.  Evangelical Christians have sponsored in Israel aliya flights, helped to build hospitals, fed destitute families, supported Holocaust education and many other charitable causes and supported pro-Israel political issues without any religious conditions of conversion.  Though these acts of love and kindness can never restore the generations of Jews who were murdered in the name of Christianity, they can foster true friendship and begin to end the Christian silence against anti-Semitism for the first time in history.

Today, many evangelical Christians may say their denomination was never anti-Semitic and may even say that they support Israel, but how do they view the current People of the Book.  Although anti-Semitism may never be overt, it may be subtle.  Sadly, many evangelical churches still preach a modified form of replacement theology or dispensationalist theology, in which they claim that the world is now in the time of the Church and God has set aside the Jews.  If there is another Holocaust, then it is to be.  In the end times, God will offer the Jews another chance to accept Jesus for their salvation.

What makes them any different than the medieval pagan Church that persecuted Jewish communities over the last 2,000 years?  They see no purposes in Christian dialogue with the Jewish people, unless the Jews want to accept the Christian way of salvation.

From the foundation of Israel as a nation, God’s relationship to it was direct and personal, without an intermediary.  When it was time to seal His covenant with His people by freeing them from the land of their enslavement, God did not delegate the task to any other. Maharal.[commentary to Exodus 12:12].

Many Jews thought that the lessons of the Holocaust would finally destroy European anti-Semitism for all time.  How naïve is that belief.  Amalek is Durban I, II and III, it is the pious posturing of the NGOs which call self-defense war crimes for Israel; it is the biased media coverage of events concerning Israel and the Jews; and it is Iran and its proxies bent only on the destruction of Israel, the state and the people and Amalek is fostering into the world the politically correct Islamo-pandering climate.  The worldwide rise of Islam against Judaism and Christianity in every country represents the spirit of the Anti-Christ with its spewing forth of vile anti-Semitism.

Rabbi Greenberg said that only after the Holocaust can one understand the true message in the Book of Ruth, in which out of faithfulness comes hope, out of suffering comes redemption and out of love comes renewed life.[59]  The story of Ruth opened up the covenant and the Jewish people to others who share its values; for a marriage followed, a child was born who became the grandfather of King David and from such a line would come the Messiah.[60]

The day will come, when people will no longer swear by the God who took the children of Israel out of Egypt but when all people will take the oath by the God who brought the children of the house of Israel from all the lands to which God had banished the Jewish people and brought them back to dwell on their own Land. Jeremiah 23:7-8.

In furtherance of their missions, Jews and Christians must come together to support Israel and to stand united against all forms of theological, cultural and political anti-Semitism as disseminated by the world.  Anti-Semitism is an assault against God, as well as against the Jewish people.

Come let us go up to the Mountain of the Lord, to the Temple of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of His Ways and we will walk in His paths. For from Zion will the Torah come forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Isaiah 2:3.

Let not the foreigner, who has joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying, “The Lord will utterly separate me from His people.”. . And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord to serve Him and to love the Name of the Lord to become servants unto Him, all who guard the Sabbath against desecration, and grasp My covenant tightly – I will bring them to My holy mountain, and I will gladden them in My house of prayer; their elevation-offerings and their feast-offerings will find favor on My Altar, for My House will be called a house of prayer for all the people.  The word of my Lord, the Lord/God, Who gathers in the dispersed of Israel: I shall gather to him even more than those already gathered to him. (Exiled Jews and many gentiles will rally to the Messiah). Isaiah 56:3-8.  

Out of the Holocaust, a Remnant returns to God as prophesized in Isaiah.[61]  As a Jew today one must ask, why did a catastrophe that devoured six million of our people not reach me and prevent me from even being born, a Remnant?[62]  A miracle allowed some of our family to survive in a catastrophe, which raged all over the world.[63]  In belonging to the Remnant, to those saved by the miracle, we must have God in our heart so we can return to Him.[64]

 

[1] Ignaz Maybaum, The Face of God After Auschwitz, (1st ed. 1965), p. 59.

[2] Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, (1st ed. 1953), pp. 360-361.

[3] The Chumash, Genesis 13:15 [commentary].

[4] Ibid., Genesis 13:16 [commentary].

[5] Ibid.

[6] Jocelyn Hellig, The Holocaust and Antisemitism, A Short History, (1st ed. 2003), p. 33.

[7] Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2001), p. 187.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Genesis 8:12 (Rashi).

[10] James S. Pacy and Alan P. Wertheimer, Perspectives on the Holocaust: Essays in Honor of Raul Hilberg, (1st ed. 1995), p. 172.

[11] Ibid., p. 171.

[12] Ibid., p. 172.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid., p. 173.

[15] Ibid.

[16] David Patterson, Overcoming Alienation: A Kabbalistic Reflection on the Five Levels of the Soul, (1st ed. 2008), p. 38.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid., p. 138.

[19] Exodus 17:16.

[20] The Chumash, Exodus 17:8-15 [commentary].

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Exodus 17:14-16 (Rashi).

[24] Irving Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity, (1st ed. 2004), p. 169.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Abraham J. Heschel, Israel: An Echo of Eternity,(1st ed, 3rd Printing 1969), pp. 112-113.

[27] Ibid., p. 113.

[28] Ibid., p. 112.

[29] Yaffa Eliach, Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1982), pp. 134-135.

[30] Heschel, Israel: An Echo of Eternity, p. 112.

[31] Patterson, Overcoming Alienation: A Kabbalistic Reflection on the Five Levels of the Soul, p. 76.

[32] Abraham J. Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, (1st ed. 1955), pp. 25, 29.

[33] Judea Pearl and Ruth Pearl, I Am Jewish, Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl, (1st ed. 2004), p. 140.

[34] Ibid, p. 141.

[35] Elie Wiesel, A Jew Today, (1st ed. 1978), p. 16.

[36] Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, (2nd ed. 2003), p. 34.

[37] John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, the Secret History of Pius XII, (Penguin ed. 2008), p. 294.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Judea and Ruth Pearl, p. 195.

[40] Ibid., p. 213.

[41] Michael Berenbaum, Elie Wiesel: God, the Holocaust, and the Children of Israel, (2nd ed. 1994), p. 141.

[42] Ibid., p. 143.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Franklin H. Littell, The Crucifixion of the Jews: the Failure of Christians to Understand the Jewish Experience, (1st ed. 1975), p. 77.

[45] Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, (1st ed. 2010), p. 502.

[46] Eliezer Berkovits, God, Man and History: A Jewish Interpretation, (1st ed. 1959), p. 156.

[47] Harry James Cargas, When God and Man Failed: Non-Jewish Views of the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1981), p. 155.

[48] Jonathan Sacks, Covent & Conversation: Exodus: The Book of Redemption, (1st ed. 2010), p. 254.

[49] Cargas, p. 168.

[50] Patterson, Overcoming Alienation: A Kabbalistic Reflection on the Five Levels of the Soul, pp. 134-135.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid., p. 136.

[53] Cargas, p. 169.

[54] Ibid., p. 170.

[55] David Patterson, A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad, (1st ed. 2011), p. 255.

[56] David Patterson, Emil L. Fackenheim: A Jewish Philosopher’s Response to the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2008), p. 53.

[57] Elie Wiesel, And the Sea Is Never Full: Memoirs, 1969 –, (1st ed. 1999), p. 175.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays, pp. 88-89.

[60] Ibid., p. 89.

[61] Maybaum, The Face of God After Auschwitz, p. 59.

[62] Ibid.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Ibid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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WHERE ARE YOU?

Martin M. van Brauman

 

 

In Genesis 3, God called out to Adam, Where are you?, after Adam had bitten into the forbidden fruit and was hiding from God. It is the first question asked in the Bible and it is the primordial question.[1]  God knew where Adam was, the question was whether Adam knew.  The real meaning of this question was where do you stand in this world – who are you?  What does God want you to do?  What have you done with your life?  Are you moving towards God, or moving away?  These are the fundamental questions of why are we here.

In the Book of Job, God speaks about the continuous cycle of death and rebirth with all of nature and with all creatures in chapters 38 and 39, while the reader attempts to comprehend why the struggle between good and evil, why the freedom and why bad things happen to innocent people.  Likewise, Job, symbolizing the Jewish people, experienced the cycle of death and rebirth as Job is reborn and restored at the end but not by his efforts but by his faithfulness to God.  In the end, Job repents and responds to God by acknowledging God’s plan of continual creation with simply Therefore I declared, yet I understand nothing. It is beyond me. I shall not know! Job 42:3.

The Jewish peoplehood has survived not by winning in history, but by responding to death and destruction with the rebirth of life and the affirmation to God.  Those who live in the presence of God are not exempt from suffering, but they know that though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Psalm 23:4.

When God called out Abraham’s name in Genesis 22:1, Abraham replied Hineni! ‘Here I am!,’ which did not mean here I am in this place, but “Here I am for You!”[2]  When Jacob was leaving Eretz Yisrael for the long Egyptian exile of his people, God came in night visions to Jacob to symbolize the Jewish exile from the Land but not exile from their God.  He would always be with them: God spoke to Israel in night visions and He said, ‘Jacob, Jacob,’ And he said, ‘Here I am.“ And He said, ‘I am the God – God of your father. Have no fear of descending to Egypt, for I shall establish you as a great nation there. I shall descend with you to Egypt, and I shall also surely bring you up . . . Genesis 46:2-4. 

When God called out to Moses in Exodus 3:4 from the burning bush, Moses replied Here I am! in total readiness to carry out the will of God. Faith is not a matter of affirming a belief in God, but of declaring “Here I am, Your servant,” denoting both humbleness and willingness.  As Abraham Heschel expressed in God In Search of Man, “Where are you” also represents God’s search for man as man “going out to meet Thee I found Thee coming toward me.”  All of human history as described in the Bible can be expressed as man’s search for God and also God in search of man.  However, God is not in the world; the world is within God.

But who are we?  When, we are asked “What is your name.”  How do we answer this question?  Your name has been carried by others who have preceded you.  The question is linked to “Where are you?”  When called by Name, you must know your Name for you to answer – “Here I am” – in order to enter into a relationship with God and to understand His plan for your life.

What is your name – is a question tied to our identity and if we are Jewish any assault on our name is an assault on Jewish identity and an assault on God.  I have realized that God determines Jewish identity and to deny this identity is to deny God’s plan for our life.  Even born a Jew, still we must stand and stay “Here I am.”  Each of us must stand alone, in the fullness of our being, before God, and attempt to understand what God wants of us.  What is the correct path?  Is it God’s voice we are hearing?

During President Kennedy’s famous Berlin trip in the 1960’s, he said to the crowd that the proudest boast that a person could make today is “Ich bin ein Berliner.”  He was wrong.  The proudest boast that a man can make not just today, but over the past 3,500 years, is “I am Jewish!”  That boast was made as the last words remembered from Daniel Pearl before he was murdered by Islamic terrorists.  How strong is our faith?

Do you fear the God of Israel?  Whether a man has the “fear of heaven” or not is up to man’s free will.

As a father is merciful towards his children, so has the Lord shown mercy to those who fear Him.  For He knew our nature; He is mindful that we are dust.  Frail man, his days are like grass; like a sprout of the field, so he sprouts. When a wind passes over it, it is gone, and its place recognizes it no more.  But the kindness of the Lord is forever and ever upon those who fear Him, and His righteousness is upon children’s children, to those who keep His covenant, and to those who remember His commands to fulfill them. Psalms 103:13-18.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; foolish ones scorn wisdom and discipline. Proverbs 1:7. [Fear of God and subordination to Him, foster a thirst for wisdom and knowledge. (Rashi)].

. . . and He said to man, ‘Behold, the fear [awe] of the Lord is wisdom, and refraining from evil is understanding!’ Job 28:28.

The very existence of the Jewish people has a message to a world that is threatened by Islamic Jihadism and a world that is searching for God and morality.  The Torah was never just only for Jews for it delivers a message to all humanity of justice, equality, compassion and the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person.  When God elected Abraham and said all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you [Genesis 12:3], the message God gives to the world of the eternal existence of the Jewish people to be the light of God through the Torah to the nations, is not just a message for Jews, but for all the families of the earth.  This message will renew and strengthen Christian faith through the realization of the Truth of the scriptures as the Holy Word of God.  Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach wrote:

Every nation is chosen for something. Every person is chosen. When I say we are chosen do you know what we have to bring down to the world? The realization that everything is chosen. We are here to let everyone know that they too are chosen.  This is OUR ‘chosenness.’  The world should know that we are not just living and doing our thing then dying. Everyone has to say ‘I am chosen.’ We all have a mission in life and this is OUR function. We are chosen to show the world to not ever ever ever give up![3]  

Franz Rosenzweig wrote that the continued existence of the Jewish people stands as surety for the truth of Christianity.[4]  Professor Didier Pollefeyt wrote in Christology after Auschwitz: A Catholic Perspective that the Christian church must acknowledge the reality, in which it exists, is understood only when Israel’s continuing covenant with God is both recognized and confessed as essential to it.

Judaism seeks to draw the presence of God into the world through Shabbat and the Jewish holidays.  The entire Shabbat experience anticipates the future messianic redemption and provides a foretaste of the Kingdom.  As summarized by Rabbi Greenberg, the Exodus holiday, Passover, is followed 49 days by the covenant acceptance, Shavuot, when on the 50th day the people stood before Mt. Sinai and accepted the covenant with God, the experience of revelation – the Torah, and then the redemption way, the long journey to the Promised Land, Sukkot.  On Passover, God committed to the covenant by an act of redemption.  On Shavuot, standing at Sinai, the Jewish people responded by accepting the Torah, the teaching that guides the way of the Jewish people for an ongoing relationship with God.

As explained by Rabbi Greenberg, the Passover/Exodus paradigm at the historical, material and spiritual levels is a continuing event of good overcoming evil, of God’s love overpowering death, of freedom and redemption, as witnessed by the slavery and genocide of the Holocaust and the redemption of Israel reborn.  Appropriately, the name of the ship that launched the nation when attempting to bring Jewish Holocaust survivors to Israel was the Exodus ’47.

The Exodus event is an ever-recurring redemption of humanity whenever people open up and enter into the experience.  Remembering the history of Israel is fundamental to the religious life of Christians, in which Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross relives the Exodus from Egypt, a person’s conversion repeats the crossing of the Jordan as the Jewish people entered the Promise Land, and the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus’ disciples on Pentecost parallels the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai.[5]

The most important message in the Torah is that regardless of our fall from God, He provides always the power of repentance and the opportunity to renew our relationship with Him.  The original tablets of the Ten Commandments marked the initial revelation to Israel at Sinai, a gift of grace.  The making of the golden calf brought forth the concept of repentance and the return to the everlasting covenant.  For the breaking of the first tablets of the Ten Commandments led to their replacement, in which the second tablets were greater than the first, by bringing forth the power of repentance and redemption.

The Sadducees were connected to the Temple priesthood and the government.[6]  The Pharisees were rooted in the openness of the covenant to interpretation through the written and oral Torah and all of Israel could be priests and every kitchen table could be an altar where food could be served and eaten as an offering before the Lord.  The Sadducees believed that the destruction of the Temple and the Roman expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem cut Israel off from its main channels of communication with the Divine and the end of the Jewish religion.  Christian Jews concluded that the covenant was broken.  The Sadducees and their followers over the next two centuries attempted to restore the Temple with the revolt against Rome in 117 A.D. and the major revolt in Judea in 132 A.D. and the Sadducees disappeared.[7]

The rabbis, the descendants of the Pharisees, understood this churban as God calling the Jews to a new level of covenantal relationship.  The Temple had been destroyed, but the Divine Presence was everywhere, yearning for the Jews to uncover it and through Torah study the will of God could be discerned.  The day of the destruction of the Temple Rabbinic Judaism was fully born out of the churban. The Talmud says that “On the day the Temple was destroyed, the Messiah was born.”[8]  Some rabbinic rabbis taught that on the day of destruction a messiah was born, not yet revealed and active in the world but bringing hope through a deeper level of covenantal relationship with God.

Moses took the Book of the Covenant and read in earshot of the people, and they said, ‘Everything that the Lord has said, we will do and we will obey!’  The Jews declared their resolve to “do and obey” whatever God would command – even before the commandments were issued.  The declaration has remained for all time the anthem of Israel’s faith in God and devotion to His word.  The concept of prayer and the synagogue was developed by the rabbis to carry on the covenantal dialogue.

Whenever I walk up to the Kotel in the eternal city of Jerusalem, I stand and think about my chain of generations who for centuries prayed “Next year in Jerusalem” (Leshanah haba’ah biyrushalayim).  I think of my distant and unknown family that died in the Holocaust and do they ask me – what have you done through your life with our lost future that was denied to us? And who knows whether it was just for such a time as this that you attained the royal position! Esther 4:14.  Like the Book of Esther, will it be a story of an assimilated Jew, accepting one’s Jewishness as a decisive statement and taking up the Jewish cause and fate?

For my chain of generations before me, I stand at the Kotel for I know the reason why I am here and who my name is, the compass of my life, and I pray Kaddish, the Memorial Prayer for the Dead, and realize that God has always been in control and that He has a plan for our lives that He sets in motion in generations before we are born into this world.  In centuries ago, Rabbi Akiva had said that “Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given,” for God knows exactly what will happen, but nevertheless we are not compelled to act in any particular way.[9]  Even if my choices in life were and are influenced by arrangements imposed by God, I must have made and still must make the effort of choices under God’s illumination.

God controls everything except man’s free will.  While we are given freedom to act, God’s divine plan will ultimately happen and God will use man with or without his knowledge.  For God has elected by grace a remnant of the Jewish people to exist to the end of the age.

. . .  you will be gathered up one by one, O Children of Israel. Isaiah 27:12

For I, the Lord, have not changed; and you, the sons of Jacob, you have not perished [your existence as a people guaranteed forever]. Malachi 3:6.

 

 

 

 

[1] Elie Wiesel and Philippe-Michaël de Saint-Cheron, Evil and Exile, (1st ed. 1990), p. 157.

[2] David Patterson, Overcoming Alienation: A Kabbalistic Reflection on the Five Level of the Soul, (1st ed. 2008), p. 84.

[3] Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Israel is Living G-d is Living: The teachings of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

[4] Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, (1st English ed. 1971), p. 415.

[5] Goldman, David p., How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam is Dying Too), (1st ed. 2011), p. 221.

[6] Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays, (2nd ed. 1998), p. 72.

[7] Ibid., p. 79.

[8] Irving Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity, (1st ed. 2004), p. 114.

[9] Oliver Leaman, Evil and Suffering in Jewish Philosophy, (1st ed. 1995), p. 82.

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THE RETURN OF THE REMNANT CHOSEN BY GRACE TO ISRAEL

Martin M. van Brauman 

 

FUGITIVES FROM THE SWORD WILL RETURN . . .  TO THE LAND

OF JUDAH, FEW IN NUMBER . . .  JEREMIAH 44:28

 

I will assemble you from the nations and gather you in from the lands where you have been scattered, and give you the Land of Israel . . . I will give them an undivided heart and I will place a new spirit in them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may walk in My decrees and observe My laws and fulfill them. Then they will be a people unto Me, and I will be a God for them. Ezekiel 11:17, 19-20.

In a letter to Willy Hellpach in 1929, Albert Einstein wrote about the necessity for Zionism as a way for Jews to bear “the hatred and the humiliations” endured throughout the Diaspora; for there could be no Jewish dignity, self-sufficiency, productive work, or authentic union with humanity unless there was a Jewish homeland in Palestine to liberate and “revive the soul of the Jewish people.”[1]  Emil Fackenheim wrote that the Jewish reaction to the Holocaust was Israel’s existence and the Law of Return.[2]

The Law of Return is the legal result from the “ingathering of the exiles” in the first operative paragraph of Israel’s Declaration of Independence.  The Law of Return is a symbolic statement that Jews will never again as during the 1930s find themselves without a place to go.  The Law of Return requires only one Jewish grandparent, based upon the Nazi laws defining a Jew for extermination.

As remarked by Debbie Drori in Israel during the Intifada in 2003:

My parents are Holocaust survivors from Auschwitz.  They had to fight hard.  They stayed alive so that we would live.  Unfortunately, we have to keep living and fighting for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren so that there is a place for us to live here, not in Europe, the U.S. or any other place.  Jews have only one country.[3]

The future Jewish return to Israel has been a dynamic that has maintained the unity of the Jewish Diaspora.  The Jews, having passed through the fire, are seeing the prophecy of Isaiah 11:12 fulfilled:

And he shall set up an ensign for the nations,

and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel,

and gather together the dispersed of Judah

from the four corners of the earth.[4]

However, some continuous Jewish presence has existed in the Holy Land for over 33 centuries and in the Middle East, North Africa and Arabia for over 25 centuries.[5]   There has been always a Jewish presence in the Holy Land varying from the thousands to the tens of thousands.[6]  Mostly, there were ultra-orthodox Jewish communities centered in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberius and Hebron, waiting patiently for the Messiah to rise and lead the Jewish Diaspora back to Israel.[7]  Jews have always been the majority in Jerusalem except during the periods when Roman Emperors or Christian Kings prohibited their presence on the risk of death.[8]

Since the time of Joshua, Jews have lived in the land of Israel in unbroken sequence for more than 3,300 years.[9]  After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. and again after the destruction of the Second Commonwealth by the Romans in 70 C.E., Jews continued to live in the land.[10]  Although most of the nation was forced into exile, there have always remained Jewish settlements in the area referred to as the Holy Land.[11]

In 135 C.E. after the revolt by the pseudo-Messiah Bar-Cochba against the Romans ended, the main centers of Jewish population and life shifted to the Galilee around Sepphoris, Tiberias and the southern hills in Judaea, but there were no residents in Jerusalem until Empress Endocia (394-460), widow of Theodosius II, secured permission for the Jews to return.[12]  There were some Jewish communities in many of the coastal cities and in the caravan cities of Peraea.[13]

Nevertheless, from 135 to 400 C.E. witnessed the completion of the Mishnah and most of the Jerusalem Talmud.[14]  However, Christian Emperor Valentinian III in 425 closed down the Jewish schools of study and Babylonia became the seat of Jewish learning resulting in the Babylonian Talmud.[15]  The Temple and Jerusalem was replaced by the synagogue and the school in every Jewish settlement.[16]  In the 4th century, Jews were still a majority of the population of Galilee, but a minority in the south where they never recovered from the revolt in 135 C.E.[17]

During the rule of the Byzantine emperors, legislation in Palestine excluded Jews from all honorary office, prohibited them from building new synagogues with only essential repairs to exiting Jewish structures, and prohibited Jewish conversions of slaves and freedmen along with other oppressive actions.[18]  The Jewish communities suffered 300 years of Christian intolerance and violence by the monks for half the period.  During the 7th and 8th centuries, Tiberias was the Jewish center of population, while some Jews returned to Jerusalem after the Muslim invasion ended Byzantine rule in 640.[19]

As Jews resettled in Jerusalem during the 7th and 8th centuries, they lived in the southern quarter near the Western Wall, in the northeast between the Damascus and St. Stephen’s Gates and later they purchased the slopes of the Mount of Olives facing the Temple.[20]  Along with completing the Jerusalem Talmud, work was performed on collecting and editing the commentaries known as the Midrash and to the development of a new and more efficient system of pointing and punctuation (Masorah) for the actual language in the Biblical text.[21]

During the conquest of the country by the crusaders, the entire Jewish communities of Jerusalem, Acre, Caesarea and Haifa were destroyed and those of Ramleh and Jaffa were dispersed, but the Jewish communities in the Galilee survived.[22]  In 1119, Jews were expelled from Hebron after Christian clerics decided to control the Tombs of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.[23]

In 1170, the famous Jewish merchant-traveler Benjamin of Tudela passed through Jaffa and found only one Jew, a dyer, since the Crusaders had massacred the Jews and forbid the return of any Jews to Jaffa.[24]  Benjamin also met a few Jewish dyers working in Jerusalem, who were allowed to resume trading near the end of Crusader rule.[25]  According to Benjamin about 500 Jews resided in Tyre, and 200 in Ashkelon and Karaites with substantial Jewish populations in Acre, Tiberias, Beirut and Caesarea.[26]  After the encouraging visit of Benjamin of Tudela to Eretz Israel and Jerusalem, a number of Jewish pilgrims from Europe traveled to the Holy Land with the belief that their pilgrimage would bring the coming of the Messiah and Redemption.[27]

The Jewish population began to grow and beginning in 1200 the Jewish artisans had almost a monopoly of the manufacture of enameled pottery and glass, which became a major export from Jaffa to Italy and southern France.[28]  The important pottery and glass industry in Jaffa was practiced almost exclusively by Jewish artisans and introduction of its products into southern France from the end of the 12th century onwards exerted a strong influence on the development of French ceramic art.[29]   Jewish dyers were returning back to Jerusalem, along with the occupations of Jews in banking, medicine, glass making, shipping and peddling, and the coastal cities were gaining back its Jewish population by the 13th century.[30]

In 1211, around 300 rabbis, scholars and other Jewish immigrants from England and France settled at Acre, during a period of controversy about the rationalism of the Egyptian Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides (1135-1204)(the “Rambam”).[31]  The Jewish academy of Acre seemed to be of the mystical school of religious thought instead of the rationalism of Maimonides.[32]  Other Jewish European immigrants arrived in the impoverished community of Jerusalem.[33]  The great scholar Nachmanides (1194-1270)(the “Ramban”) from Spain settled in Jerusalem and revived the Jerusalem Jewish community and his synagogue became the center of Jewish life.[34]

By the 14th century, the Jewish community in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem numbered over several hundred and there were established Jewish communities in Lydda, Ramleh, Gaza, Beisan, Tiberias, Safad and Acre.[35]  In 1488, the Italian scholar Obadiah da Bertinoro arrived in Jerusalem and established a rabbinical college, which became an important authority in rabbinic matters among the Jewish communities in the Islamic world.[36]  Of course, during the Mamluk centuries the Jewish and Christian communities suffered losses of population and became a land of peasants and Bedouin.[37]

The sultans of the Ottoman Empire began ruling Palestine in 1517.[38]  The Jewish communities expanded during the Turkish rule with Sephardic immigration from the Iberian Peninsula and Italy outnumbering the local Arabic-speaking Jews until the 18th century when Ashkenazi immigrants from Poland and northern Europe arrived.[39]  During Turkish rule, Safed became an important commercial center for its industries of weaving and the preparation of woolen cloth and emerged as an important center of Kabbalah scholars.[40]

Under the leadership of Isaac Luria (1534-1572), the Zohar with its mysterious prophecies became the center of study in Safed, influenced by the founder of Jewish mysticism, Simeon ben Jochai, who had lived in the Galilee.[41]  The Jewish population of Safed reached 15,000 during the middle of the 16th century with 3,000 looms for weaving wool and the mystic Joseph Caro combined the studies of Kabbalah with the Talmud and produced the Shulhan Arukh, which became the standard codification of Talmudic law for orthodox Jews worldwide.[42]

However, the prosperity of the 16th century in Safed and Tiberias was destroyed beginning in the 17th century by raids by Bedouins and Druzes.[43]  The Turkish pashas were indifferent to the neglect and local wars of local amirs, Bedouin tribes, Druzes and others that reduced not only the Jewish community, but the whole country to poverty and desolation by reducing fertile fields to marshes and desert and towns to ruins.[44]

From the 17th to the 19th centuries, a number of political visionaries pleaded for the restoration of the Jews and the reestablishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.[45]  The Danish merchant Paulli submitted plans to King William III of England, Louis XIV of France and other European kings.[46]  The French priest Pierre Jurieux pleaded for the reestablishment of the Jewish homeland and Prince de Ligne in 1797 published a document in which he pleaded for the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Judea in Palestine.[47]

When Napoleon invaded Egypt and Syria in 1799, he published an appeal to the Jews of Asia and Africa “to join his colours in order to restore ancient Jerusalem.”[48]  To create a base for an empire against the British, Napoleon invited Jews from all nations to establish a Jewish state.[49]  The French historian Chateaubriand visited Jerusalem after Napoleon and was in awe of the Jewish community by writing:

It has seen Jerusalem destroyed seventeen times, yet there exists nothing in the world which can discourage it or prevent it from raisng its eyes to Zion. He who beholds the Jews dispersed over the face of the earth, in keeping with the Word of God, lingers and marvels.  But he will be struck with amazement, as at a miracle, who finds them still in Jerusalem and perceives even, who in law and justice are the masters of Judea, to exist as slaves and strangers in their own land; how despite all abuses they await the king who is to deliver them . . . If there is anything among the nations of the world marked with the stamp of the miraculous, this, in our opinion, is that miracle.[50]  

By the beginning of the 19th century, the Jewish communities had suffered great decline along with the rest of the inhabitants after the epidemic plague in 1812 and an earthquake in 1837.[51]  When Mehemet Ali, the Viceroy of Egypt, overran Syria in 1832, the international powers suggested that a Jewish buffer state be set up in Palestine between Turkey and Egypt.[52]  In England, Sir Lawrence Oliphant, British Consul in Jerusalem, and Warder Cresson advocated a national home for the Jews.[53] In 1838, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury asked the five Western powers to restore the Jews to Palestine and continued to address the issue during the London Convention of 1840.[54]

Sir Moses Montefiore, traveling in Palestine in May of 1839, had proposed the idea of colonization near Tiberius.[55]  The idea of the return of the Jewish people to Palestine was a subject that continually engaged public opinion.[56]  In 1839, the first British consul in Jerusalem made a report on the Jewish situation and estimated Jerusalem with 5,000 Jews, Safed with 1,500, Hebron with 750, Tiberias with 600, Acre with 200, Haifa with 150, Jaffa with 60, Nablus with 150 and various villages with about 400, resulting in a total Jewish population of approximately 10,000.[57]  In 1840, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Palmerston recommended to the Sultan Jewish settlements in Palestine to strength the Ottoman Empire.[58]

The Jews are the only nation to have a national claim to the Land.  Lord Shaftesbury said in 1843:

There is a country without a nation; and God now in his wisdom and mercy, directs us to a nation without a country, His own once loved, nay still loved people, the sons of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob.[59]

In 1334, Jewish traveler Rabbi Isaac Chelo visited Jaffa, where the Jews had built a beautiful synagogue with a school and library.[60]  After subsequent years of wars of destruction in Jaffa, the Jewish community disappeared until 1830 when a new Jewish community was established.[61]  In 1841, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Abraham Hayyim Gagin, appointed a rabbi for Jaffa, Jehudah Halevy.[62]  By 1844, Jews were the largest single religious group in Jerusalem and in 1872 they outnumbered the total Christian and Muslim community.[63]

Moses Hess, a German Jew and disturbed by the Damascus blood libel in 1840, envisioned the restoration of the Jewish people to a Jewish state in the Holy Land, when he wrote Rome and Jerusalem in 1862.[64]  Although the Jews were experiencing a period of emancipation and assimilation in Germany, Hess asserted that Germans would continue to hate Jews for racial reasons and would continue to despise the Jews.[65]  He claimed that a Jewish state would raise the Jews from their parasitic position and correct the injustice.[66]  He predicted accurately that European powers and Jewish philanthropists with immigration primarily from religious eastern European Jews would create the Jewish state.[67]   German Jews in the Jewish Reform movement were hostile towards Hess and his book was forgotten yet his ideas were adopted by Zionist leaders 40 years later.[68]

In 1870, the Alliance Israélite Universelle of French, British and American Jews bought land outside Jaffa for an agricultural school, Mikveh Israel.[69]  Previously, Rabbi Zvi Hersch Kalischer (1795-1874) called a conference in 1860 at Thorn and from the conference “The Society for the Colonisation of the Land of Israel” was founded in 1861.[70]  Kalischer and his followers influenced the Alliance to establish Mikveh Israel.[71]

In 1873, Tiberias consisted of about a two thousand residents of which one-third were Jewish, who were divided between Russian and Spanish immigrants.[72]  In 1873, it was reported how Jews would come every Friday as for centuries to the “wailing place of the Jews”, which was a portion of the lower walls of the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem.[73]

In 1875, land north of Jaffa was purchased for agricultural work and named Petah Tikvah (gate of hope), followed by similar agricultural settlements by Jews from Rumania, Poland and Russia.[74]  In 1882, Rumanian Jews settled at Samarin (later renamed Zikron Yaakob) in the hills south of Carmel and at Rosh Pina on the road from Tiberias to Lake Huleh.[75]  Russian Jews settled in Rishon le Zion (First in Zion) and in the Jerusalem colony of Petah Tikvah, while Polish Jews settled north of Rosh Pina.[76]  By 1880, there were over 25,000 Jews in Palestine and by 1914 Jewish colonies were established along the coastal plain and in the Galilee and Jewish presence in Jerusalem and other cities was increased.[77]

Many early settlements were provided funds from Baron Edmond de Rothschild and later his interests were handed over to the Jewish Colonisation Association in 1899 to reform the agricultural programs and improve the economic conditions of the settlements.[78]  Between 1882 and 1898, Alliance continued to establish schools in Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, Safad and Tiberias.[79]  To survive, the Jewish refugees had to established agricultural settlements, which were dependent upon wealthy benefactors such as Baron Edmond de Rothschild.  By the beginning of the First World War, 55 settlements, including the town of Tel Aviv, had been established.[80]

With the opening of the Jaffa-Jerusalem Railway in 1892 and with continued Jewish immigration, Jaffa experienced development in trade and shipping with the Jewish suburb of Tel Aviv being established in 1909.[81]  The remarkable growth and development of Jaffa and the surrounding area was due to the creation of Jewish agricultural settlements and the large influx into Jaffa and Tel Aviv of Jewish Zionists.[82]  By 1922, Tel Aviv was the first constituted town in the world whose administration was entirely Jewish with a population of around 18,000 Jews.[83]

The first major wave of emigration, or First Aliyah (“to ascend” or “to go up”) of Jewish refugees escaping persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe began in the 1880s and continued with a second major wave or Second Aliyah in 1903.[84]  Rishon le Zion, southeast of Jaffa, was established in 1882 and by 1900 there were about 20 other settlements of about 4,500 settlers throughout the country from Metula in the north to Gedera in the south.[85]

During this period, Jewish immigration was driven by the rise of anti-Semitism in Russia.  On April 19th and 20th of 1903, a mob in Kishinev attacked its Jewish community, killing 49 men, women and children, injuring over 500 and looting and destroying Jewish property.[86]  Kishinev was followed by fifty other pogroms throughout Czarist Russia during the Easter holidays.[87]  In the late 19th century, Greek Orthodox clergy in Palestine were aggressively importing anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism from Czarist Russia and the local German Protestant Templars were hostile to Jewish immigration as economic rivals.[88]

Prior to the Zionist waves of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Jews in Palestine lived in extreme poverty, especially in Jerusalem where even before the 1840s they were the largest part of the population.[89]  The Holy Land was destroyed by centuries of Islamic misrule and absentee landlords, until the Jewish people started to return in increased numbers to the Land in the late 1800’s and began planting trees in the desert, draining malarial swamps and establishing agricultural areas.  This development by the Jewish settlers drew Arab laborers from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Sudan.  By 1914, over 12,000 Jewish settlers were farming about 100,000 acres of agricultural land.[90]  The total Jewish population was close to 100,000 by 1914 with around 60,000 in Jerusalem (a majority of the inhabitants), 12,500 in Safad and 12,000 in Jaffa-Tel Aviv.[91]

However, because of the Islamic rule under the Ottoman Empire the Jews were treated as dhimmis, second-class subjects, who were considered inferior by custom and law and were segregated by residence and subject to discrimination and periodic pogroms.[92]  The Jerusalem-resident Arabs would deliberately scatter broken glass along the Jews’ path to prayer at the Western Wall, against which the Arabs would dump garbage, sewage, urine and feces.[93]

This discriminated status rejects the so-called Arab claims that under Islamic rule Christians, Jews and Muslims have lived always in peace, fraternity and tolerance and, as historian David Landes summarized, the dhimmis rules under Islamic law in all Muslim countries were the following:

Jews had to pass Muslims on their left side, because that was the side of Satan.  They had to yield the right of way, step off the pavement to let the Arab go by, above all make sure not to touch him in passing, because this could provoke a violent response.  In the same way, anything that reminded the Muslim of the presence of alternative forms of worship had to be avoided so synagogues were placed in humble, hidden places and the sounds of Jewish prayer were carefully muted.[94]

The Palestinian, pan-Arab and Islamist fundamental hatred against Zionism cannot be understood without considering this dhimmi background.[95]  Muslim nationalism cannot accommodate the sovereignty of the Jewish people residing in the “abodes of Islam,” who are not in the dhimmi status.[96]

Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858-1922), Lithuanian born and Paris educated, arrived in Jerusalem in 1881, established a newspaper, promoted the use of Hebrew as the local language and created a modern usage Hebrew dictionary.[97]  In 1913, Hebrew was used at the Institute of Technology in Haifa.[98]  By the end of World War I, Hebrew was the public language, uniting the Jewish people in the Land after 2,000 years.[99]

Emigration had increased with Theodor Herzl promoting the idea of a Jewish homeland in 1895 through the Society of Maccabaeans in London.[100]  European anti-Semitism was the driving force that returned Herzl to his Jewish identity from his assimilated background.[101]  In 1896, he published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) and political Zionism was born.[102]

Herzl insisted that the creation of a Jewish state was possible “[i]f you will it, it is no dream.”[103]  Zionism represents the ingathering of the Jewish people in its historic homeland, Eretz Israel, from all countries and the re-establishment of the nation-state of Israel with Jerusalem (Zion) as its capital.  In the late 19th century with the rise of nationalism, countries especially in Eastern Europe were organizing based upon national heritage, as Poles, Romanians, Slovaks, Serbs and Jews.[104]  Zionism was simply considered the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.[105]

The First Zionist Congress with over 200 delegates from all over the world was established by Herzl in 1897 for the “aim of Zionism to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.”  However, Herzl died in 1904 with all of his endeavors in failure.[106]  Herzl was unable to convince the German Kaiser to use his power with the Sultan of Turkey to set up in Palestine a Jewish Chartered Company under German protection.[107]  Herzl was unable to conclude an agreement with the Sultan Abdul Hamid for authority to purchase lands in certain areas in Palestine and Syria for Jewish immigrants by offering the Sultan a loan of four million Turkish pounds to establish the Jewish-Ottoman Land Company.[108]  Herzl unsuccessfully pursued efforts in Russia and with the Vatican to gain support for Zionism and to influence Turkey.[109]

Also, Herzl held negotiations with the British Foreign Office for a Jewish settlement in El Arish, near the southern frontier of Palestine, but was opposed by the Egyptian and Turkish governments.[110]  Later, the Zionist Congress rejected an offer after the El Arish failure from Britain’s Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, of the British Foreign Office to settle Jews in the colony of Kenya in East Africa to avoid the pressure of Jews from Eastern Europe immigrating to Britain and exciting anti-Semitic protests.[111]

Herzl foresaw the menace posed by the growing populist anti-Semitism in France, Algeria, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Russia and believed that only a mass exodus by the Diaspora Jews from Europe resettling in the ancient homeland would avoid persecution and pogroms.[112]  The ancient homeland was a tiny part of the Ottoman Empire and there were never a separate Palestinian people.[113]  Unfortunately, anti-Semitism has not diminished or disappeared after the establishment of Israel in 1948.[114]  Instead, Israel itself has become the new “Jewish question” and its enemies reject its very right to exist.[115]

Following several pogroms in Russia during 1905, the Second Aliyah increased from 1902 to 1914.[116]  Around 1908, Palestine was still an underdeveloped backwater and a desolate area in the Ottoman Empire, but the Jews had acquired over 156 square miles of land and had established 26 settlements.[117]  As mentioned previously, the Jewish community in Palestine (or the Yishuv) numbered over 100,000 people by the outbreak of the 1st World War.[118]  By 1914, the Jews had purchased 130,000 acres of which 90,000 were under cultivation in the 26 separate agricultural communities.[119]  The Third Aliyah beginning in the early 1920s from Communist Russia expanded the kibbutz system and greatly increased the Jewish population in the 1930s with Nazi persecution in Europe.[120]

In 1898, Kaiser Wilhelm sought support from the Ottoman Empire’s Sultan Abdul Hamid and ceased any promising support to Herzl and the Zionists to appease Hamid.[121]    In 1914, the Kaiser unleashed an anti-Jewish global jihad through Max von Oppenheim to destroy the British Empire in the Middle East.[122]  Britain was considering a public embrace of Zionism since the Russian Revolution in February of 1917 to win the support of the Jewish populations in Russia to return to the war effort for Britain and in the United States to help US war mobilization.[123]  Sir Mark Sykes expressed the opinion after the Russian Revolution that a public endorsement of Zionism would keep Russia in the war for the Allied cause.[124]

The final push for the British came from a German newspaper editorial in the Vossische Zeitung on October 18, 1917, in which Richard Lichtheim pleaded with Zionists not to give up on Germany and her Ottoman ally “while the Entente can only make promises, Turkey, being in virtual possession of Palestine,” could offer “more tangible concessions.”    The London Times cried “insidious propaganda” and demanded on October 26, 1917 that the government endorse Zionism, in which after receiving Cabinet approval on October 31st two days later Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour released his famous declaration.[125]

The Kaiser’s attempt in pan-Islam was a strategic failure to help Germany in the First World War, but the flames of revolutionary Islamic jihadism appeared throughout the Middle East.[126]  The German produced Arabic jihad pamphlet during the winter of 1914-1915 read:

The killing of the infidels who rule over the Islamic lands has become a sacred duty, whether it be secretly or openly, as the great Koran declares in its word: ‘Take them and kill them whenever you come across them.’[127]

On November 9, 1914 after Turkey’s entry into World War I, Herbert Samuel, a member of the British Cabinet as President of the Local Government Board, proposed to Foreign Secretary Gray, concerning the post-war disposition of the Ottoman Empire of “the opportunity for the fulfillment of the ancient aspiration of the Jewish people and the restoration there of a Jewish State” and a Jewish state in Palestine might become a “fountain of enlightenment.”[128]

However, by early 1915 Samuel’s position changed to recommending a British Protectorate for Palestine with allowances for Jewish land purchases and controlled Jewish immigration, but with an Arab majority a Jewish state was out of the question until the Jews obtained a majority over time in the land.[129]  The theme of gradual evolution to Jewish self-rule in some form under British power to Samuel’s early statements to actively propose a Jewish return to Palestine did form the framework of thought, in which the Balfour Declaration was drafted in 1917.[130]

On November 2, 1917, A.J. Balfour, Foreign Secretary in Lloyd George’s government, sent a letter to the head of Britain’s Zionist Federation, Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a letter known ever since as the Balfour Declaration.[131]  The Balfour Declaration stated that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”[132]  Balfour, who knew the Bible, suggested that this Declaration might be atonement by the Christian world for its persecution of the Jews.[133]  In 1918, Balfour commented that “My personal hope is that the Jews will make good in Palestine and eventually found a Jewish State.”[134]

The Balfour Declaration was approved by the War Cabinet in October 1917 and published on November 9th.[135]  On December 2, 1917 in the London Opera House before a full house with overflow people in the streets outside, leading officials, such as Herbert Samuel, former Liberal cabinet minister, Robert Cecil, assistant foreign secretary, Sir Mark Sykes, War Cabinet assistant secretary, spoke in celebration of the British government’s pledge “to use their best endeavors to . . . [establish] in Palestine . . . a national home for the Jewish people.”[136]  With the presence of Zionist leaders Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolw, Lord Rothschild spoke first by saying “We are met on the most momentous occasion in the history of Judaism for the last eighteen hundred years.  We are here to return thanks to His Majesty’s government for a declaration which marked an epoch . . . For the first time since the dispersion, the Jewish people have received their proper status by the declaration of one of the great Powers.”[137]

Balfour during his discussions in 1906 with Chaim Weizmann, a lecturer in organic chemistry at Manchester University, witnessed that the Jewish love of Israel was unique and at the end of his life Balfour stated that “what he had been able to do for the Jews had been the thing he looked back upon as the most worth his doing.”[138]  Weizmann was rewarded with the Balfour Declaration by successfully producing synthetic acetone from grain rather than wood pulp, which was becoming scarce in Britain.[139]  Acetone was an essential ingredient in cordite for explosives in ammunition.[140]

The War Cabinet hoped with the promise of a home in Palestine that Russian Jews would encourage Russia to stay in the war and American Jews would help increase the United State military’s participation in the war.[141]  Many Britons in 1916 held the misconception of the existence of a monolithic, powerful and worldwide Jewish association.[142]  Winston Churchill as Secretary of State for the Colonies stated in June 22, 1921 that the Balfour Declaration was an obligation made in wartime “to enlist the aid of Jews all over the world.”[143]

When Dr. Chaim Weizmann went to Palestine in spring of 1918 as head of the Zionist commission sent by the British government to plan the implementation of the Balfour Declaration for the Jewish homeland, the seeds of anti-Semitism were implanted already into the British officer corps.[144]  General Wyndham Deeds showed him copies of the Protocols, which belonged to the British officers who served in the British Military Mission in the Caucasus on the staff of the Grand Duke Nicholas.[145]

In autumn of 1919, publications of the Protocols appeared in England, causing a rise in anti-Semitism and an incorrect linkage between the mythical Jewish conspiracy of world domination and the Bolshevik Revolution.[146]  An anti-Semitic political environment developed in Britain, in which an anti-Bolshevik fixation negatively affected Zionist attitudes among the government officials.[147]

On June 4, 1918, Dr. Weizmann met with Emir Feisal, leader of the Arab armies against the Ottoman Empire and the son of Emir Hussein the Grand Sharif of Mecca and leader of the Arabs of Hejaz in Akaba, to welcome the Jews to their National Home in Palestine.[148]  On January 3, 1919, the Weizmann-Faisal Agreement between Chaim Weizmann of the Zionist movement and His Royal Highness the Emir Faisal was signed, which assured under Articles III and IV a Jewish homeland in Palestine.[149]

Haj Amin al-Husseini was enraged with Faisal’s signing and the Balfour Declaration and incited four days of rioting in Jerusalem on April 4, 1920 during the annual Nabi Musa procession.[150]  Even though al-Husseini was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the British for instigating the riots that devastated the Jewish residential areas in Jerusalem, the British Mandate Governor Herbert Samuel appointed al-Husseini the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem for life to make peace with al-Husseini and to maintain a balance of power between the Husseini and Nashashibi clans on May 8, 1921.[151]

In 1921, the British excluded Transjordan from the Jewish National Home, for Feisal’s brother Emir Abdullah to rule.[152]  Feisal expected the British to give him Syria with its capital in Damascus, in return for abandoning all claims to Palestine for the Jewish National Home.[153]

In 1921 when the Balfour Declaration was challenged in the House of Lords by Lord Rothermere, Lord Balfour replied that he was aware of the large Arab population in Palestine and accepted self-determination for all countries with the exception of Palestine.[154]  He explained further that exception:

Every Jew throughout the world has his portion in Palestine, and, therefore, if I take all the Jews throughout the world, surely in strict numbers they overcome the Arabs present.[155]

Balfour’s concept of the Jewish Diaspora has been expressed as “He who lives in the land and he who waits to see it are both part of the patrimony of the Jewish heritage and its destiny.”[156]

Although the principles of the Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919, the League of Nations Mandate to Britain to oversee the Jewish national home was finalized at the Allied conference in San Remo, Italy.[157]  The Balfour Declaration was adopted by the San Remo Conference as a “declaration of sympathy for Jewish Zionist aspirations” and Great Britain was granted a Mandate over Palestine, which was confirmed and defined by the League of Nations.[158]

The San Remo Conference on April 25, 1920 incorporated the Balfour Declaration into the peace treaty with Turkey at Sèvres and to grant the Palestine mandate to Britain.[159]  Article 2 of the San Remo resolution, which was ratified by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922, provided the international legal support for the British promise to create a Jewish homeland.[160]  The League of Nations approved three mandates carved out of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine and Mesopotamia as British mandates and Syria as a French mandate, and approved Arabia as independent under pro-British monarchs.[161]   The British wanted the Sinai as part of the Palestine Mandate, but France disagreed so the Sinai was allotted to Egypt, which had not requested it out of the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire.[162]

President Wilson supported the Balfour Declaration beginning in 1917 and the U.S. Congress endorsed it in September 1922, while Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes opposed the Congressional endorsement.[163]  The State Department worked with anti-Zionists, the Arab delegation, Protestant missionaries and the British Colonial Office during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference to prevent the endorsement of it.[164]

The Preamble of the Mandate recognized the historic right of the Jews to a national home in Palestine.[165]  President Woodrow Wilson on March 3, 1919 stated that “the Allied Nations with the fullest concern of our own government and people are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundation of a Jewish Commonwealth.”[166]

I will return the captivity of My people Israel, and they will rebuild desolate cities and settle them; they will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will cultivate gardens and eat their fruits. I will plant them upon their land and they will never again be uprooted from their land that I have given them, said the Lord, your God. Amos 9:14-15.

The Jewish immigration and financial investment after World War 1 changed the Palestine economy and attracted Arabs from everywhere in the Middle East to the improving socio-economic conditions by the development of the Jewish National Home.[167]  The 1937 British Commission of inquiry headed by Lord Peel acknowledged:

The general benefit effect of Jewish immigration on Arab welfare is illustrated by the fact that the increase in the Arab population is most marked in urban areas percent in Haifa was 86, in Jaffa 62, in Jerusalem 37, while in purely Arab towns such as Nablus and Hebron it was only 7, and at Gaza there was a decrease of 2 percent.[168]

However, the Peel report stated that:

We have found that, though the Arabs have benefited by the development of the country owing to Jewish immigration, this has had no conciliatory effect.  On the contrary . . . with almost mathematical precision the betterment of the economic situation in Palestine meant the deterioration of the political situation.[169] 

Because of the political situation with the Balfour Declaration, there were Arab attacks on the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem with 47 Jewish deaths following Muslim religious celebrations on April 4, 1920.[170]  Haj Amin Husseini led the pogrom in Jerusalem and was later sentenced by a British military court to 10 years in prison, but was able to flee the country and was pardoned subsequently by High Commissioner Samuel, who in April 1921 appointed Haj Amin to Palestine’s highest Islamic post of Mufti.[171]

After the war, the British took the side of the Arabs.  When Arab mobs raged against the Jews throughout Jerusalem in April 1920, veterans of the Jewish Legion of General Allenby’s army lead by Vladimir Jabotinsky protected the Jewish community in New Jerusalem, but the British army prevented Jabotinsky’s militia from entering the Old City to protect the Jewish community.[172]  The British military tribunal acquitted most of the Arab rioters, but sentenced Jabotinsky to 15 years hard labor for the crime of trying to defend his people from a murderous mob, which a court of inquiry by the British army later reversed the outcome and recalled the anti-Semitic military government in Palestine.[173]

In 1920, the Jews had formed the Haganah, a paramilitary organization lead by Jabotinsky, since the British failed to defend the Jews during the pogroms.[174]  The Irgun and the Stern Gang were formed in the 1930s to launch offensives against the Arabs and the British army.[175]

During 1928, out of Egypt was formed in Ismailia the Muslim Brotherhood headed by Hassan al-Banna, with the purpose to conduct jihad against Zionism as a political and national movement and against the Jewish people as the carrier of an alien and destructive religion and ideology.[176]  The name of this evil movement is Islamic Jihadism, as launched by al-Banna (1906-1949) with the call to jihad.[177]

During Yom Kippur in 1928, a collapsible screen to separate male and female worshippers, a mechitza, was set at the Western Wall and the Arabs yelled jihad that the Jews were trying to rebuild their Temple and destroy the al-Aksa Mosque.[178]  Because of the jihad call, hundreds of Jews were killed leading up to the 1929 pogrom in Hebron, which eliminated the entire ancient Jewish community.[179]  In June 1930 during an international commission on the future of the Western Wall after the 1929 massacres, the Mufti’s representatives refused to recognize any Jewish rights at the Wall and in Palestine at all, which was repeated at a pan-Islamic congress meeting in Jerusalem in December 1931.[180]  After the pogroms, the British decreed to appease the Arabs that the Arabs were the sole owners of the Western Wall and the Jews were forbidden to blow the shofar near the Wall.[181]

During the 1929 pogroms in Jerusalem, Safed and Hebron, over 133 Jews were murdered by Arab mobs that were inspired by the British-appointed grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.[182]  After the Jewish massacres, Jerusalem Arab students in September 1929 with the authority of the Moslem Supreme Council called for a boycott of Jewish businesses, which continued under the Palestinian Arab leadership during the Mandate period.[183]  The wife, Beatrice Webb, of the anti-Zionist Colonial Secretary, Lord Passfield, commented to Chaim Weizmann, regarding the mass killing of Hebron’s Jews in 1929 that

I can’t understand why the Jews make such a fuss over a few dozen of their people killed in Palestine.  As many are killed every week in London in traffic accidents, and no one pays any attention.[184]

Syrian Arab sheikh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam, who actively cooperated with Haj Amin from the early 1920s, led jihad terror attacks against the British mandate and Jewish civilians as an Islamic inevitability.[185]  Al-Qassam’s death near Jenin in a gunfight against British police in November 1935 made him into a hero of the Palestinian resistance (“Qassam” rockets and brigades).[186]  Qassam promoted jihad as a war against unbelievers as interpreted by the Koran with no tolerance for any deviance.[187]

In 1936, Ahmad Hussein, founder of the Young Egypt movement and later known as the Islamic Nationalist Party, and a delegation of his paramilitary Green Shirts participated in the Nazi Nuremberg Rally.[188]  In October 1938, Arabic versions of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were distributed at the Islamic parliamentarians’ conference in Cairo.[189]  After a September 1938 visit by 30 Iraqis to Nuremberg as the guests of Hitler and the Hitler Youth, Sami Shawkat, a government minister, created the al-Futuwa youth organization modeled after the Hitler Youth.[190]

The grand mufti established a Palestinian youth organization under the name of the “Nazi Scouts” before the war, which adopted Hitler Youth-style shorts and leather belts.[191]  During the Palestinian revolt of 1936-1939, the swastika, German flags and photographs of Hitler were displayed by the Arabs and Arab children greeted each other with the Hitler salute.

During the 1936-1939 Arab riots, the followers of Al-Qassam carried on such a campaign of terror and indiscriminate murder that the Arab revolt eventual disintegrated within the Palestinian camp.[192]  Of the nineteen Jews in Tiberias that were murdered by the Arabs, eleven children were burnt alive in their nursery.[193]  Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization and Hamas have revered him as “the first commander of the Palestinian Revolution.”[194]

During the 1920s and 30s, Jewish settlements increased economic opportunities in the area, making immigration attractive to the Arabs living in the nearby underdeveloped countries.[195]  In 1933, about 4 percent of Palestine’s 10,000 square miles was in Jewish possession in enclaves around Jaffa-Tel Aviv, the northern Mediterranean coast, Haifa and the Galilee, about 20 percent was Arab owned and large tracts were reserved for cultivation.[196]  The Mandate government owned the remaining 70 percent and half of that was uninhabitable desert.[197]  From 1933 to 1935, over 120,000 Jews mainly from Germany and Poland immigrated to Palestine, bringing the Jewish population to around 355,000.[198]  During this time Arab immigration from Arab regions as far as from Morocco to Afghanistan increased to more than 1,300,000 by 1936 with a Jewish population of 380,000.[199]

On August 7, 1933, the Zionist movement concluded the Transfer Agreement (Haavara) with the Third Reich in which approximately 60,000 German Jews with $100 million in personal wealth were transferred to Palestine in return for the Zionists to halt the worldwide Jewish-led anti-Nazi boycott.[200]  The Transfer Agreement, by allowing money and Jews to move to Palestine, launched the possibility of a Jewish state, a “nation no Jew could enter as a refugee or a stranger, a nation all Jews would enter as full citizens.”[201]  Edwin Black wrote that

the price of this new nation would be the abandonment of the war against Nazi Germany. Whole branches of Judaism would wither, but the trunk would survive – Herzl’s words . . . From this crisis of humiliation, agony, and expulsion would come sanctuary, nationhood, and a new Jew, with a new home to call his own.[202]  

Over the four year period beginning in 1933, the Transfer Agreement between the German Economics Ministry and the Jewish Agency, as the Zionist representatives in Germany and Palestine, encouraged the Jewish exit from Germany by allowing limited property transfers to Palestine in spite of the financial crisis in Germany, but the majority of the personal wealth was taken by the Nazi government as an exit charge.[203]  The British imposed a £1,000 Palestine entry requirement for Jews, which allowed the British a refined racial barrier to Jewish immigration, since most Jews could not meet the financial requisites.[204]

In 1933, Hitler considered Palestine as only a stretch of desert and swamp, in which German Jews would be sent to a remote, self-run concentration camp and would be politically isolated.[205]  Edwin Black wrote that while the worldwide boycott against Hitler in 1933 did not succeed, the initial boycott did force the Third Reich to agree to the Transfer Agreement and without such an agreement “a precious human and financial remnant would have never been saved, a remnant indispensable to building the Jewish State.”[206]  During this period, Hitler’s political power rested upon the German expectation of economic recovery and the German boycott during 1933 was devasting to the economy and employment.[207]

In 1933, most of the Jewish Palestinian economy was based upon citrus exports, primarily oranges.[208]  The Haavara brought capital, businesses, and how-how to produce an economic explosion of jobs in Jewish Palestine and by 1936 the Jewish population had doubled.[209]  When hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, representing a remnant of a family, a village, or a community in Europe, and “when the moment of the in-gathering of the exiles was at hand, Israel was ready” for a nation was waiting that had not existed 15 years earlier.[210]

After the Evian conference in July 1938, the resulting Intergovernmental committee of Refugee’s representative in London, George Rublee, began negotiating with Hjalmar Schucht from the German government about Jewish emigration, following the general pattern of the Haavara.[211]  The negotiations continued with Helmut Wohlthat, Göring’s representative in the Rublee talks, resulting in the Rublee-Schacht-Wohlthat agreement.[212]  President Roosevelt pressured the American Jewish leadership to agree to the Rublee-Wohlthat plan and early June 1939 the Jewish leadership had established the Co-ordinating Foundation to finance the German-Jewish emigrants, but the war in September 1939 ended the resettlement project.[213]

The influx of Jewish immigration was met with Arab armed revolt between 1936 and 1939.[214]  In October 1930, the Colonial Secretary, Lord Passfield issued a new Palestine White Paper to appease the Arab hostility to a Jewish National Home and drastically altered the commitment to both Arabs and Jews.[215]  Churchill argued that the British obligation “was to Jews wherever they might live, to have the right to become part of the Jewish National Home” and “no similar obligation had been made to the Arabs outside Palestine.”[216]  Churchill emphasized that Britain had pledged to the Jews alone to build a homeland in Palestine by immigration.[217]  While the Peel Commission report published on July 7, 1937 was being debated in the British Parliament over the proposed partition of Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State, Churchill reiterated that the Mandate intended for a Jewish State to constitute the whole of Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.[218]

Considering the continuing conflict without end in Israel with the Arabs, Churchill’s statement in 1937 may prove to be the eventual outcome for the State of Israel by declaring that

[i]f the Mandate was ‘worked a bit slower, on the lines that had been intended,’ he said, eventually he ‘considered it to be inevitable that we should have sovereignty over the whole of Palestine, although that might take a century or two centuries.’ Jewish civilization . . . was ‘the stronger and would ultimately dominate,’ . . . [219]   

Arguing against partition, Churchill held that a small Jewish State “can be ravished by its enemies, defeated in war, annexed to other powers or suffer any of the other incidents that are common to small States in the fortunes and chances of war. . .  Once you have accepted your State, and it has gone, or been destroyed, your great moral claims will have disappeared too.”[220]

Regrettably, Churchill later argued in 1938 for a fixed ratio of Jewish and Arab immigration over a ten-year plan to maintain existing population percentages to the dismay of the Zionists, who wanted to secure a Jewish majority within ten years in Palestine.[221]  In 1939, Churchill did argue against the MacDonald White Paper (known to the Jews as the Black Paper) as a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration and a reprehensible act of appeasement to the Arabs.[222]

Between the beginning of the Arab uprising in April 1936 and the spring of 1939, Arab attacks on British military had resulted in more than 5,000 Arabs killed by British troops and more than 500 Arabs, advocating good relations with the Jews, killed by Arabs.[223]  To end Arab violence, Neville Chamberlain “to have the Moslem world with us” proposed a policy to guarantee a permanent Arab majority.[224]   Chamberlain stressed that “[i]f we must offend one side . . .  Let us offend the Jews rather than the Arabs.”[225]

Following every outbreak of Arab violence, the British would reduce the unrest by limiting Jewish immigration.[226]  Thus, the “Arab extortion” began, in which the Arabs realized that by attacking Jews they could force the British to impose greater restrictions on the Jews while the Jewish victims were perceived as being at fault.[227] Even today, Arab attacks against Israel and the Jews bring pro-Arab world reactions that reinforce and encourage the cycle of Arab violence.

In October 1938 to appease the Arabs, the Sir John Woodhead commission recommended renouncing the partition plan and by January 1939, the colonial secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, insisted on active measures to improve Anglo-Arab relations.[228]   While Hitler was entering Prague during his pillage of Czechoslovakia and the destruction of the Jewish communities in March 1939, Chamberlain, who so handled Herr Hitler in Munich, made public the White Paper on May 19, 1939, which limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 Jews over the next 5 years and required Arab approval for any additional Jewish immigration after 5 years.[229]

In July 1939, MacDonald suspended all Jewish immigration to Palestine from October 1939 until March 1940.[230]  The White Paper essentially stopped the immigration of the persecuted Jews from Hitler’s Europe and the possibility of a Jewish place of sanctuary.[231]  Graciously as a “humanitarian” gesture, the British government permitted 9,000 to 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Free City of Danzig to enter Britain.[232]

On February 28, 1940, the Land Transfer Regulations were placed in effect, which prevented further Jewish land purchases in Judea, Samaria, Galilee, the immediate areas surrounding Jerusalem, the Jerusalem corridor, Beersheba, the area north of Acre and the Jezreel Valley, but Jews could continue to purchase land along the coast around existing Jewish settlements and around Haifa.[233]  The regulations essentially nullified the terms of the British Mandate.[234]

A coup d’état on April 1, 1941 against the pro-British government of Regent Abdul al-Ilah by pro-Nazi Rashid Ali Kilani was inspired by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.[235]  One of the coup plotters was Yunis es-Sebawi, who was involved in the Arabic translation of Mein Kampf.[236]  Al-Husseini offered the Germans the support of the Arab countries, if they would allow the Arabs to destroy the promise of a Jewish Home in Palestine.[237]  Through radio broadcasts, the Mufti claimed that the Jews worked as spies for the British and called for their death.[238]

Haj Amin was appointed Mufti of Jerusalem in May 1921 by the “brilliant” Sir Herbert Samuel despite the fact that Haj Amin had been tried in absentia for his part of the 1920 riots and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by the British.[239]  In April 1920 and in May 1921, anti-Zionist riots occurred in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Hadera and Petach Tikva.[240]  Since the early 1920s, Haj Amin aroused the Muslim believers by falsely claiming that the Jews were planning to take the al-Haram al-Sharif (the Temple Mount area) to rebuild Solomon’s Temple on the ruins of the great mosques and he called on Muslim leaders in the world to defend the holy places of Islam against Zionist imperialism.[241] This same fake claim is used consistently today to inflame the Muslim world against the very existence of the Jewish state and the Jews.

Haj Amin fled to French-controlled Beirut in 1937 to avoid arrest by the British and then to Iraq after the British suppressed the Palestine revolt in 1939 and fled again after the 1941 pro-Axis coup in Baghdad to Tehran, Ankara, Rome and then Berlin.[242]  The British-led Arab Legion from Jordan drove out the junta in Baghdad after 30 days and returned power to the Regent, but before the Legion’s return mobs murdered 180 Jews and injured and mutilated several hundred, desecrated synagogues and destroyed Jewish property.[243]  The farhud (great pogrom) in Baghdad changed forever the position of the Jews and, after the State of Israel was established, the Iraq government began promulgating numerous anti-Semitic decrees.[244]

On March 19, 1933, the swastika was unfurled over the German consulates in Jerusalem and Jaffa.[245]  By 1937, there were about 2,000 Aryan Reichdeutsche residing in Palestine and most of them being members of the Templar sect with loyalty to the Nazi Party, which considered the German settlements as foreign posts of the Third Reich.[246]  Arab nationalists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian leader Haj Amin developed relationships and ideological connections with the local Nazis, which provided the anti-Semitic underpinning for the current Islamo-fascism.[247]  The ideologies of Hezbollah and Hamas are viscerally anti-Semitic, encompassing conspiracy theories from the Protocols of the Elders as well as from the Koran.[248]

On November 28, 1941, Hitler met with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and promised there would be no Jewish territorial problem after the war, for the last objective in the Middle East would be the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands.[249]  There were more than 700,000 Jews living in the Middle East and North Africa, who would be subject to the Final Solution.[250]

Previously, Nazi officials by the spring and summer of 1936 had assured Arab diplomats that Nazi ideology and German race laws were directed against the Jews and not against non-Jewish Semites, despite the Aryan racial superiority presented in Mein Kampf.[251]  During the end of 1937, Arabic translations of Mein Kampf omitted the racial ladder theory that placed Arabs on one of the lowest racial rungs just above the Jews.[252]

On April 28, 1942, Hitler agreed to an accord with the Grand Muffi of a German commitment to Arab independence in Palestine and “to the abolition of the Jewish National Homeland in Palestine.”[253]  On December 18, 1942, the Grand Mufti opened the Islamic Central Institute in Berlin to launch his Islamic war against the Jews to drive them out of the Arabian Peninsula as preached by the prophet Muhammad.[254]  The Nazis paid 75,000 marks per month to the Mufti as salary and provided a home on Berlin’s fashionable Klopstock Street, a full staff of servants, a chauffeured Mercedes limousine as well as four other residences and suites in two of Berlin’s luxury hotels.[255]

Enjoying access to Himmler and Eichmann, the Grand Mufti visited Auschwitz and Majdanek where “he paid close attention to the efficiency of the crematoria, spoke to the leading personnel and was generous in his praise for those who were reported as particularly conscientious in their work.”[256]  The Mufti was on intimate terms with Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoes, Mauthausen commandant Franz Ziereis, Theresienstadt commandant Siegfried Seidl and Belsen commandant Josef Kramer.[257]  According to the Grand Mufti, the “solution” of the “Palestinian question” was to be found in the killing fields of Auschwitz.[258]

Later, Haj Amin assisted in the recruitment of Moslems from the Balkans and other Muslim areas into units of the Waffen SS.[259]   Haj Amin brought Moslem Arabs from the British colony of Palestine to serve in the Moslem brigades.  Haj Amin’s Waffen-SS company of Bosnian Muslims (the “Hanjars”) murdered 90 percent of Bosnian Jewry and burned Serbian churches and villages and the Mufti sent Bosnian Muslims to Croatia and Hungary to assist in killing Jews.[260]

The Grand Mufti went to all efforts to ensure that Himmler would “take all measures to prevent the Jews from going [to Palestine]” and send them to the death camps.[261]  SS Colonel Walter Rauff (who fled to Chile after the war) with Rommel’s Afrika Korps, expecting to conquer Palestine in 1942, was assigned by the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin to implement a Middle Eastern “Final Solution” for the Jews.[262]  In October 1942, Rauf was in charge of “Einsatzgruppe Egypt,” which was to be comprised of 24-member killing squads and to enlist Palestinian Arabs for the extermination of Jews in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.[263]  With Rommel’s defeat at El Alamein in November 1942 and the retreat of German and Italian forces from North Africa, the killing squads were disbanded.[264]

Beginning in September 1939, the German Foreign Ministry was broadcasting Arabic-language propaganda over shortwave radio to the Middle East and North Africa, which found common ground with the anti-Semitism contained within the Koran, its commentaries and the traditions of Islam.[265]  The Axis broadcasts focused on anti-Zionism and continually reported that the British planned to extend the boundaries of the Jewish national home and supported Jews to the detriment of the Arabs.[266]

Just preceding the war in North Africa, the status of Jews in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia had deteriorated already under the impact of French anti-Semitism, Arab nationalism, the Palestine conflict, Fascist Italy’s influence and German propaganda, in which restrictions were placed on the professions, Jewish businesses were seized and school and university enrollments were limited.[267]  The Nazi propaganda’s primary focus to the Arabs was that the war was started by the Jews and Jewish-Bolshevism and Roosevelt and Churchill were acting under Jewish orders and influence for the Zionist goal of a Jewish national home in Palestine with the Arabs deported elsewhere.[268]  However, during this time Britain restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, Roosevelt postponed any formal decision of a Jewish state in Palestine until after the war, the Soviet Union cared nothing about the mass murder of the Jews on the Eastern Front and the Jews were completely powerless.[269]

In January 1944, Resolutions 418 and 419 were introduced into the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs to rescue Europe’s Jews and lift restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine after reports of the Jewish genocide and in February 1945 Senator Robert Wagner, a Democrat, and Senator Robert Taft, a Republican, introduced a similar resolution to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.[270]  The resolutions were withdrawn after the White House, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of State Hull, General George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army chief of staff, and L. Roy Henderson, the American ambassador to Iraq all wrote and stated that the resolutions were not advisable at this time as it would strengthen Axis propaganda and undermine Allied creditability among the Arab world.[271]

From 1941 to 1945, Haj Amin made the anti-Semitic broadcasts to the Arab world from Berlin and in a November 2, 1943 speech stressed the ideological connection among radical Islam, Arab nationalism and National Socialism and how the Germans are solving the Jews problem.[272]  On the same day, the Mufti received a congratulatory telegram from Heinrich Himmler as if the Nazi leadership was passing the torch of genocidal anti-Semitism to the Arabs.[273]

Although the Grand Mufti was charged with war crimes in 1945 for organizing SS Muslim divisions in the Balkans, legal proceedings were dropped in order not to upset the Arab world and by 1946 a de facto amnesty was in place after his escape to Egypt with French assistance.[274]  The German officials who had worked with the pro-Nazi Arabs in Berlin were all placed in important positions in the reconstruction of the West German diplomatic corps dealing with the Middle East.[275]

Haj Amin encouraged Yasser Arafat, who was related by blood, to pursue terrorist jihad against the Jews.[276]  Arafat recruited for Fatah and the PLO former Nazis such as Erich Altern, who was in the Jewish affairs section of the Gestapo, and Willy Berner, an SS officer in Mauthausen death camp, and neo-Nazis, such as Otto Albrecht, Karl van der Put and Jean Tireault, secretary of the fascist La Nation Européene.[277]

With the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1945, the worst anti-Jewish pogrom in Cairo’s history occurred in the Jewish Quarter with houses, businesses and the Ashkenazi synagogue destroyed and over 400 people injured.[278]  In Alexandria, violent riots occurred with at least 5 people killed.[279]  In the same year, the Arab League initiated a boycott of Jewish Palestinian businesses and the next year the ban was extended to anything Jewish.[280]

By 1946, the British Mandatory Government recorded 1,200,000 Arabs living in Israel, an increase of 65 percent over 1922, composed mainly of recent immigrants seeking economic opportunity created by Jewish enterprises.[281]  In April 1946, the Anglo-American committee submitted a report recommending the immediate admission into Palestine of 100,000 Holocaust survivors and the abolition of the restrictions on Jewish land purchases, but the British government quickly denied any entry of refugees to Palestine.[282]  On Yom Kippur in the fall of 1946, President Truman demanded that the more than 100,000 refugees be authorized by the British government to enter Palestine and stated that a Jewish state should be created.[283]

During July of 1946, the British launched “Operation Agatha” in which British troops entered the Jewish settlements to confiscate hidden weapons, operational plans of the Hagana and the Irgun and to arrest over 2,000 activists including prominent Jewish leaders.[284]  Since the confiscated operational plans were assumed located in the headquarters of the British government in Palestine, the King David Hotel, the southern wing of the hotel was dynamited by the Irgun on July 22, 1946 and approved by the United Resistance Command.[285]

In 1947 with the continued Arab refusal of a partition for a Jewish state, the British referred the Palestine question to the United Nations.[286]  Foreign Secretary Bevin expected that the UN would send the political problem back to Britain to continue the trusteeship over Palestine, in which the Jews would remain a small minority in an Arab state.[287]  Britain thought that an affirmative UN vote would never happen on partition, since a two-thirds majority would be needed, requiring the Eastern bloc and the United States to support the same resolution.[288]  Britain raised objections to the creation of a Jewish state and warned UN members that an Arab oil embargo would cripple Europe’s economic recovery after the war, there would be violent Islamic attacks against the West and the Jewish state would become a Soviet bridgehead in the Middle East.[289]

Pope Pius XII opposed the partion of the Mandate and the creation of a Jewish state and expected that the UN would recognize the Roman Catholic Church as the primary ecclesiastical power at the Holy Sites and entitled to exercise extra-territorial power.[290]  Not until December 30, 1993 was there signed a Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel for mutual recognition; however, the Holy See maintains the ambition of an “internationalized” Jerusalem.[291]  On February 15, 2000, Pope John Paul II meeting with Yasir Arafat at the Vatican affirmed the joint support for international status for Jerusalem under the “Basic Agreement Between the Holy See and the Palestine Liberation Organization” and warned Israel not “to change the unique character of Jerusalem.”[292]

Contrary to British expectations, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed and on November 24, 1947 a Political Committee of the United Nations proposed under Resolution 181 that the Mandate be terminated and Palestine divided into two sovereign states, one Jewish and the other Arab, with Jerusalem internationalized.[293]  Thirty-three UN members voted for the resolution, thirteen voted against and ten abstained including Great Britain.[294]

On the night of November 29, 1947, the Israeli novelist Amos Oz described the country’s reaction after listening to the UN roll call vote on the radio to the adoption of Resolution 181:

Our faraway street on the edge of Kerem Avraham in northern Jerusalem . . . roared all at once in a first terrifying shout that tore through the darkness and the buildings and trees, piercing itself, not a shout of joy, nothing like the shouts of spectators in sports grounds or excited rioting crowds, perhaps more like a scream of horror and bewilderment, a cataclysmic shout, a shout that could shift rocks, that could freeze your blood, as though all the dead who had ever died here and all those still to die had received a brief window to shout, and the next moment the scream of horror was replaced by roars of joy and a medley of hoarse cries and “The Jewish People Lives.”[295]

“The Jewish People lives” is the message of the State of Israel, as described in the Balfour Declaration a “national home for the Jewish people” more than a mere state.[296]  Israel, as a “national home,” has resurrected a Jewish character and peoplehood that a life in the Diaspora could never realize.[297]  Beyond a Jewish homeland and reviving the Hebrew language, statehood has brought about the Jews’ return as major players on the stage of history.[298]

Although the Partition Plan was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on November 29, 1947, it was never accepted by the Arabs, who violently opposed it and appealed to Arabs to flee before the coming invasion of the Arab armies.[299]  The Partition Resolution gave the Arabs 82.5 percent of the country, in addition to their vast holdings all over the Middle East.[300]

Haj Amin Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Arab Higher Committee that was the “government” of the Palestinian Arabs, carried out thousands of attacks with the pan-Arab irregular army against the Jewish settlements during the five and a half months between the UN resolution and the end of the British mandate in an attempt to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.[301]

In British ruled Aden on December 2, 1947, Muslim mobs during three days destroyed 106 Jewish-owned shops, hundreds of Jewish homes, Jewish schools, the synagogue and killed 82 Jews of the Jewish community that had lived in Aden for over a thousand years.[302]  In December 1947 in the Syrian city of Aleppo, Muslim mobs attacked the Jewish community in existence since the 12th century, destroying all 18 synagogues, 5 Jewish schools, the orphanage and youth club and the Syrian government legitimized the violence by denying Jewish citizens civil protection.[303]

Throughout the Muslim world, the ancient Jewish communities were no longer safe, but persecuted during the march toward Jewish statehood by the rise of Arab nationalism and hatred against Zionism.  Dr. Stephen Wise, President of the World Jewish Congress, wrote on January 18, 1948 an article entitled “Crime of Arabs is Genocide” in which he pleaded with the U.S. Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, to intervene to protect the Jewish communities in Muslim countries.[304]  Wise wrote “[b]etween 800,000 and a million Jews in the Middle East and Africa, exclusive of Palestine, are in greatest danger of destruction by Moslems being incited to holy war over the partition of Palestine.”[305]

By February 1948, the Arab Liberation Army numbered over 12,000 men in Palestine with 7,000 “Liberation Army” troops in the north under Fawzi el-Kaukji and his Syrian aide, Shishakli, 4,000 Palestine irregulars around Jerusalem under the Muft’s Husseini family and 1,000 fanatic Egyptian “Moslem Brotherhood” in the Negev.[306]  Under the Anglo-Transjordan Treaty of Alliance on March 1948, the British-financed, armed and led Arab Legion was given the green light by the British to invade Palestine after the termination of the Mandate to provide “law enforcement” and “peacekeeping operations” while driving the Jewish state into nonexistence to Bevin’s and his foreign office’s delight and to secure Britain’s most loyal Arab ally, King Abdullah.[307]  By 1948, the British military command in Palestine was openly pro-Arab and anti-Semitic as recorded by Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen in his diary:

Violence and murder are the order of the day in Palestine.  Apparently, having done our best to disarm the Jews, we are prepared to abandon them to their fate and the Holy Land to anarchy, whilst arming the Arabs as hard as we can.[308]

At 6:45 a.m. on May 14, 1948 the Union Jack was lowered from the King David Hotel, where the Palestine government’s administrative officers were located, to be replaced by the International Red Cross flag.[309]  The British mandate came to an end at midnight.[310]  Abdel Rahman Azzam, the Arab League’s secretary, promised that the Arab armies would drive the Jews into the sea within hours of the proclamation of the Jewish state.[311]

At 4 p.m. on that Friday the 14th of May, David Ben-Gurion read a 979 word declaration of independence before a small audience at the Tel Aviv Art Museum, 16 Rothschild Boulevard, with the following main passages:

The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people.  Here their spiritual, religious, and political identity was shaped.  Here they first attained to statehood  . . .

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration of their political freedom.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Israel, requiring the inhabitants of Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution.  This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.  This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.

Thus members and representatives of the Jews of Palestine and of the Zionist movement upon the end of the British Mandate, by virtue of “natural and historic right,” and based on the United Nations resolution  . . . Hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel to be known as the State of Israel.[312]  

Upon finishing Ben-Gurion stated “The state of Israel is established!  The meeting is ended.”  Ben-Gurion had announced that the new republic would be “based on the principles of liberty, justice, and peace as conceived by the prophets of Israel.”[313]  On that day Elie Wiesel said that “Shabbat was not an offering to Israel . . .  [but] . . . Israel was an offering to Shabbat.”[314]

Who has heard such as this? Who has seen such as these? Has a land ever gone through its labor in one day? Has a nation ever been born at one time, as Zion went through her labor and gave birth to her children? Isaiah 66:8.

The recreation of the State of Israel can only be compared to the Exodus out of Egypt.  As Ben-Gurion stated in Israel if you do not believe in miracles, you are not a realist.[315]  The State of Israel returned in the Hebrew year 5708.  The 5,708th verse of the Torah, Deuteronomy 30:2 reads and you shall return unto the Lord, your God.

Two hours after Ben-Gurion’s proclamation, the United States announced U.S. recognition.[316]  The Chief Rabbi of Israel later told President Truman that “God put you in your mother’s womb, so you would be the instrument to bring the rebirth of Israel.”   President Truman had to overrule the State Department, the Pentagon, key cabinet members such as Secretary of State George Marshall and Defense Secretary James Forrestal, the oil lobby, and the entire U.S. intelligence community.[317]  However, the State Department did not give up its pro-Arab position and forcefully imposed the arms embargo against Israel to facilitate its demise as five Arab armies invaded.[318]

President Truman knew that some of the members of the State Department were anti-Semitic and the last thing the State Department wanted was instant American recognition of Jewish statehood.[319]  Prior to President Truman’s decision on Israel, Edward Jacobson, the son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants and the former business partner with Truman in a haberdashery store in Kansas City between 1919 and 1934, made the trip to Washington to ask his friend Harry Truman to meet with Chaim Weizmann about statehood.[320]

King Abdullah issued a militant communiqué following the proclamation of the Jewish state on May 14th that:

The ending of the British Mandate means the termination and abrogation of the promises contained in the Balfour Declaration.  The Jews have no rights in Palestine; the Jews have no rights to local self-independence as they rejected my previous proposals; I repeat my promise that Palestine inhabitants will freely determine their future.[321]

King Abdullah proposed previously to the Jews the status of a tolerated minority in the dhimmi tradition under Islam in the Arab regime he wanted to create in Palestine as part of the Transjordan.[322]  Abdel Rahman Azzam, the Arab League Secretary-General, at a Cairo press conference on May 15 said, predicting the victory of the invading Arab forces into Palestine that:

We will sweep them into the sea!  This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.[323]

Sir John Bagot Glubb, the British commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion, who was an unabashed anti-Semite, held that the “unlikable character” of the Jews was the prime cause of anti-Semitism and were “to blame for the habit of religious persecution and massacres in the history of Christendom.”[324]  Glubb also defamed Zionism as a form of “Jewish Nazism.”[325]  General Glubb and British Brigadier Norman O. Lash, second in command of the Arab Legion, led the invasion of Palestine against the Jews with 40 other British officers spread out through the Legion.[326]  The British Colonial Secretary Bevin assumed that the Arab League was stronger and would win.[327]

On May 15th, Israel was simultaneously invaded by armies from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, which were launched by the Arabs in response to the UN decision for partition.  After more than 5 months of fighting the Palestine irregulars (the Arab Liberation Army) of 2,500 before the Declaration of the Jewish state, the Jewish force was met with 6 professional armies of overwhelming superiority in weapons, artillery and air power, consisting of an Egyptian army of 10,000 plus 2,500 of the Moslem Brotherhood, the Transjordan Arab Legion of 4,500 plus 1,500 of the Frontier Corps, a Syrian army of 5,500, an Iraqi army of 4,000, a Lebanese army of 1,500 and a Saudi Arabian army of around 300.[328]

Trained and led by 40 British officers and armed with British equipment, the Arab Legion opened artillery fire on the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem and several hundred Jews were killed when the Jewish Quarter was overrun.[329]  During the low point of the invasion, Jerusalem was cut off and the Transjordanian army was within 15 miles of Tel Aviv.[330]  The Arabs’ purpose was the extermination of the Jewish people and this Arab invasion was considered the last campaign of the “Final Solution” of World War II.[331]

Some with chariots, and some with horses; but we, in the Name of the Lord, our God, call out.  They slumped and fell, but we arose and were invigorated.  Lord save!  May the King answer us on the day we call. Psalms 20:8-10.

During the first session of the provisional Israeli government on May 16th, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion reported on the military status as follows:

The number of [Jewish] recruits has exceeded 30,000, but only 40% of them are armed due to the lack of rifles.  The [Arabs] are using artillery, aircraft and tanks, while we have a single tank and a number of [captured] British armored cars.  In my opinion we’ll be able to teach them a lesson they’ll remember for generations.  But for the time being the situation is extremely serious.[332]

The most famous poem during that period was by Natan Alterman, who speaks of a boy and a girl out of the hundreds that died as the “silver platter” on which was delivered the state of Israel:

Then the nation, in tears and ecstasy, asks: ‘Who are you?’ And the two softly reply: ‘We are the silver platter on which the Jewish state is offered you.’  They so said and fell at its feet, enveloped in shadow.  And the rest shall be told in the annals of Israel.[333]

During the short-lived true on June 11th, the UN special mediator Count Folke Bernadotte attempted to impose the British 1937 Peel plan, which would have reduced Israel to less than half of the land allotted by the UN and limit the immigration to Israel.[334]  When Felix Kersten, working with the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs Christian Günther, persuaded Himmler to release 3,000 Jewish concentration camp prisoners to Sweden on December 8, 1944, this Count Bernadotte was asked by the Swedish Minister to arrange the Swedish portion of the transfer.[335]  Later, not only did the Count self-glorify his role in this matter after the war, but initially before the transfer he refused to handle non-Scandinavian prisoners to the surprise of Himmler and the dismay of Kersten.[336]

Not only did the British vision of Israel consist of an indefensible silver of land along the coast, but to severely limit the Jewish population so as not to offend the Arabs.[337]  British policy attempted to prevent the remnants of European Jewry from arriving during the Mandate’s final years by maintaining the 1939 White Paper’s immigration restrictions, enforcing a naval blockade and herding Holocaust survivors reaching Israel into concentration camps in Cyprus without the gas chambers.[338]

On June 17, 1948, a truce between Israel and its Arab attackers entered into force with the UN, but the Arabs rejected any settlement and the concept of any Jewish statehood.[339]  Israel would remain even today as the only state in the world that’s right to exist is continually debated and denied.[340]

 

[1] Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, (1st ed. 2010), p. 241.

[2] David Patterson, Emil L. Fackenheim: A Jewish Philosopher’s Response to the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2008), p. 124.

[3] Liza M. Wiemer and Benay Katz, Waiting For Peace: How Israelis Live With Terrorism, (1st ed. 2005), pp. 32-33.

[4] Littell, Franklin H., The Crucifixion of the Jews: The Failure of Christians to Understand the Jewish Experience, (1st ed. 1975), pp. 117-118.

[5] Maurice M. Roumani, The Case of the Jews From Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, (1st ed., 4th printing 1983), p. 22.

[6] Norman Rose, ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’: Voices from Palestine 1945-1948, (1st ed. 2009), p. 5.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Paul Charles Merkley, Those That Bless You, I Will Bless: Christian Zionism in Historical Perspective, (1st ed. 2011), p. 113.

[9] Abraham J. Heschel, Israel, An Echo of Eternity, (1st ed. 3rd printing 1969), p. 67.

[10] Ibid., pp. 67-68.

[11] Ibid., p. 68.

[12] James Parkes, A History of Palestine From 135 A.D. to Modern Times, (1st ed. 1949), p. 61.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid., p. 61.

[15] Merkley, p. 64.

[16] Parkes, p. 63.

[17] Ibid., pp. 64-65.

[18] Ibid., p. 79.

[19] Ibid., pp. 82, 94.

[20] Ibid., p. 94.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid., p. 121.

[23] MartinGilbert, In Ishmael’s House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands, (1st ed. 2010), p. 60.

[24] S. Tolkowsky, The Gateway of Palestine: A History of Jaffa, (1st ed. 1924), p. 99

[25] Gilbert, In Ishmael’s House, p. 60.

[26] Haim Beinart, Atlas of Medieval Jewish History, (1st ed. 1992), p. 46.

[27] Ibid., p. 44.

[28] Tolkowsky, p. 99.

[29] Ibid., p. 125.

[30] Parkes, p. 122.

[31] Ibid., p. 147.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ibid., p. 149.

[36] Ibid., p. 148.

[37] Ibid., pp. 151-151.

[38] Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, (1st ed. 2010), p. 7.

[39] Parkes, p. 167.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Ibid., pp. 167-168.

[42] Ibid., p. 168.

[43] Ibid., p. 169.

[44] Ibid., p. 170.

[45] Abraham J. Heschel, Israel: An Echo of Eternity, p. 76.

[46] Ibid.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Ibid., p. 76.

[49] John Weiss, Ideology of Death, Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany, (1st ed. 1996), p. 59.

[50] Jonathan Sacks, Future Tense: Jews, Judaism, and Israel in the Twenty-First Century. (1st ed. 2009), p. 143.

[51] Parkes, p. 261.

[52] Heschel, p. 79.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Ibid.

[55] Ibid., p. 79.

[56] Ibid., p. 80.

[57] Parkes, p.261.

[58] Yaacov Herzog, A People That Dwells Alone, (1st American ed. 1975), p. 184.

[59] Sacks, Future Tense, p. 138.

[60] Tolkowsky, p. 127.

[61] Ibid., p. 156.

[62] Ibid., p. 160.

[63] James Rudin, Christians & Jews Faith to Faith: Tragic History, Promising Present, Fragile Future, (1st ed. 2011), p. 142.

[64] Michael Makovsky, Churchill’s Promised Land, Zionism and Statecraft, (1st ed. 2007), p. 53.

[65] Ibid.

[66] Ibid.

[67] Ibid.

[68] Ibid., pp. 53-54.

[69] Parkes, p. 265.

[70] Ibid., p. 266.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Thomas W. Knox, Backsheesh! or Life and Adventures in the Orient, (1st ed. 1875), pp. 339-340.

[73] Ibid., p. 397.

[74] Parkes, p. 265.

[75] Ibid., p. 268.

[76] Ibid.

[77] Herzog, p. 183.

[78] Parkes, p. 272.

[79] Ibid.

[80] Rose, p. 6.

[81] Tolkowsky, p. 163.

[82] Ibid.

[83] Ibid., pp. 175-176.

[84] Anthony S. Travis, On Chariots With Horses of Fire and Iron: The Excursionists and the Narrow Gauge Railroad from Jaffa to Jerusalem, (1st ed. 2009), p. 110.

[85] Martin van Creveld, The Land of Blood and Honey: The Rise of Modern Israel, (1st ed. 2010), p. 21.

[86] Rose, p. 5.

[87] Ibid.

[88] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 687.

[89] Ibid., p. 689.

[90] Parkes, p. 275.

[91] Ibid.

[92] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 690.

[93] Ibid.

[94] Ibid.

[95] Ibid., p. 691.

[96] Ibid.

[97] Van Creveld, p. 27.

[98] Ibid.

[99] Ibid.

[100] Travis, p. 110.

[101] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 13.

[102] Travis, p. 110.

[103] Daniel Gordis, Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End. (1st ed. 2009), p. 121.

[104] Wiemer and Katz, p. 42.

[105] Ibid.

[106] Herzog, p. 178.

[107] Ibid.

[108] Ibid., pp. 178-179.

[109] Ibid., p. 179.

[110] Ibid.

[111] Ibid.

[112] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2001), pp. 13-14.

[113] Wiemer and Katz, p. 42.

[114] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 15.

[115] Ibid.

[116] Travis, p. 124.

[117] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 684.

[118] Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, (1st ed. 2010), p. 9.

[119] Schneer, p. 11.

[120] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, pp. 696-697.

[121] Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power, (1st ed. 2010), p. 355.

[122] Ibid.

[123] Ibid., pp. 352-353.

[124] Ibid., p. 343.

[125] Ibid., p. 353.

[126] Ibid., p. 341.

[127] Ibid., p. 123.

[128] Herzog, p. 215.

[129] Ibid., pp. 216-217.

[130] Ibid., p. 218.

[131] Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship, (1st ed. 2007), p. 27.

[132] Heschel, p. 82.

[133] Yaacov Herzog, A People That Dwells Alone, (1st ed. 1975), p. 58.

[134] Makovsky, p. 77.

[135] Schneer, p. xxviii.

[136] Ibid., pp. xxvii-xxviii.

[137] Ibid., p. xxviii.

[138] Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England, (1st ed. 2010), p. 292.

[139] Schneer, p. 155.

[140] Ibid.

[141] Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p. 27-28.

[142] Schneer, pp. 152-153.

[143] Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p. 69.

[144] Maurice Samuel, Blood Accusation: The Strange History of the Beiliss Case, (1st ed. 1966), p. 260.

[145] Ibid., pp. 260-261.

[146] Makovsky, pp. 80-81.

[147] Ibid., pp. 83-85.

[148] Gilbert, In Ishmael’s House, p. 147.

[149] David Patterson, A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad, (1st ed. 2011), p. 109.

[150] Ibid.

[151] Patterson, A Genealogy of Evil, p. 109.

[152]Gilbert, In Ishmael’s House, p. 147.

[153] Ibid., p. 148.

[154] Herzog, p. 122.

[155] Ibid.

[156] Ibid.

[157] Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine. (2nd ed. 1999), p. 76.

[158] Heschel, p. 82.

[159] Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine, (1st English ed. 2010), p. 5.

[160] Ibid.

[161] Makovsky, pp. 77-78.

[162] Irving Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity, (1st ed. 2004), pp. 38-39.

[163] Mitchell Bard, The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance that Undermines America’s Interests in the Middle East, (1st ed. 2010), pp. 2-3.

[164] Ibid.

[165]Heschel, p. 82-83.

[166] Ibid., p. 83.

[167] Karsh, p. 12.

[168] Ibid.

[169] Ibid., p. 16.

[170] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 694.

[171] Karsh, pp. 16-17.

[172] Sean McMeeklin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power, (1st ed. 2010), p. 354.

[173] Ibid., pp. 354-355.

[174] Schneer, p. 376.

[175] Ibid.

[176] Gilbert, In Ishmael’s House, 157.

[177] Patterson, A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad, p. xi.

[178] Yehuda Avner, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, (1st ed. 2010), p. 9.

[179] Ibid., p. 9-10.

[180] Karsh, p. 30.

[181] Avner, p. 10.

[182] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 694.

[183] Julius, p. 481.

[184] Julius, p. 300.

[185] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, pp. 694-695.

[186] Ibid., p. 695.

[187] Mallmann, p. 15.

[188] Ibid., p. 33.

[189] Ibid.

[190] Ibid., p. 35.

[191] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 698.

[192] Ibid., p. 695.

[193] Julius, p. 301.

[194] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 695.

[195] Maurice M. Roumani, p. 43.

[196] Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 98.

[197] Ibid., pp. 98-99.

[198] Gilbert, Chuchill and the Jews, p. 108.

[199] Ibid.

[200] Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. xix.

[201] Ibid., p. 250.

[202] Ibid.

[203] Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda For the Arab World, (1st ed. 2009), p. 27.

[204] Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 132.

[205] Ibid., p. 98.

[206] Ibid. p. xxiii.

[207] Ibid., p. 10.

[208] Ibid., p. 317.

[209] Ibid., p. 375.

[210] Ibid., p. 379.

[211] James S. Pacy and Alan P. Wertheimer, Perspectives on the Holocaust: Essays in Honor of Raul Hilberg, (1st ed. 1995), p. 95.

[212] Ibid.

[213] Ibid., pp. 95-96.

[214] Herf, p. 27.

[215] Gilbert, Chuchill and the Jews, p. 93.

[216] Ibid., p. 94.

[217] Ibid.

[218] Ibid., p. 123-124.

[219] Ibid., p. 131.

[220] Ibid.

[221] Ibid., p. 153.

[222] Ibid., p. 158.

[223] Ibid., p. 157.

[224] Ibid.

[225] Ibid.

[226] Mallmann, p. 8.

[227] Ibid.

[228] Karsh, p. 57.

[229] Gilbert, Chuchill and the Jews, p. 158-159.

[230] Karsh, p. 57.

[231] Gilbert, Chuchill and the Jews, p. 158.

[232] Rose, p. 49, note.

[233]Gilbert, p. 164-165, 170.

[234] Ibid., p. 171.

[235] Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, (1st ed. 1996), p. 362.

[236] Herf, p. 60.

[237] Dwork and van Pelt, p. 362.

[238] Ibid., p. 363.

[239] Rose, p. 23.

[240] Ibid., p. 22.

[241] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 694.

[242] Herf, pp. 8, 37.

[243] Dwork and van Pelt, p. 363.

[244] Ibid.

[245] Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 12.

[246] Rose, p. 42.

[247] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 45.

[248] Ibid.

[249] Mark Roseman, The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration. (1st ed. 2002), p. 74.

[250] Herf, p. 78.

[251] Ibid., p. 23.

[252] Gilbert, In Ishmael’s House, p. 175.

[253] Carroll, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, p. 255.

[254] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 671.

[255] McMeeklin, p. 361.

[256] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 671.

[257] Patterson, A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad, p. 116.

[258]Wistrich, pp. 671-672.

[259] Rose, p. 55.

[260] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 700.

[261] Ibid., p. 674.

[262] Ibid., p. 700.

[263] Gilbert, In Ishmael’s House, p. 186.

[264] Ibid.

[265] Herf, p. 3.

[266] Ibid., p. 71.

[267] Ibid., p. 89.

[268] Ibid., pp. 86-87.

[269] Ibid., p. 103.

[270] Ibid., p. 207.

[271] Ibid., pp. 207-212.

[272] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 52.

[273] Ibid.

[274] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 700.

[275] Herf, p. 238.

[276] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 701.

[277] Ibid.

[278] Julius, p. 481.

[279] Ibid.

[280] Ibid.

[281] Roumani, p. 44.

[282] Karsh, p. 78.

[283] Saul Friedländer, When Memory Comes, (1st ed. 1979), p. 158.

[284] Avner, pp. 17-18.

[285] Ibid.

[286] Karsh, p. 84.

[287] Ibid.

[288] Ibid., p. 85

[289] Ibid.

[290] Merkley, pp. 179-180.

[291] Ibid., p. 180.

[292] Ibid.

[293] Heschel, p. 84.

[294] Karsh, p. 1.

[295] Gordis, Saving Israel, pp. 14-15.

[296] Ibid., p. 15

[297] Ibid. p. 38.

[298] Ibid., p. 43.

[299] Roumani, p. 44.

[300] Ibid.

[301] Karsh, p. 2.

[302] Gilbert, In Ishmael’s House, pp. 209-210.

[303] Ibid., pp. 211-212.

[304] Ibid., pp. 215-216.

[305] Ibid., p. 216.

[306] Ted Berkman, Cast a Giant Shadow: The Story of Mickey Marcus, Who Died to Save Jerusalem, (1st ed. 1962), p. 69.

[307] Karsh, pp. 195-200.

[308] Berkman, p. 70.

[309] Rose, p. 210.

[310] Ibid., p. 211.

[311] Karsh, p. 2.

[312] Van Creveld, p. 62.

[313] Berkman, p. 211.

[314] Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, p. 169.

[315] Greenberg, p. 377.

[316] Rose, p. 211.

[317] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 467.

[318] Bard, The Arab Lobby, p. 34.

[319] Avner, p. 122.

[320] Ibid., pp. 119-121.

[321] Karsh, pp. 208-209.

[322] Ibid., p. 202.

[323] Ibid., p. 209.

[324] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, pp. 376-377.

[325] Ibid., p. 377.

[326] Berkman, p. 245.

[327]Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p. 275.

[328] Berkman, pp. 212-213.

[329] Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p. 268.

[330] Van Creveld, p. 66.

[331] Wiemer and Katz, p. 42.

[332] Karsh, pp. 210-211.

[333] Friedländer, When Memory Comes, p. 173.

[334] Karsh, p. 212.

[335] Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs 1940-1945, (1st ed. 1956), pp. 14-15.

[336] Ibid., p. 15.

[337] Karsh, p. 213.

[338] Ibid.

[339] Ibid., p. 244.

[340] Ibid., p. 245.

Posted in ARTICLES | Leave a comment

WHAT IS THIS EVIL EXPOSED BY THE HOLOCAUST THAT CONTINUES TO OCCUR AGAINST THE JEWISH FAITH AND PEOPLE

Martin M. van Brauman 

 

Auschwitz cannot be explained nor can it be visualized.  Whether culmination or aberration of history, the Holocaust transcends history. Everything about it inspires fear and leads to despair.  The dead are in possession of a secret that we, the living, are neither worthy of nor capable of recovering.[1]

The poem by the great Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti entitled “Like a Bull” was written in the year Hitler came to power in 1933.[2]  He foretold the coming danger of the “wolfpack” and the future of European Jewry in that “the pack will scatter his bones all over the meadow.”  The biologist Lecomte du Noüy stated in La dignité humaine (1944) that “Germany’s crime is the greatest crime the world has ever known, because it is not on the scale of History: it is on the scale of evolution” of driving a human genetic line, a bloodline, to extinction like man has driven certain species of animals to extinction.[3]

Fifteen-year old Anna Eilenberg-Eibeshitz witnessed in Łódź the day on September 5, 1939 when the Nazi soldiers arrived singing Wenn Judenblut von messer spritzte/Dann geht’s nochmal so gut!” (When the Jewish blood spurts from the knife/Then all goes doubly well!).[4]  Later, she wrote these words:

They came like a cloud of green locusts, a horde of brutes in human form; masses of flesh and steel, a stream of thunderous terror in dawn, heavy with foreboding.  Even the smallest child among us could feel the abysmal evil and disaster that descended upon us.  We were enveloped, as doomed to destruction as the sinful generation of the flood.[5]

Elie Wiesel has called the Holocaust the mysterium tremendum (sacred mystery) that can be approached, but never fully understood.[6]  Wiesel claims that “the ultimate mystery of the Holocaust is that whatever happened took place in the soul” and Professor David Patterson wrote to approach the Holocaust we need to find our way into our own souls.[7]  Primo Levi wrote that

. . . there is no rationality in the Nazi hatred: it is a hate that is not in us: it is outside man, it is a poison fruit sprung from the deadly trunk of Fascism, but it is outside and beyond Fascism itself.  We cannot understand it, but we can and must understand from where it springs, and we must be in our guard . . . because what happened could happen again.  Conscience can be seduced and obscured again – even our consciences.[8]

Wiesel asked one of the three judges in the Adolf Eichmann trial on whether he understood the Holocaust after reading all of the trial documents and the secret reports and interrogating all of the witness.  The judge humbly confessed that:

No, not at all.  I know the facts and the events that served as their framework; I know how the tragedy unfolded minute by minute, but this knowledge, as if coming from outside, has nothing to do with understanding. There is in all this a portion which will always remain a mystery; a kind of forbidden zone, inaccessible to reason.  Fortunately, as it happens.  Without that . . . Who knows, perhaps that’s the gift which God, in a moment of grace, gave to man: it prevents him from understanding everything, thus saving him from madness, or from suicide.[9]

Arthur Cohen refers to the Holocaust as a human tremendum, in which the concentration camps were a tremendum, based upon the celebration of death and not of life.[10]  Wiesel has said “[w]hat we suffered has no place within language: it is somewhere beyond life and history.”[11]  Arthur Cohen wrote that:

The death camps are a reality which, by their very nature, obliterate thought and the human programme of thinking.  We are dealing . . . with something unmanageable and obdurate . . . The death camps are unthinkable, but not unfelt.  They constitute a traumatic event and, like all decisive trauma, they are suppressed but omnipresent, unrecognized but tyrannic, silted over by forgetfulness but never obliterated.[12] 

Wiesel described his moment of liberation on April 11, 1945 at Buchenwald during a speech delivered at the International Liberators Conference in 1981 beginning as a

. . . terrifying silence terminated by abrupt yelling.  The first American soldiers. Their faces ashen. Their eyes – I shall never forget their eyes, your eyes. You looked and looked, you could not move your gaze away from us; it was as though you sought to alter reality with your eyes. They reflected astonishment, bewilderment, endless pain, and anger – yes, anger above all. Rarely have I seen such anger, such rage – contained, mute, yet ready to burst with frustration, humiliation, and utter helplessness. Then you broke down. You wept. You wept and wept uncontrollably, unashamedly; you were our children then, for we, the twelve-year-old, the sixteen-year-old boys and girls in Buchenwald and Theresienstadt and Mauthausen knew so much more than you about life and death. You wept; we could not. We had no more tears left; we had nothing left. In a way we were dead and we knew it. What did we feel? Only sadness.[13]   

Wiesel said “[a] normal person cannot absorb so much darkness, nor can he understand, or ever hope to understand.”[14]

The ghetto and the sealed cars, the children hurled alive into the flames, the dumb old men with slit throats, the mothers with crazed eyes, the sons powerless to relieve their fathers’ agony: a ‘normal’ person cannot take in so much horror.[15]

Christian theologian Franklin H. Littell has stated that “[t]here is a demonic quality to hatred of the Jews which makes it more than human cruelty: it is blasphemy.”[16]  In early 1942 and 1943, government officials in Washington, London, Basel and Stockholm had actual information in photographs and reports marked confidential and publication prohibited “about every transport carrying its human cargo to the realm of ashes, to the kingdom of mist.”[17]  And the world was silent.  As Eichmann once declared no country was interested in saving Jews and Germany was killing the Jews for the good of the world.[18]  How do you explain the silence from Roosevelt, Churchill, Eisenhower and the Pope?  The Hungarians, the Rumanians, the Slovaks, the Poles and the Ukrainians were more savage than the Germans in murdering Jews.[19]

Professor Wistrich has called the Holocaust a pan-European event supported by millions of Europeans wishing to eliminate the Jewish presence and remarked that:

Thinking about the Holocaust is like staring into an abyss and hoping it will not stare back . . . a black hole of history that not only challenges our facile assumptions about modernity and progress but questions our very sense of what it means to be human.[20]

Emil Fackenheim wrote that what stares back from the abyss is the terrifying, stark and skeletal image of the Muselmann, the Nazis’ “most characteristic, most original product,” a “new way of being in human history.”[21]  Primo Levi in Survival in Auschwitz described the Muselmänner as

. . . the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labour in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty to really suffer.  One hesitates to call them living: one hesitates to call their death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to understand.

. . . if I could enclose all the evil of our time in one image, I would choose this image . . .[22]

The evil of the Holocaust cannot be understood, punished, nor forgiven, but can only be remembered.[23]  By remembering, we rob the Holocaust of the final victory of silencing the dead in the abstractness of the number 6 million.[24]  The number 6 in the Ten Commandments is “you shall not kill.” Exodus 20: 13. Whoever sheds the blood of man, among man, his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He made man. Genesis 9:6. The mass murder that is the Holocaust was a series of millions of individual murders,[25] in which one third of the world Jewish population was killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.

Herman Kruk’s hidden diaries, narratives and poems recorded the annihilation of the Vilna Ghetto and the death camps in Estonia before his death on September 19, 1944.[26]  Before he was shot and burned, he wrote and buried on March 24, 1944 in Klooga near Tallinn the following poem:

FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

Neighbors in Camp Klooga often ask me

Why do you write in such hard times? –

Why and for whom? . . .

. . . For we won’t live to see it anyway.

I know I am condemned and awaiting my turn,

Although deep inside me burrows a hope for a miracle.

Drunk on the pen trembling in my hand,

I record everything for future generations:

A day will come when someone will find

The leaves of horror I write and record.

People will tear their hair in anguish,

Eyes will plunge into the sky

Unwilling to believe the horror of our times.

And then these lines will be a consolation

For future generations, which I, a prisoner,

Kept in my sight, things

I recorded, fixed faithfully . . .

For me it is superfluous,

For future generations I leave it as a trace.

And let it remain though I must die here

And let it show what I could not live to tell.

And I answer my neighbors:

Maybe a miracle will liberate me.

But if I must die, it must not die with me –

The time of horrors I leave for future worlds.

I write because I must write – a consolation in my time of horror.

For future generations I leave it as a trace.[27]

Wiesel in The Oath comes to the realization that if, by telling the story of countless deaths, one life can be saved, the story must be told, no matter how painful and even if promises of silence were made in the past.[28] Victor Klemperer said in his diary on May 27, 1942 “I shall go on writing. That is my heroism. I will bear witness, precise witness!”[29]  We must tell so the dead are not forgotten and, since it is so easy for the nature of man to play the role of the SS guard, seek ways ensuring it will not happen again.[30]

Tell your children about it, and your children to their children, and their children to another generation. Joel 1:3.

Wiesel has said many times that to forget the victims means to kill them a second time and, although we could not prevent the first murders, we have a responsibility for the second one.[31]  The legend engraved over the entrance to Yad Vashem reads, “Forgetfulness is the way to exile. Remembrance is the way to redemption.”[32]  The memory of the Holocaust is part of the collective consciousness of every Jew living in Israel.[33]

From the Kingdom of Memory, Wiesel wrote “to be Jewish is to remember – to claim our right to memory as well as our duty to keep it alive” and

Remember . . . Remember that you were a slave in Egypt: Remember to sanctify the Sabbath . . . Remember Amalek, who wanted to annihilate you . . . No other Biblical Commandment is as persistent.  Jews live and grow under the sign of memory.[34]

Dr. Yosef Burg during the eulogy for Aliza Begin in 1982, the wife of the former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, gave these words about memory:

In Judaism, memory is everything.  No less than one hundred and sixty-nine times does the Torah command us to remember the past.  The significance of memory is that, by it, the past is made part of the present.  If you erase the power of memory you shatter the sense of time.  Time is past, present and future.  And the existence of a future in Judaism is netzach – eternity.[35]

Hélène Berr wrote in her Journal on November 30, 1943 that “[t]he only immortality of which we can have certain knowledge is the immortality that consists in the continuing memory of the dead among the living.”[36]  The Hebrew word for “memory,” zikaron, means also “a source of speech,” the “wellspring of the word offered to another, for the sake of another.”[37]  Hélène Berr, an honor graduate of the Sorbonne in English language and literature in 1942, kept a diary in Nazi-occupied Paris until her deportation to Drancy.[38]  Drancy was an internment camp located in a northern working-class suburb of Paris close to railway lines leading east and became the hub of operations to exterminate the entire Jewish population of France.[39]

Hélène was involved in a clandestine network to save Jewish children from deportation.[40]  On her twenty-third birthday in 1944, Hélène and her parents were taken from Drancy by train to Auschwitz, where her parents died within six months and later she was forced marched to Bergen-Belsen, where in April of 1945 she was brutally beaten to death because being sick with typhus she could not make the morning assembly that day.[41]  In Berr’s Journal on October 11, 1943, she earned the right to make these observations:

Is the pope worthy of God’s mandate on earth if he is an impotent bystander to the most flagrant violations of Christ’s teachings?  Do Catholics deserve the name of Christians when, if they applied Christ’s teachings, religious difference, or even racial difference would not exist? 

And when they say: The difference between you and us is that we believe the Messiah has come already, and you are still waiting.  But what have they done with their Messiah?  They’re as evil as men were before he came.  They crucify Christ every day.  And if Christ were to return to earth, would he not answer them with the same words as before?  Who knows if his fate would not be exactly the same? . . No, Christ would no longer be wanted, because he would give men back their freedom of conscience, and that is too hard for them to bear.. .

 . . . I also read the Gospel according to St. Matthew. . . What I found in the words of Christ was no different from the rules of conscience that I have instinctively tried to obey myself. It seemed to me that Christ belongs much more to me than he does to some good Catholics I could mention. I sometimes used to think I was nearer to Christ than many Christians were, but now I can prove it.

. . . there were those who rejected Christ, despite his having come for everyone’s sake, and those people weren’t “the Jews,” since at that time everyone was Jewish; they were just stupid, nasty people (nowadays you could just as well call them “Catholic”) . . .

As I read the Gospel I was struck by the word convert.  We have given it a precise meaning that it did not have.  The Gospels say that “ye shall be converted” – that is to say, changed and made good by listening to the word of Christ.  But nowadays, conversion means going to a different church, following a different sect.  Were there different sects at the time of Christ?  Was there anything other than the cult of God?  How men have become petty while believing they have become clever![42] 

Since the Holocaust represented the attempted annihilation of the entire Jewish people and culture from the face of the earth and the erasing of any memory of their existence, Wiesel has ruled out all comparisons to other genocides.[43]  Benjamin Harshav wrote that there were two Holocausts: the extermination of six million Germans, French, Poles, Hungarians, Italians and Russians of Jewish origin and the extermination of a trans-national Jewish cultural nation without power over a territory that emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries with political parties, clubs, newspapers, literature, language, libraries, unions, schools and had existed in Europe for over a thousand years.[44]

Lucy Dawidowicz has described the Holocaust as not just another anti-Semitic event, but “[i]t was part of a salvational ideology that envisaged the attainment of Heaven by bringing Hell on earth” by the Nazis.[45]  Zelig Kalmanovitch wrote from the Vilna Ghetto that

A war is being waged against the Jew.  But this war is not merely directed against one link in the triad [of Israel, God, and Torah] but against the entire triad: against the Torah and God, against the moral law and Creator of the universe.[46]

Professor Wistrich wrote that the “Holocaust was indeed a logical culmination of Hitler’s messianic megalomania and the perverted religiosity that had animated his politics . . . [and its] . . . ‘finality’ . . . resonated with sinister echoes of the last judgment, the final destruction of the Jews heralding the dawn of a new millennium, the redemption of the end of days . . . [and yet] destroyed the moral foundations of the European civilization that it so falsely claimed to defend.”[47]

Wistrich said that “Hitler, masquerading as a Germanic warrior ‘Christ’ (the Chosen redeemer of a secular Salvationist religion) brought this millenarian tradition to a gruesome end in the death camps – the ‘sacred altars’ of the new political religion called National Socialism.”[48]  Also, Richard Rubinstein characterized the Holocaust as a “modern version of a Christian holy war carried out by a neo-pagan National Socialist State hostile to Christianity.”[49]

In Wiesel’s Dialogue between “A Mother and Her Daughter,” the little girl wonders where they are going for she is “really tired.”[50]  She wonders whether God is tired too, but is assured by her mother that “you will ask Him yourself.”[51]  A child’s question is anything but childish when asked on the way to Auschwitz, on the way to the end of the world.[52]  However in Eastern Europe except Poland, most Jews were not deported to concentration camps but died at killing sites near their homes with neighbors, schoolmates and colleagues watching or participating in the destruction of the town’s Jewish population.[53]

In 1941 I witnessed when all the Jews were gathered.  Nearly 1,000 appeared with their suitcases.  They were given the promise that they would go to Israel.  They were deprived of all of their things and forced to strip naked.  My friend and classmate was there.  His family name was Cantor.  He was twelve years old, and they shot him in the eye.  My chemistry teacher, his wife, and their two kids were also shot – the entire family.  That’s how the Jews were treated. – Iuril Alekseevich Kilan, Zhytomyr, 1996.[54]

What did the father calmly say to his young son, while holding his hand and pointing up to the beautiful sky before the Einsatzgruppen troops[55] and their local collaborators released the fury of their machine guns over the death pits outside of their Lithuanian village?  What secret things did he say to his son while pointing upward?  Perhaps, “Look, we will soon see the face of God.”  The Hungarian poet András Mezei described this epidemic of casual murder.

JASON

She carefully unlaced her grandmother’s boots,

then kicked off her own. Before the pair: the river.

Behind them: Jason, the neighbour’s son from the square

lit by the frozen snow – and his machinegun.

Jason, discharging his first-ever magazine.

Jason, standing stunned as the tumbling bodies

are whisked away and gone with the turbulent current.

. . . Had he done that? Was there so little to life?[56]

From the Kovno Ghetto came the song Lietuva, Kraujuota žemė (Lithuania, Bloody Land) as a parody on the Lithuania anthem, Lietuva, tėvyne mūsų (Lithuania, Our Homeland), which was sung in the ghettos despite risk of death and was inscribed in blood on walls of once Jewish houses.

Lithuania, bloody land,

May you be cursed through the centuries,

Let your blood flow

Like the blood of Jewish children.

Let your sons suffer

As you made Jewish sons suffer;

When your dark days end,

May no one find your grave.

You hope the Germans will grant you favors,

But you will end up in the Ninth Fort.

What you wish for us should happen to you:

You should be buried alive.

Let your cities burn,

And your villages and farms; You should die as you made us die,

Through all eternity![57]

My grandfather’s older brother, Josel Brauman, was a tradesman who was married and lived in Panevezys (Ponevezh), Lithuania when he died on January 13, 1940.  Fortunately, he was buried in the Panevezys Jewish Cemetery before the Germans came, but his wife and sons Chaim Ber (age 33), Itsik and Eliokim (both age 20) died an unknown death when the Germans arrived.  Another distant relative in the author’s chain of generations gone, was Sholem Brauman, a merchant, who once lived in Zarasai (NovoAleksandrovsk District), Lithuania, also my grandfather’s place of birth, and was married to Zelda Kaufman.  From the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names at Yad Vashem, all that is known is of their deaths in their home town.  There once lived Khaim Brauman, who was from and died in Rakishok, Lithuania, in 1941.  There once lived Ferentz Brauman (prisoner number 92818) from Lithuania (language German) who died from disease in the camp at Muehldorf Mettenheim in January of 1945 at age 51.  During 1942, my grandmother’s family met the same fate in Kalisch, East Prussia.

For how many of the murdered victims cried out Shema Israel Adonay Eloheynu Adonay Ehod (Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is the One) before the SS Death Heads and the local populace pulled the triggers or released the gas in the trucks with glee.[58]  The term for martyr in Hebrew means “to sanctify the Name” that is to die with the words of the Shema on one’s lips.[59]  With the Shema, a person acknowledges his acceptance of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.

THE SHEMA – Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is the One.  You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your possessions.  And these words that I command you today shall be upon your heart.  You shall teach them to your sons and you shall speak of them while you sit in your home and while you walk on the way, when you lie down and when you rise.  Bind them as a sign upon your arm and let them be ornaments between your eyes.  And write them on the doorposts of your house and upon your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

This primary article of Jewish faith, Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is the One. You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your possessions, is the prayer for the morning, evening and bedtime.  It is the prayer inscribed within the mezuzah on every Jewish doorpost, it is the final prayer uttered before death and it is the prayer on the lips of Jewish martyrs whether they were murdered by Catholics of the Inquisition, Hitler’s SS, or Muslim jihadists today. When the Pharisees asked Jesus what is the greatest commandment in the Law, from Deuteronomy 6:5 Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Matthew 22:35-40).

Evidence indicates that Kiddush haShem (sanctification of the name of God) at the moment of death may have provided spiritual refuge and connection and aided individuals to overcome the panic accompanying imminent horror.[60]  This action constituted spiritual resistance and essentially the only kind of resistance possible for a devout Jew.[61]  Rabbis separated from their congregations nevertheless performed religious ceremonies, led prayers and protected Torah scrolls to the very moment of their death.[62]

An Auschwitz survivor describes how he kept his soul from the Germans by praying and God became a living presence within him, a presence in time and memory.[63]  God surrounded and whispered to those heading for the gas chambers that death could be understood not as nothingness but as a moment of the supreme testing of faith and redemption beyond the suffering of this world for the resurrection of the dead is one of the cornerstones of the Torah.[64]

Some Jews amazingly smuggled a page or two of a sacred text into the Nazi death camps, for these words were the connection to a world that honored people, where sanctity existed, where life had meaning and to a world that is to come.[65]  However more importantly, the words of Torah, just as when the phrase Shema Yisrael is spoken, is the spiritual link and guide for every Jew and to a shared destiny that a non-Jew cannot understand.[66]

. . . the Torah is not just a sacred scroll of parchment. You have a special feeling for it when you have helped to smuggle it into a ghetto under the nose of the Nazis so that you can celebrate the High Holy Days. When it is a matter of life and death, and something you are willing to risk your life for . . . [67]

Elie Wiesel related how people in the camps without books would recite passages from the Talmud and how a man smuggled in a pair of tefillin, phylacteries.[68]

He smuggled them in and there were at least two hundred Jews who got up every day one hour before everybody to stand in line and to perform the Mitzvah.  Absurd!  Yes, it was absurd to put on the phylacteries. Do you know there were Jews there who fasted on Yom Kippur!  There were Jews who said prayers!  There were Jews who sanctified the name of Israel, of their people, simply by remaining human![69]  

Livia Bitton Jackson related how in the cattle cars on the way to Auschwitz the men stood up and responded in prayer with the timeless affirmation of faith of Here, Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One![70]  Jackson later describes how in the women’s barracks at Auschwitz the girls were able to obtain a small prayer book from somewhere and chanted evening prayers daily in Hebrew.[71]  Jackson talks of their fasting for Yom Kippur.[72]  In the Death Camps in spite of complete destitution, suffering and humiliation, some had the strength to fast for Yom Kippur and to express the hope of living in Eretz Yisrael, if by miracle they survive the camp.[73]

However, behold – days are coming – the word of the Lord – when it will no longer be said, As the Lord lives, Who took out the Children of Israel from the land of Egypt, but rather, As the Lord lives, Who took out the Children of Israel from the North and from all the lands where He had scattered them; and I shall return them to their land, which I gave to their forefathers. Jeremiah 16:14-15.

From the voices of the ghettos comes a song, it could be the song from the Book of Job, sung during the Nazi persecution by Miriam Eisenstadt, known as the “Nightingale of the Warsaw Ghetto,” of “My God, My God.”

My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?

In fire and flames they burned us.

Everywhere they shamed and mocked us.

But none could turn us away

From You, My God, and from Your Holy Torah

And Your Commandments.

My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?

Day and night, My God, I think only of You,

And with awe I keep Your Torah and Your

Commandments.

Oh save me from danger,

As once You saved the patriarchs,

Hear my prayer and my lament,

You are my only help.

Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.[74]

In Lawrence Langer’s book entitled Return to Vilna, In the Art of Samuel Bak, he describes the works of Bak, who was born in Vilna, Lithuania and survived the Vilna ghetto as a young boy.  Bak’s paintings often feature a broken Ten Commandments with the number 6 (not to murder) tossed aside and broken Stars of David.  Bak symbolized in his paintings the meaning of the Holocaust with the image of the broken Tablets, when he wrote that: “[t]hroughout their long history of violation and abuse, the Tablets have maintained their eternal power to reemerge as a guide for those who choose to accept their covenant.  Their power cannot be totally annihilated: Out of their fragments new Tablets are being created.”[75]

Some of Bak’s paintings depict a tattered Teddy Bear, allegorizing the more than one and half million Jewish children killed.  Elie Wiesel speaks of the Jewish children from his experiences at Auschwitz: “I saw them, I saw them being thrown into the flames, alive.”[76]  From his hiding place on a farm near Kovno, Aba Gefen wrote in his diary on October 30, 1941 about

the Lithuanian chief of police, covered his nice uniform with a white smock and methodically smashed the heads of Jewish babies against the stone wall of the Christian cemetery, adjacent to the killing site. Then calmly he returned home to his wife and four little children. On Sunday he attended chapel in the friendly company of the parish priest.[77]

How could Christians celebrate their religious holidays, such as Christmas with the joyous birth of the Savior of the world, and yet destroy their Savior’s earthly family?

Christmas in Auschwitz

I

Holding that child will cost your life,

Young woman . . . a slave of the camp warned Mary

on the ramp, before the selection. Today

that advice resounds a thousandfold.

II

When Mengele sent off Mary

and the Child towards the left,

the Saviour was even born

in the Carpenter’s empty arms.[78]

In the spring of 1942, the children from the Shpalerna Street orphanage in Minsk were buried alive in deep sand pits, while SS officer Wilhelm Kube threw them candy as they cried in terror.[79]  The words of Israel’s poet laureate, Haim Nahman Bialik, have been used to express that “[e]ven the Devil himself has yet to conceive vengeance for the blood of a child” to describe the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis.[80]

Bak’s paintings take the raw material of the greatest tragedy of human experience and provide a window looking into what is deeply hidden, evil and morally hideous.  The dominant theme throughout Bak’s paintings, as symbolized in Elegy III, was the crucifixion of the Jews by Christian Europe.  The painting portrays the raised and nail-scarred hands of a ghost of a young Jewish boy being executed in the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto, while an angle looks off and detached like the Christian church.  Bak’s painting, depicting this Warsaw boy, is drawn from the infamous photograph of a Jewish child that has become an icon of the Shoah.[81]

In the photograph, the Jewish boy, probably eight or nine years old, is dressed in a fine coat and hat, indicating his family’s apparent urban middle-class life, but he is alone and unprotected without his parents to comfort him.[82]  He represented the European-Jewish financial and social middle-class success that was destroyed forever.[83]

For Samuel Bak, the boy’s outstretched

[a]rms that reach for the sky are also a gesture of surrender, of giving up.  When you superimpose the image of a crucified Son on that of the little Warsaw boy with his uplifted arms, you are made to wonder, Where is God the Father?[84]  

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34.

His hands are reaching out crying, where is anyone who would play the part of God or savior among the religions created by men?[85]  God did not create religion.  The Nazi photo of the Jewish boy discloses the fact that no difference was made between children and adults in the Holocaust.[86]  The paintings of Bak cry out after the Holocaust, what are we to make of the Christian church with its promises of redemption and salvation?[87]

The photograph of the Warsaw boy was one of forty-nine photographs assembled into an album, entitled “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw Is No More,” by Jürgen Stroop, the commandant charged with clearing out the Warsaw Ghetto following the Jewish uprising from April to May of 1943, and which album was a birthday present to Heinrich Himmler.[88]  SS General Jürgen Stroop, a Roman Catholic, married with two children, wrote in his April 22, 1943 report: “Whole families of Jews enveloped in flames leaped out of windows or slid to the ground on bed sheets tied together. Measures were taken to liquidate those Jews at once.”[89]

Alexander Donat described the scene of that Easter Sunday in 1943 after the Jewish Uprising as the Nazis were clearing out the Jews by burning down the Warsaw Ghetto:

Church bells rang out that bright April morning as the God-fearing Poles of Warsaw, dressed in their finest, crowded into their lovely churches to hear once again the glad tidings – so often repeated, yet always joyfully anticipated – that He who had died on the Cross for the love of man was risen from the dead . . . 

Mass over, the holiday crowds poured out into the sun-drenched streets.  Hearts filled with Christian love, people went to look at the new unprecedented attraction that lay halfway across the city to the north, on the other side of the Ghetto wall, where Christ’s Jewish brethren suffered a new and terrible Calvary not by crucifixion but by fire.  What a unique spectacle!  Bemused, the crowds stared at the hanging curtains of flame, listened to the roar of the conflagration, and whispered to one another, ‘But the Jews – they’re being roasted alive!’

. . . The explosions of grenades and dynamite could be heard as well, as Jews scrambled from their hiding places.  Pain-crazed figures leaped from balconies and windows to smash on the streets below.  From time to time a living torch would crouch on a window sill for one unbearably long moment before flashing like a comet through the air.  When such figures caught on some obstruction and hung there suspended in agony, the spectators were quick to attract the attention of German riflemen. ‘Hey, look over there! No, over there!’  Love of neatness and efficiency were appeased by a well-placed shot; the flaming comet was made to complete its trajectory; and the crowds cheered.[90]    

“Campo dei Fiori” is the title of a poem by Polish Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz written at Easter 1943 when he lived in Warsaw, in which he associated the carefree attitude of Romans going about their daily lives while public executions were being carried out in Campo dei Fiori with that of Polish citizens of Warsaw merrily attending an amusement park on a spring evening as the Warsaw Ghetto burned nearby.

Those dying here, the lonely

forgotten by the world,

their tongue becomes for us

the language of an ancient planet.

Until, when all is legend,

and many years have passed on a new Campo dei Fiori

rage will kindle a poet’s word.

Czeslaw Milosz, Warsaw 1943[91]

In Miklós Radnóti’s poem, “Neither Memory nor Magic,” the poet begins with in my youth “I knew an angel watched me, a great sword in his hand, to care, protect and follow me in danger’s shadow-land.”[92] However, the poem ends with the lamentation of “[w]here once an angel with a sword stood guard, now perhaps, no one stands.”[93]

Primo Levi has said that there is the shame that afflicts us when we read about the Holocaust.[94] When Levi was liberated from Auschwitz, he expressed this feeling of shame during the meeting of the first Russian troops to reach the camp:

They did not greet us, nor did they smile; they seemed oppressed not only by compassion but by a confused restraint . . . It was that shame we knew so well, the shame that drowned us after the selections, and every time we had to watch, or to submit to, some outrage; the shame the Germans did not know, that the just man experiences at another man’s crime; the feeling of guilt that such a crime should exist, that it should have been introduced irrevocably into the world of things that exist.[95]

It is a shame afflicting our image of human nature, which can never be purged.[96]  It is a shame that falls on the Christian church as reflected by the fact that in Auschwitz all the Jews were victims and all the killers were Christian as highlighted by Wiesel’s questions.[97]

How is one to explain that neither Hitler nor Himmler was ever excommunicated by the church?  That Pius XII never thought it necessary, not to say indispensable, to condemn Auschwitz and Treblinka?  That among the S.S. a large proportion were believers who remained faithful to their Christian ties to the end?  That there were killers who went to confession between massacres?  And that they all came from Christian families and had received a Christian education?[98]

In Wiesel’s book, Night, he tells of his experiences as a prisoner with his father at Auschwitz and the witnessing of the public hanging of a young boy.  The victim was so light in weight that he took more than half an hour on the rope to die as his tongue hung swollen, blue-tinged and his eyes glazed.[99]  While the prisoners were forced to watch the execution, Wiesel remembers someone behind him asking:

Where is God now?

And I heard a voice within me answer him:

Where is He? Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows . . .” [100]

Wiesel concluded that it is God Himself that the Nazis were determined to crucify.[101]

Rutka Laskier, a 14 year-old Jewish girl in the months before perishing in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, wrote in her diary:

Well, Rutka, you’ve probably gone completely crazy. You are calling upon God as if He exists. The little faith I used to have has been completely shattered.  If God existed, He would have certainly not permitted that human beings be thrown alive into furnaces, and the heads of little toddlers be smashed with butts of guns or be shoved into sacks and gassed to death . . . It sounds like a fairy tale  Those who haven’t seen this would never believe it.  But it’s not a legend; it’s the truth.[102]

A Yiddish poem entitled Lekh Lekho by Simcha Bunin Shayevitsh from the Łódź Ghetto, dated February 23, 1942, spoke of going forth as Abraham from their once happy village and “in our blood flows the power of our forefathers who in all generations performed all kinds of sacrifices,” as he prepared his own daughter for the “unknown journey” of deportation. [103]

So let us not weep, let us not

Moan, and to spite all enemies,

Let us smile, only smile, that they

May be amazed at what Jews are capable of

And not know that today, the same angels

Accompany us as in the past.

On the right Michael, on the left Gabriel,

In front Uriel, and in the rear Raphael.

And though beneath our steps lies death,

Over our heads is the divine presence of God.

So, child, go forth with a new sacrifice of self

And with the old “Ekhod,” the oneness of God.

Shema Yisrael.  The Lord is One.[104]

Between 1933 and 1939, Jewish livelihoods in Germany were destroyed and social assimilation was dissolved by incremental stages of Nazi persecution.[105]  Few imagined that conditions for the Jews would deteriorate to Auschwitz, even after the November Pogrom of 1938.[106]  After 1938, the escalation of persecution by the German government and society left Jews scrambling to escape Europe, but the world did not want them.[107]

“We were so German, we were so assimilated, we were so middle class” were the words of German Jews to explain their life before 1933.[108]  Earlier in the 19th century, Meshech Chochmah prophetically had written that the assimilated Jew had “substituted Berlin for Jerusalem.”[109]  Just as during the long sojourn in Egypt when the Nile was substituted for the Jordan, will eventually God demonstrate that Germany is not their homeland?[110]

Will God demonstrate that Western Europe and the United States today are not their homeland with the emergence of anti-Semitism again like the 1930s, especially in Europe?  When the last Jew leaves Europe, so will civilization and the moral laws of God.

Jews had lived in Germany since the 4th century.[111]  Although representing less than 1 percent of the population in the early 1900s, they were among the elite of German society as prominent doctors, lawyers, professors and industrialists.[112]   Of the 550,000 Jews in Germany by 1914, 100,000 fought in the Great War, 12,000 German Jews died fighting and about 35,000 were decorated for their military service.[113]  As the birthplace of the Reform movement of Judaism, Germany represented one of the cradles of Jewish religious intellectualism.[114]

German Jewish intellectuals in the 1930s by being “good Germans” who rejected Jewish laws and traditions believed that they would be safe.  History is repeating itself today, for liberal Jews in the United States and Europe have rejected traditional Judaism, but use their “Jewishness” in aiding the Arab cause by making Israel appear to be illegitimate for having a presence in the Biblical areas of Judea and Samaria and even parts of Jerusalem and even in denying any religious significance to the State of Israel.

Conditioned by centuries of racism towards the Jews, the German bureaucratic, academic and military elites were unencumbered by any sense of personal guilt, even after the war.[115]  Perhaps, that is why Yehuda Bauer, one of the world’s premier historians of the Holocaust, stated that “[t]he horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t.”[116]  Still, one would have to ask how one of the most advanced nations of Western civilization could sacrifice millions of innocent civilians for Nazi paganism.[117]

Primo Levi commented that:

[n]othing obligated German industrialists to hire famished slaves . . . No one forced the Topf Company (flourishing today in Wiesbaden) to build the enormous multiple crematoria in the Lagers; that perhaps the SS did receive orders to kill the Jews, but enrollment in the SS was voluntary; that I myself found in Katowitz, after the liberation, innumerable packages of forms by which the heads of German families were authorized to draw clothes and shoes for adults and for children from the Auschwitz warehouse; did no one ask himself where so many children’s shoes were coming from?[118]

Did these events simply represent humanity without God?

Many historians have asked why the Jews walked like meek sheep to the slaughter house.  Holocaust survivor, Gerda Weissmann Klein, responded to this question in her book, All But My Life, by saying “because we had faith in humanity” and “we did not really think that human beings were capable of committing such crimes.”[119]  Anti-Partisan Chief and Police Leader Russia Center von dem Bach, who observed the killing of Jews from 1941 until the end, commented that

Contrary to the opinion of the National Socialists that the Jews were a highly organized group, the appalling fact was that they had no organization whatsoever.  The mass of the Jewish people were taken completely by surprise   . . . That is the greatest lie of anti-Semitism because it gives the lie to the slogan that the Jews are conspiring to dominate the world and that they are so highly organized.  In reality they had no organization of their own at all, not even an information service. . . It was not so, as the anti-Semites say, that they were friendly to the Soviets.  That is the most appalling misconception of all.  The Jews in the old Poland, who were never communistic in their sympathies, were, throughout the area of the Bug eastward, more afraid of Bolshevism than of the Nazis.  This was insanity. . . After the first anti-Jewish actions of the Germans, they thought now the wave was over and so they walked back to their undoing.[120]

The Jews were accustomed to the historical pogroms as Elie Wiesel commented that during his youth:

Somehow I accepted persecution as a law of nature.  I was convinced that this was how God created the world, that once a year we had to avoid being in the street because on that winter evening [Christmas], or on that day in the spring [Easter], Christians attacked Jews.  It was clear, it was normal. I didn’t even protest.[121]

The Nazis introduced a revolutionary doctrine and a Nazi innovation of using technology for the mass murder of defenseless people, which was so inconceivable to Western civilization and the Jews that they had great difficulty in accepting the Nazis’ intention of mass murder.[122]  The American judge at the Nuremberg trials, Robert H. Jackson spoke of the Nazis’ crimes:

These crimes are unprecedented ones because of the shocking numbers of victims. They are even more shocking and unprecedented because of the large number of persons who united to perpetrate them.  All scruple or conscience of a very large segment of the German people was committed to Nazi keeping, and its devotees felt no personal sense of guilt as they went from one extreme measure to the other.  On the other hand they developed a contest in cruelty and a competition in crime.[123]

Until the Holocaust, it was impossible for human consciousness, Jewish or otherwise, to accept as a non-negotiable inevitability the elimination of an entire people.[124]  Holocaust survivors in witness accounts repeat the same two observations: “I saw it,” and “I could not believe what my eyes have seen.”[125]  Wiesel has commented that it is possible that these victims, abandoned by the world except for Death, were tired of hiding, running and hoping and tired of living in a world where humans murdered innocent Jewish children without remorse.[126]

Alexander Donat in The Holocaust Kingdom, a Memoir wrote that it was a pure myth of the Jews not resisting the Nazis, for they fought back to a degree no other community anywhere in the world could have been able to do in any similar situation of total systematic annihilation.[127]  Donat described the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto fighting against starvation, disease, the Nazi economic blockade and murderers and traitors within their own community, while “forsaken by God and by man, surrounded by hatred or indifference.”[128]

In the end, it was ruse, deception, cunning beyond anything the world had ever before seen, which accomplished what hunger and disease, terror and treachery could not achieve.  What defeated us, was Jewry’s unconquerable optimism, our eternal faith in the goodness of man, our faith that even a German, even a Nazi, could never have so far renounced his own humanity as to murder women and children coldly and systematically.  And when, finally, we saw how we had been deceived, and resorted to the weapon which we were least well prepared to use – historically, ideologically, and psychologically – that is, when we finally took up arms, we inscribed in the book of history the unforgettable epic of the Ghetto Uprising.[129]   

As Allan Levine proposed that “the question should not be, why did more Jews not resist . . . But rather, how, under the circumstances, was any resistance possible at all?”[130]  During 1942 and 1943 in Poland, more than 100,000 Jewish fugitives were on the run while the Nazis were liquidating ghettos, but most were killed by Nazi police or by Soviet or Polish partisans, who cared nothing about Jewish extermination.[131]  Yet, small groups of Jewish partisans survived fighting and hiding in the forests of eastern Europe led by leaders such as Abba Kovner, Tuvia Bielski, Shalom Zorin, Dr. Yeheskel Atlas, Misha Gildenman and many more.[132]

Jewish resistance existed at Sobibor where they organized an escape, at Treblinka where they revolted, and at Auschwitz where they blew up the crematoria.[133]  After the explosion and the attempted escape from Auschwitz failed, the Germans arrested the four Jewish girls from Warsaw who supplied to the prisoners the chemicals for the explosives.[134]  Roza Robota, Ala Gertner, Estusia Wajcblum and Regina Safirsztajn were tortured, but refused to give the names of the underground members before their execution.  They were hanged in public, but they died without fear with the oldest being 16 and the youngest being 12.[135]

Professor Wistrich commented that the common cliché that the Jews went “like sheep to the slaughter” was neither accurate or a fair description when considering the extreme efforts, in which the Nazis concealed their genocidal policy towards the Jews.[136]  The Nazis continued to encourage false hopes and the illusion of salvation through compliance and work, while the notion of total extermination was unprecedented.[137]  The ghettoized Jews were exhausted, demoralized and isolated from the outside world.[138] Even with escape into generally hostile and anti-Semitic surroundings, Jewish men were marked by circumcision and probably by beards, facial features, and distinctive clothes.[139]

Wistrich has pointed out that the Jews did rebel in over twenty ghettos, such as in Warsaw, Kovno, Vilna and Bialystok, in the death camps of Treblinka, Sobibór and Auschwitz and with arm resistance as partisans, such as the United Partisan Organization.[140]  There were more than a half million Jewish soldiers in the Soviet Army, seven hundred thousand Jews in the British and American armies, thirty-five thousand Palestinian Jews fighting under the Jewish Brigade in the British Army, two thousand Jews with Marshal Tito’s guerrilla forces and significant involvement in the leadership and rank and file roles with all of the resistance movements throughout Europe.[141]

During the hopeless voyage in 1939 of the S.S. St. Louis, in which Jewish refugees were trying to flee Nazi Germany and to seek sanctuary in America by way of Cuba, the passenger Aaron Pozner described Dachau to the ship’s steward, Leo Jockl.[142]  Aaron was released in 1939 from Dachau with the condition to leave Germany immediately.[143]  During the conversations, Leo asked “[b]ut have you never lost your faith?”  “No, I have not lost my faith, but only a Jew would understand why.”[144]  “He later realized it would have been easy to have said he was a Jew through an accident of birth but he knew it would have been less than the truth; that for him being a Jew was far more than merely observing the ritual of his faith, that it reached deep into every aspect of his life.”[145]

When the St. Louis returned to Europe after the refugees were denied entry into Cuba by the Cuban president, who had not received his bribes timely, and ignored by President Roosevelt, Aaron Pozner was sent to Auschwitz and died; this was the fate of most the Jews on that ship returning to Continental Europe in 1939.[146]

Chaim Kaplan wrote in his diary on October 2, 1940 from the sealed Warsaw Ghetto on the eve of the High Holy Days that “[a[gain: everything is forbidden to us; and yet we do everything!  We make our ‘living’ in ways that are forbidden . . . It is the same with community prayers: secret minyanim in their hundreds all over Warsaw hold prayers together and do not leave out even the most difficult hymns.  Neither preachers nor sermons are missing; everything is in accordance with the ancient traditions of Israel.”[147]

On the eve of the Ninth day of Av (the anniversary of the destruction of the first and second Temples and of the exile of the Jewish people from Israel and later from Spain in 1492), a scroll is chanted in the synagogues from the two verses at the end of Lamentations: “Return us unto Thee, oh Lord, and we shall return; renew our days as of old. Unless You have abandoned us entirely, have been angry with us to the extreme.”  Tradition mandates that the reading not end in utter abandonment but that the verse of return is repeated, so that the lament ends with hope.[148]

On the eve of the Ninth of Av, July 22, 1942, began the deportation of the hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to the gas chambers at Treblinka.[149]   During the eight-week period with the Resettlement Operation ending on Rosh Hashanah in 1942, more than 300,000 Jews were deported by cattle cars to Treblinka, leaving 30,000 “legal” inhabitants of the Ghetto with probably an equal number of hidden “illegals.”[150]  As commented by Alexander Donat about the final deportations to Treblinka from the Warsaw Ghetto:

In vain we looked at that cloudless September sky for some sign of God’s wrath. The heavens were silent.  In vain we waited to hear from the lips of the great ones of the world – the champions of light and justice, the Roosevelts, the Churchills, the Stalins – the words of thunder, the threat of massive retaliation that might have halted the executioner’s axe.  In vain we implored help from our Polish brothers with whom we had shared good and bad fortune alike for seven centuries, but they were utterly unmoved in our hour of anguish.  They did not show even normal human compassion at our ordeal, let alone demonstrate Christian charity.[151] 

From the information in the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names at Yad Vashem, there once lived a family, Yisrael and Cyna Brauman, their son and daughter-in-law, Moshe and Ita Brauman, and their granddaughter, Sheindl Brauman, age 7.  Except for Moshe, they all were deported from Warsaw and murdered at Treblinka in 1942.  Moshe was killed in Kursk, Russia in 1942, probably in a slave work gang.  Somehow they are a part of the author’s chain of generations; I will never know their family.

In Joshua Perle’s eyewitness account in The Destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, he described pediatrician Henryk Goldszmit (pen name: Janusz Korczak), who abandoned his literary and medical careers to start an orphanage in Warsaw and who could have escaped the Warsaw Ghetto at any time, but who chose to lead his children to the trains bound for Treblinka for he knew his presence would calm them, ignoring his own future death with them in the gas chambers.[152]

A miracle occurred, two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep.  Not one of them ran away.  None tried to hide.  Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, to their father and brother, Janusz Korczak.[153]

Diane Ackerman in describing the actions in the Warsaw Ghetto of Janusz Korczak wrote that according to Jewish legend, there are a few pure souls “through their good hearts and good deeds, keep the too-wicked world from being destroyed . . . [and] . . . [f]or their sake alone, all of humanity is spared . . . they are ordinary people, not flawless or magical, and that most of them remain unrecognized throughout their lives, while they choose to perpetuate goodness, even in the midst of inferno.”[154]

Although Janusz Korczak was a popular pediatric doctor with both the assimilated, urban Jews and the Polish population, he chose to be with his orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto and to journey with his two hundred children to the death camps even though the Germans offered to spare his life.[155]  Korczak embodied a spiritual presence not even the Germans could destroy by saying “You will not destroy my dignity, my humanity.”[156]  Through his death, Korczak became a monument to the over 100,000 murdered Jewish children of Warsaw[157] and located in Janusz Korczak Square at Yad Vashem is the sculpture in memory of this great Polish-Jewish educator standing in the center of a group of his children and sheltering them with his body and his outstretched arms.[158]

Viktor Frankl, a survivor of Auschwitz, wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning that the Nazis tried to rob the Jews of every vestige of their humanity, but there was one freedom they could not take away, the freedom to decide how to respond because at the heart of Judaism is faith in freedom, our faith in God’s freedom and God’s faith in ours:

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.[159]

After each catastrophe, Jewish faith has confronted the suffering and Jews have remained faithful to the covenant.[160]

The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will lead you.  There you will serve gods, the handiwork of man, of wood and stone, which do not see, and do not hear, and do not eat, and do not smell.  From there you will seek the Lord, your God, and you will find Him, if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.  When you are in distress and all these things have befallen you, at the end of days, you will return unto the Lord, your God, and hearken to His voice.  For the Lord, your God, is a merciful God, He will not abandon you nor destroy you, and He will not forget the covenant of your forefathers that He swore to them. Deuteronomy 4:27-31.

Jews on their journey to Treblinka and Birkenau sung Ani Ma’amin, the Song Lost and Found Again, a song about the coming of the Messiah who will deliver us, and showed that the dead at the moment of dying had maintained their faith.[161]  Prime Minister Menachem Begin once related how his father, the secretary of the Brisk Jewish community in Belarus, walked to his death leading 500 fellow Jews in singing Hatikva, the anthem of Jewish resistance, and Ani Ma’amin as the Germans drove them into the River Bug while machine guns turned the river to blood.[162]

Wiesel relates from personal memory on April 11, 1945, the day of his liberation at Buchenwald, of how the Jewish walking dead welcomed their sudden freedom.[163]  Instead of grabbing the food offered by the American soldiers, they gathered in circles and their first act of freedom was to say Kaddish, glorifying and sanctifying God’s name.[164]

Out of the pit of death, the rebirth of the Jewish people has occurred as symbolized by the testimony of Rivka Yoselewska during the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel when describing the Nazi murder squads.[165]

He [the German] turned me around again, began to reload his revolver. Turned me around and fired . . . I fell into a pit and felt nothing.  I felt that I felt some weight, some heaviness on me.  I thought that I was dead, but nonetheless, for all my being dead, I felt something. I felt that I was suffocating, because people had fallen on top of me.  I felt that I was drowning.  I began to move about.  I felt that I could move, that I was alive.  I am suffocating, I hear the shots, another person falls, but I fought and struggled not to suffocate.  I had no strength.  And then suddenly I feel that, for all that, I am rising upwards and over the others.  I see people dragging, biting, scratching, pulling me downwards.  Yet, with all the strength remaining to me, I started to climb upwards, I climbed and recognized nothing . . . [166] 

Yoselewska rose out of the death pit of Europe, losing her entire family, but immigrated to Israel, remarried and gave birth to two sons.[167]

It will be that when all these things come upon you – the blessing and the curse that I have presented before you – then you will take it to your heart among all the nations where the Lord, your God, has dispersed you; and you will return unto the Lord, your God, and listen to His voice, according to everything that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and all your soul.  Then the Lord, your God, will bring back your captivity and have mercy upon you, and He will return and gather you in from all the peoples to which the Lord, your God, has scattered you. If your dispersed will be at the ends of heaven, from there the Lord, your God, will gather you in and from there He will take you.  The Lord, your God, will bring you to the Land that your forefathers possessed and you shall possess it; He will do good to you and make you more numerous than your forefathers. The Lord, your God, will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. Deuteronomy 30:1-6.   

In Deuteronomy 30:3, “God, will bring back your captivity,” means that God will return with your captivity, signifying that God Himself goes into exile and will return from exile together with the Jewish people.[168]  When Israel is dispersed, God’s Presence goes with them.[169]  “The Book of Esther taught the Jewish people that God always hovers near His people, even when He seems to have forsaken them, and it teaches that there are no coincidences in Jewish history.”[170]  When people ask where was God during the Holocaust?  God went into exile with His people as evident by a post-Christian Europe today.  In Exodus 3:2, the vision of the burning bush that did not burn was symbolic of the Egyptian exile, in which God was in the humble thorn bush and when Israel is in exile, He joins in their suffering.  The bush, representing Israel, could not be consumed because God will not allow His nation to be destroyed.

He will call upon Me and I will answer him, I am with him in distress; I will release him and I will bring him honor. Psalm 91:15.

The Nazis were determined to destroy the soul, the divine spark within man from having been created in the image and likeness of God, before destroying the body.  Israel’s enemies doom their own souls as their souls shall be hurled into eternal pain as one shoots a stone from a slingshot (kaf hakela). I Samuel 25:29.  The Holocaust was not just a genocidal attempt to destroy the Jews, God’s people, but an attempt by the Nazis to destroy God Himself, deicide, and purge Him from the Christian churches of Europe forever.

For the last two thousand years Esau’s offspring, the ancestors of Edom, in their various manifestations have held sway and the Jewish people have been exiled from their land and former glory.[171]  Also, Edom has signified Christendom with its anti-Semitic dogma, its crusades and persecutions and its underpinnings leading to the Holocaust.[172]  However, the prophecy given to Rebecca between Jacob and Esau shall be fulfilled when “the might shall pass from one of them to the other” and judgment shall be rendered upon those who trace their greatness to the mountain of Esau and the kingdom will be God’s.[173]  Amalek’s torch of genocidal anti-Semitism has been passed to the Islamic Jihadists.  Arab Muslims have reached back to the theological roots of Islamic anti-Semitism to attack the Jews and Israel.[174]  Another Holocaust is emerging out of the Middle East to destroy the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person.

Judaism has a message to a world that is threatened by Islamic Jihadism and a world that is searching for God and morality.  Judaism was never just only for Jews for it delivers a message to all humanity of justice, equality, compassion and the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person.  When God elected Abraham and said all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you [Genesis 12:3], the message God gives to the world of the eternal existence of the Jewish people to be the light of God through the Torah to the nations, is not just a message for Jews, but for all the families of the earth.  This message will renew and strengthen Christian faith through the realization of the Truth of the scriptures as the Eternal Word of God.

Extend the sickle, for the harvest has ripened! Come and trample [the grapes], for the winepress is full, the vats have overflowed! – for their evil is great. [Commentary: God is speaking to His agents of destruction, who are now to harvest the crops of Divine vengeance]. Multitudes upon multitudes [will fall] in the Valley of the [Final] Decision, for the day of the Lord is near in the Valley of the [Final] Decision. The sun and moon have become blackened, and the stars have withdrawn their shine. And the Lord will roar from Zion and will emit His voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and earth will tremble. But the Lord will be a shelter for His people and a stronghold for the Children of Israel. Thus you will know that I am the Lord your God, Who dwells in Zion, My holy mountain; Jerusalem will be holy, and aliens will no longer pass through her.

And it shall be on that day that the mountains will drip with wine, the hills will flow with milk, and all the watercourses of Judah will flow with water, and a spring will go out from the House of the Lord and water the Valley of Shittim.  Egypt will become a desolation and Edom will become a desolate wilderness; because of the robbery of the children of Judah, for they shed innocent blood in their land.  Judah will exist forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation.  Though I cleanse, their bloodshed I will not cleanse, when the Lord dwells in Zion. [Commentary: Though I will cleanse the nations by forgiving many of their sins, I will not forgive them for the bloodshed they perpetrated against Israel.  When the Lord dwells in Zion, at the End of Days, they will be punished.] Joel 4:13-21.

 

[1] Elie Wiesel, And the Sea Is Never Full: Memoirs, 1969 -, (1st ed. 1999), p. 121.

[2] Zsuzsanna Ozváth and Frederick Turner, Foamy Sky: The Major Poems of Miklós Radnóti, (1st ed. 1992), p. 16. Dr. Ozsvȧth translated the poems by the great Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti in her book Foamy Sky.   Radnóti was executed, as the Russian army approached, and fell into a mass grave after a forced march into the countryside and after suffering years in the work camps in Hungary.  A year and half after his death, they found his body in the mass grave, as identified by his notebook (containing his last 10 poems written in the camps) found in the rain coat that he was wearing when he was shot.  Dr. Ozsvȧth has the notebook and has published his works.

[3] Diane Ackerman, The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story, (1st ed. 2007), p. 92.

[4] Allan Levine, Fugitives of the Forest: The Heroic Story of Jewish Resistance and Survival During the Second World War, (1st Lyons Press ed. 2009), p. 2.

[5] Ibid., p. 1.

[6] Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God, Biblical Portraits and Legends,(1st ed. 2005), p. 84.

[7] David Patterson, Along the Edge of Annihilation: The Collapse and Recovery of Life in the Holocaust Diary,(1st ed. 1999), p. 9.

[8] Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening: Two Memoirs, (Summit Books ed. 1986), p. 394.

[9] Lawrence L. Langer, Art from the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology, (1st ed. 1995), p. 143.

[10] Oliver Leaman, Evil and Suffering in Jewish Philosophy, (1st ed. 1995), p. 189.

[11] Elie Wiesel, From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences, (1st ed. 1990), p. 33.

[12] Leaman, p. 193.

[13] Wiesel, From the Kingdom of Memory, pp. 155-156.

[14] Ibid., p. 34.

[15]Ibid., pp. 33-34.

[16] Franklin H. Littell and Hubert G. Locke, editors, The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1974), p. 30

[17] Langer, Art from the Ashes, p. 144.

[18] Ibid., p. 145.

[19] Ibid., p. 149.

[20] Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2001), pp. xv and xviii.

[21] David Patterson, Emil L. Fackenheim: A Jewish Philosopher’s Response to the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2008), p. xiii.

[22] Levi, p. 90.

[23] Harry James Cargas, When God and Man Failed: Non-Jewish Views of the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1981), p. 145.

[24] Ibid., p. 193.

[25] Zahava Scherz, Rutka’s Notebook: A Voice From the Holocaust, (1st U.S. ed. 2008), p. iv.

[26] Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles From the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939-1944, (1st ed. 2002), p. v.

[27] Ibid., pp. v-vi.

[28] Cargas, p. 82.

[29] Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1933-1941, (1st ed. 1995), p. v.

[30] Cargas, p. 82.

[31] Elie Wiesel and Richard D. Heffner, Conversations With Elie Wiesel, (1st ed. 2001), p. 166.

[32] James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History, (1st ed. 2001), p. 5.

[33] Liza M. Wiemer and Benay Katz, Waiting For Peace: How Israelis Live With Terrorism, (1st ed. 2005), p. 189.

[34] Wiesel, From the Kingdom of Memory, pp. 9-10.

[35] Yehuda Avner, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, (1st ed. 2010), p. 660.

[36] David Bellos, ed. The Journal of Helene Berr (1st English ed. 2008), p. 223.

[37] David Patterson, Overcoming Alienation: A Kabbalistic Reflection on the Five Levels of the Soul, (1st ed. 2008), p. 109.

[38] Bellos, p. 270.

[39] Ibid., p. 286.

[40] Ibid.,p 270.

[41] Ibid., p. 271.

[42] Ibib., pp. 160-162.

[43] John K. Roth and Michael Berenbaum, Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications, (1st ed. 1989), p. 2. In the Genocide Convention, approved on December 9, 1948, genocide is defined as “any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical or religious group, as such.” Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2001), p. 9.

[44] Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles From the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939-1944, (1st ed. 2002), pp. xxi-xxiii.

[45] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 117.

[46] Patterson, Emil L. Fackenheim: A Jewish Philosopher’s Response to the Holocaust, p. 107.

[47] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, pp. 116-117.

[48] Ibid., p. 240.

[49] Ibid., pp. 239-240.

[50] Roth and Berenbaum, pp. 263-4.

[51] Elie Wiesel, A Jew Today, (1st ed. 1978), pp. 144-145.

[52] Roth and Berenbaum, pp. 263-4.

[53] Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine, (1st ed. 2005), p. 69,

[54] Ibid.

[55] The Einsatzgruppen units were RSHA (Reichsicherheitshauptamt – Main Reich Security Office) forces commanded by Reinhard Heydrich and were part of the S.S. Bauer, p. 158. The mobile killing units originally consisted of various police units that had been used during the annexation of Austria in 1938, Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and the attack on Poland to “purify” the area of Jews. Israel Gutman, Resistance, The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, (1st ed. 1994), p. 100.

[56] Thomas Orszag-Land, Christmas in Auschwitz: András Mezei,(1st ed. 2010), p. 38.

[57] Bret Werb, producer, Hidden History, Songs of the Kovno Ghetto, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1997 (Translated from Lithuanian).

[58] Elie Wiesel, After the Darkness: Reflections on the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2002), p. 23.

[59] Carroll, p. 263.

[60] James M. Glass, Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust: Moral Uses of Violence and Will, (1st ed. 2004), p. 106.

[61] Ibid., p. 150.

[62] Ibid., p. 106

[63] Ibid., p. 110.

[64] Ibid., p. 121.

[65] Daniel Gordis, Does the World Need the Jews?: Rethinking Chosenness and American Jewish Identity, (1st ed. 1997), p. 36.

[66] Ibid.

[67] Frances Brent, The Lost Cellos of Lev Aronson, (1st ed. 2009), p. 122.

[68] Littell and Locke, p. 273.

[69] Ibid.

[70] Livia E. Bitton Jackson, Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1980), p. 51.

[71] Ibid., p. 87.

[72] Ibid., p. 128.

[73] Judea and Ruth Pearl, eds. I Am Jewish, Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl, (1st ed. 2004), pp. 232-233.

[74] Voices of the Ghetto, Warszawa, 1943, Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, 1993.

[75] Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays, (2nd ed. 1998), p. 320.

[76] Wiesel, And the Sea Is Never Full, p. 238.

[77] Levine, p. 43.

[78] Ország-Land, p. 52.

[79] Levine, p. 59.

[80] Hanna Yablonka, The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann, (1st American ed. 2004), p. 65.

[81] Danna N. Fewell and Gary A. Phillips, Icon of Loss: Recent Paintings of Samuel Bak, (1st ed. 2008), p. 4.

[82] Gordis, Saving Israel, pp. 167-168.

[83] Ibid., p. 167.

[84] Fewell and Phillips, p. 5.

[85] Ibid.

[86] Geoffrey H. Hartman, The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1996), p. 131.

[87] Fewell and Phillips, p. 10.

[88] See Andrzej Wirth, The Stroop Report: The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is No More!, (1st American ed. 1979).

[89] Alexander Donat, The Holocaust Kingdom, a Memoir, (1st ed. 1965), p. 152.

[90] Donat, pp. 152-153.

[91] Alan Adelson, edt., The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lódź Ghetto, (1st ed. 1996), p. v.

[92] Ozváth, p. 100.

[93] Ibid.

[94] Adelson and Lapides, p. 512.

[95] Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, (1st ed. 1990), p. 660.

[96] Adelson and Lapides, pp. 512, 515.

[97] Wiesel, A Jew Today, p. 11.

[98] Ibid.

[99] Wiesel, The Night Trilogy, pp. 71-72.

[100] Ibid., p. 72.

[101] Wiesel, And the Sea Is Never Full, p. 78.

[102] Zahava (Laskier) Scherz, Rutka’s Notebook: a Voice From the Holocaust, (1st English ed. 2008), p. 22.

[103] Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides, ed., Lodz Ghetto, Inside a Community Under Siege, (1st ed. 1989), pp. 216-230.

[104] Ibid., p. 230.

[105] Ibid., p. 6.

[106] Ibid.

[107] Ibid.

[108] Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair, Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, (1st ed. 1998), p. 5-6.

[109] The Chumash, Genesis 47:28-31 (commentary).

[110] Ibid.

[111] Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine, (2nd ed. 1999), p. 167.

[112] Mitchell G. Bard, 48 Hours of Kristallnacht, Night of Destruction/Dawn of the Holocaust: an Oral History, (1st ed. 2008), p. 1.

[113] Bard, p. 63.

[114] Ibid., p. 123.

[115] John Weiss, Ideology of Death,Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany, (1st ed. 1996), p. ix.

[116] Wiesel, After the Darkness, p. 42.

[117] Wiess, pp. ix, x.

[118] Glass, pp. 134-135.

[119] Gerda Weissmann Klein, All But My Life, (1st rev’d ed. 1995), p. 89.

[120] Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, (1st ed. 1985), pp. 293-294.

[121] Hartman, p. 66.

[122] Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, (1st ed. 1990), p. 654.

[123] Ibid.

[124] Walter Reich, Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto, (1st ed. sec. printing 1998), p. 231.

[125] Hartman, p. 66.

[126] Wiesel, And the Sea Is Never Full, p. 157.

[127] Alexander Donat, The Holocaust Kingdom, a Memoir, (1st ed. 1965), p. 8.

[128] Ibid.

[129] Ibid.

[130] Allan Levine, Fugitives of the Forest: The Heroic Story of Jewish Resistance and Survival During the Second World War, (1st Lyons Press ed. 2009), p. xxi.

[131] Ibid.

[132] Ibid., p. xlviii.

[133] Langer, Art from the Ashes, p. 152.

[134] Ibid.

[135] Ibid.

[136] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 79.

[137] Ibid.

[138] Ibid.

[139] Ibid., p. 80.

[140] Ibid., pp. 80-83

[141] Ibid., pp. 81-83.

[142] Gordon Thomas and Max M. Witts, Voyage of the Damned, (1st ed. 1974), 107.

[143] Ibid.

[144] Ibid.

[145] Ibid.

[146] Ibid. p. 301.

[147] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 78.

[148] Roth and Berenbaum, p. 262.

[149] Israel Gutman, Resistance, The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, (1st ed. 1994), pp. xv-xvi, 133.

[150] Donat, pp. 95-96.

[151] Ibid., p. 100.

[152] Ackerman, p. 185.

[153] Ibid., pp. 185-186.

[154] Ibid. p. 186.

[155] Glass, p. 127.

[156] Ibid.

[157] Donat, p. 71.

[158] Bella Gutterman and Avner Shalev, editors, To Bear Witness: Holocaust Remembrance at Yad Vashem, (1st ed. 2005), p. 311.

[159] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: Exodus: The Book of Redemption, (1st ed. 2010), p. 51.

[160] Roth and Berenbaum, p. 3.

[161] Wiesel, And the Sea Is Never Full, pp. 66-67. See also, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy, (2nd ed. 2001), p. 601.

[162] Avner, p. 542.

[163] Wiesel, Sages and Dreamers, p. 29.

[164] Ibid.

[165] Yablonka, p. 111.

[166] Ibid.

[167] Ibid., pp. 111-112.

[168] The Chumash, Deuteronomy 30:3-4 [commentary].

[169] Ibid.

[170] Chumash, Esther, (commentary), p. 1253.

[171] Chumash, Genesis 36:31 (commentary), p. 196.

[172] Berger and Patterson, p. 24.

[173] Chumash, Genesis 36:31 (commentary), p. 196.

[174] Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism (2nd ed. 2003), p. 110.

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THE DEATH OF EUROPEAN CHRISTIANITY DURING THE 20TH CENTURY

Martin M. van Brauman

 

Woe to the shepherds who lose and scatter My sheep of pasture – the word of the Lord.  Therefore, thus said the Lord, God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who tend My people: You scattered My sheep and dispersed them, and you did not pay attention to them; behold, therefore, I visit upon you the wickedness of your deeds — the word of the Lord. And I shall gather together the remnant of My sheep from all the lands wherein I had dispersed them, and I shall bring them back to their cotes, and they will be fruitful and multiply.  I will establish shepherds for them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid nor be terrified nor suffer losses – the word of the Lord. Jeremiah 23:1-4.

If Israel was the root from which Jewish Christianity had its life and Israel’s Messiah was considered by Christians as the Lord of the Church, then those who hate the Jews must also hate Jewish Christianity and hate the Jewish Messiah.[1]   The 19th and 20th century European Protestant and Catholic churches with negligible exceptions failed to identify themselves with their Jewish roots, did not clearly protest against deadly anti-Semitism, and lost their true faith in their witness to the world.[2]  Anti-Semitism destroys the rootstock of Christianity.

The 19th century German Protestant theology separated Jesus from his Jewishness by the image of the Aryan Christ, which influenced Roman Catholicism.[3]  The German philosopher Johann Fischte (1762-1814) denied the Jewishness of Jesus, which influenced theologians throughout the century.[4]  With Otto von Bismarck’s pan-German nationalism, a unifying racial theory evolved with the purified notion of a German Volk and de-Judaizing Christianity.[5]  Professor Susannah Heschel has explained that the Aryanizing of Jesus was a völkisch movement “to create a judenrein Christianity for a judenrein Germany.”[6]

The great German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe argued that man must replace God as the center of art, philosophy and history and religion must be rethought and made to glorify man rather than God.[7]  Georg Hegel (1770-1831), chair of philosophy at Berlin University, rejected the uniqueness of Christianity and held that the Old Testament must be rejected because of its Jewish roots.[8]  Hegel’s dialectical philosophy preached that a pure Christian faith could only be achieved by a pure race, the Germans.[9]  Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) argued that Christianity with its emphasis on the virtues of mercy and forgiveness made Germany weak and, since God is dead, humans should be unrestrained with no fear of judgment and no belief in the virtues of morality.[10]

Hitler adopted Nietzsche as his spiritual inspiration and whose writings were used “to unleash all the devils of hell.”[11]  Nietzche announced that God was dead by equating self with God, which led Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), the Nazi philosopher, in 1933 to proclaim “the Führer himself and he alone is the present and future German reality and its law.”[12]  Nazism was the ultimate result of Heidegger’s German existentialism and nihilism.[13]

As rector of the University of Freiburg, Heidegger delivered on May 27, 1933 his Rectorial Address that glorified the “magnificence and greatness” of the National Socialistic movement and declared that “all abilities of will and thought, all strengths of the heart, and all capabilities of the body must unfold through battle, heightened in battle, and presented as battle.”[14]  Hitler’s Mein Kampf was recognized by the German people as the “sacred text” of this “battle,” which was to provide the ideological justification for the Nazis’ extermination of the Jews.[15]  Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl wrote:

The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment – or, as the Nazis liked to say, “Of Blood and Soil.”  I’m absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.[16]

The defining element of Nazi ideology was epitomized by the statement by Julius Streicher in 1936 that “who fights the Jews fights the devil” and “who masters the devil conquers heaven.”[17]  The Nazis’ object of conquest was not just the world, but the conquest of heaven, requiring the erasing from history the Jewish teaching of the sanctity of human life.[18]

In 1899, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the son-in-law of Richard Wagner, in Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Foundations of the Nineteenth Century) defined Jesus as Aryan without any Jewish blood based upon the claim that Galilee’s Jewish population never recovered from the Assyrian invasion and Jesus was “the God of the young, vigorous Indo-Europeans” who constituted the majority of Galilee’s population at the time.[19]  The “philosopher” Chamberlain was accepted as a forerunner of the National Socialist movement in the 1930s with his völkisch-racist theology.[20]  Kaiser Wilhelm II and the general public were impressed by Chamberlain’s efforts to “anchor German nationalism within a Christianity purified of Jewish dross.”[21]

In 1905, Pastor Gustav Frenssen published an extremely popular theological novel, Hilligenlei, conceptualizing the gospels as an allegory of Germany and Jesus as a savior from Schleswig-Holstein.[22]  With the novel selling over 250,000 copies in Germany between 1905 and 1944 and with the success of Chamberlain’s book, most Germans would believe misguidedly that Jesus was not a Jew.[23]

Friedrich Andersen, a pastor from Schleswig-Holstein, was greatly influenced by Chamberlain and in Andersen’s 1907 tract, Anticlericus, called for a reassessment of the place of the Old Testament in Christianity.[24]  In 1921, Andersen published the tract, Der deutsche Heiland, calling for a German Christianity that would proclaim a teaching of salvation without “Jewish muddiness.”[25]  In 1923, he rejected the Old Testament based upon the noted early Christian historian, Adolf von Harnack, who wrote that the elimination of the Old Testament from Christianity would complete Luther’s Reformation.[26]

The völkisch Aryan Christianity out of the völkisch movement propagated by Lagarde, Chamberlain, Eckart, Dinter and others provided the religious ideology that the National Socialists would later use to create a judenrein Christianity for a judenrein Germany.[27]  In the early years from 1924 to 1930 while attaining political power, the National Socialist Party maintained a distance from the völkisch movement to gain wider political support of the German Protestants.[28]

Johannes Kunz, a pastor in Stollberg, called for the church at a 1932 synod in Brandenburg to eliminate the references to the Old Testament in sermons, liturgy and the hymnals and change certain Hebrew terms to German.[29] The search for the Aryan roots of Christianity included expanded debate in the field of Assyriology by arguing that the population of Galilee, following the Assyrian conquest in the 8th century BCE, was partially Aryan and Jesus descended from an Aryan family and his teachings were as a Galilean distinct from Judaism.[30]  In 1908 at the Third International Congress for the History of Religions, the distinguished Assyriologist Paul Haupt, Director of the Oriental Seminary at Johns Hopkins University, who had been a student of Friedrich Delitzsch, professor at the University of Leipzig and Germany’s leading Assyriologist, spoke on “The Aryan Ancestry of Jesus.”[31]

Until 1918, essentially all Germans belonged to a religious community, either the Catholic Church or the Protestant State Church.[32]  The collapse of the Kaiser’s empire destroyed the political support and economic foundations of the Protestant State Church.[33]   The Protestant Churches had needed no political grouping or party, since the monarchy under the Kaiser also governed the churches as the political representative; whereas, the German Catholic Churches had the Centre Party for political representation in parliament.[34]

In 1922, the major Protestant denominations formed the United Evangelical Church of Germany, composing of 28 provincial churches and the Prussian synod and electing national officers to control church affairs out of Berlin.[35]  The Protestant church accounted for about 40 million official members, or around two-thirds of the German population with the Catholics and other Protestant sects representing the other one-third of the population.[36]  With the new German republic and without the monarchy, the masses of involuntary church members could no longer be counted as belonging to the official Protestant State Church system, but could expressly resign and so the German church struggle began with the emergence of the “German Christians,” supporting National Socialism and challenging the Protestant State Church for members.[37]

On January 8, 1931, a Protestant theological conference led by Pastor Eduard Putz of Munich was held in Steinach in Franconia with 140 pastors to discuss, if it were possible to influence National Socialism in a Christian way.[38]  However, Nazi actions in 1933 destroyed that illusion and Pastor Putz joined with the Bavarian church leadership against the “German Christians” and, beginning with the Barmen Synod and the 1934 Barmen Declaration, was a representative of the Bavarian Lutherans in the Confessing Church.[39]

During 1931 and 1932, the leaders of the Evangelical church elected large Nazi majorities to the government and, during the campaigns, the Nazis published Luther’s anti-Semitic works that called for the outlaw of Judaism, the seizure of Jewish property, the burning of synagogues and the driving out the Jews.[40]  Reason, science, enlightenment, progress and all the other advances in modern civilization, distinguishing modern man from his medieval predecessors, failed in Europe and the world, and did not prevent the anti-Jewish libels that transmuted the Christ-killer myth into demonic rituals rising up from the early Christian centuries.[41]

From 1930 to 1933, the German Catholic church formed a solid ideological opposition to the nationalism and racist ideology of the National Socialists and the Catholic Centre Party was the leading political party in Germany.[42]  After the end of the First World War, the German Catholic Peace Union (Friedensbund deutscher Katholiken) was formed with over 41,000 members by 1932.[43]  The organization was singled out by the Nazis as a “subversive” group and was officially dissolved by the Nazis on July 1, 1933.[44]  With many of its leaders in prison or in hiding, the movement disappeared.[45]

On June 6, 1932 a new religious movement, the Faith Movement of German Christians (Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen), held their first public appearance in Berlin with their agenda to reform the church.[46]  Joachim Hossenfelder, a former member of the Freikorps (a rightist paramilitary organization) and a Berlin pastor, became the head of the movement and Dr. Alfred Rosenberg was its theologian.[47]  Prior to this movement, Pastors Hossenfelder, Julius Leutheuser and Siegfried Leffler founded the Thuringian German Christians (Thüringer Deutsche Christen), which sought to abandon Christian orthodoxy for Christian activism through the revelations of Adolf Hitler.[48]  Hitler suggested that this movement join forces with the Christian German Movement (Christlich Deutsche Bewegung) with Hossenfelder as the Reich leader for Hitler’s purpose in demoralizing the official Church establishment.[49]

This new movement of the German Christians began with principles reflecting the National Socialist Party ideology, which was based on “positive Christianity,” preservation of race purity, defense against degeneration and a fight against Marxism, Jews, internationalism and Free Masonry.[50]  The concept of “positive Christianity” would lead to a German god, German re-interpretation of Christianity under “blood and soil” and a German national church.  The German Christian movement demanded that the Old Testament no longer be accepted as canonical; that Paul’s rabbinic principle of redemption be eliminated; and that Jesus’ death be presented as a heroic sacrifice in line with Germanic mysticism.[51]

The Old Testament was considered as offensive to the “moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race” and the Letters of Paul were denounced as the “rabulistic reasoning’s of a Jew whose zersetzende (subversive) intellect was foreign to Nordic feelings.”[52]  In German elementary schools, the Old Testament was replaced by German history and folklore in 1933.[53]  Nazi “theologians” proclaimed that Jesus of Nazareth was an Aryan and presumably of German descent.[54]

Upon becoming the Reich Chancellor, Hitler on February 1, 1933 over the radio made an “Appeal of the Reich Government to the German People” that although the “blessing of which the Almighty had deprived the people since the days of betrayal” [defeat in the First World War by world Jewry] we vow “to God, our conscience and our Volk” to “consider as  . . . [our] . . . supreme and first task . . . of restoring a unity of spirit and purpose among our Volk” and “preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation depends” and “will take Christianity under . . . [our] . . . firm protection, as the basis of our entire morality, and the family as the cell in the body of our Volk and state.”[55]

When Hitler became chancellor in 1933, Germany was a Christian country with 97 percent Christian church membership, represented by two-thirds Protestants and one-third Catholics and only 1.4 percent without church membership.[56]  The 40 million Protestants were divided into dozens of regional churches and denominations; whereas, the 20 million Catholics formed a solid unity under the Pope.[57]

On March 1, 1933, the Nazis’ Völkischer Beobachter emphasized in a lead article the slogan: “The Basis of Adolf Hitler’s Government: Christianity.”[58]    After taking power, Hitler remarked to Dr. Hermann Rauschning that:

Neither of the denominations – Catholic or Protestant, they are both the same – has any future left.  At least not for the Germans. Fascism may perhaps make its peace with the Church in God’s name.  I will do it too. Why not? But that won’t stop me stamping out Christianity in Germany, root and branch.  One is either a Christian or a German. You can’t be both.[59]

On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag fire symbolized the destruction of the outer shell of a German parliament that died in March 1930 when the Social Democrats overthrew their own chancellor and with him the last parliamentary government in Germany.[60]  Hermann Göring bragged to Dr. Hermann Rauschning, the Nazi Party’s president of the Danzig Senate in 1933, “that ‘his boys’ had set fire to the Reichstag and that his only regret was they hadn’t made a thorough job of it, and destroyed every vestige of ‘the old shack’.”[61]

The executive cabinets of the Weimar government under Heinrich Brüning, who was the German Chancellor from 1930 to 1933, began the downward trend toward dictatorship by emergency decrees allowed under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution.[62]  The constitution adopted in the National Theater in Weimar in 1919 was in the hands of a sham parliament.[63]  On February 28, 1933 under Hermann Göring’s emergency decrees “for the protection of nation and state” against “Communist assaults,” the presses were banned including the press of the Social Democrats.[64]

Following the Reichstag fire blamed on the Communists and the March 5, 1933 election of fear against a Communist take-over, in which the Nazi-Nationalist coalition received a majority of 52 percent of the votes, Cardinal Faulhaber on March 13th before a conference of Bavarian bishops stated that Pius XI “publicly praised the Chancellor Adolf Hitler for the stand which the latter had taken against Communism.”[65]

On March 28, 1933, the German Catholic episcopate called the Fulda Bishops’ Conference, which declared the reversal of the Church’s prohibition against membership in the Nazi party and encouraged the full support for the new government under National Socialism.[66]  On April 26 during a meeting with Catholic bishops, Hitler remarked about the fundamental agreement between National Socialism and Catholicism on the Jewish question, in which “the Church always had regarded the Jews as parasites and had banished them into the ghetto.  He was merely going to do what the Church had done for 1,500 years.”[67]

With Nazi flags on the altar of the Magdeburg Cathedral, Dr. Martin declared in 1933 that “whoever reviles this symbol of ours is reviling our Germany . . . the swastika flags around the altar radiate hope; hope that that day is at last about to dawn.”[68]  Pastor Siegfried Leffler preached that “Christ has come to us through Hitler . . . through his honesty, his faith and his idealism, the Redeemer found us . . . We know today the Savior has come . . . we have only one task, be German, not Christian.”[69]

On April 1, 1933, the Nazis began their boycott of Jewish businesses across Germany and as Saul Friedlander commented that it was “the first major test on a national scale of the attitude of the Christian Churches toward the situation of the Jews under the new government” and there was silence across Germany and from the Vatican.[70]

On April 25, 1933, Hitler chose Ludwig Müller, who would accept the National Socialism ideology, over Hossenfelder to lead the German Church movement.[71]  By force and violence, the Nazis were able by July 1933 to place Ludwig Müller as the first national bishop and he was confirmed in a national synod in Luther’s Wittenberg, symbolizing a second historic German Protestant church revolution.[72]

On September 5 and 6, 1933, the old Prussian General Synod met in Berlin and adopted the Aryan Clause, which barred those who were of Jewish blood from the pulpits of German churches, and required all pastors to sign an oath of unconditional support to the National Socialist State.[73]  On September 21, 1933 as a result of the “Brown Synod” meeting (the Nazi SA brown uniforms were worn by the delegates), Martin Niemőller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer formed the Pastors’ Emergency League to protest the Aryan Clause and the oath.[74]

Nevertheless, Ludwig Müller was elected Reich bishop on September 27, 1933, unifying all Protestant denominations under one national organization with the swastika adopted as the new cross.[75]  Müller, a militarist pastor, was known for his nationalistic sermons and völkisch anti-Semitism since the 1920s.[76]  His Association of German Christians preached a virile racism that harmonized belief in Christ with the “blood and soil” doctrine of Nazi ideology.[77]  At a rally in Berlin in November 1933, Reinhold Krause, a German Christian leader, called for eliminating the Old Testament as an expression of an inappropriate Jewish “morality” of “cattle traders and pimps,” and denounced the Apostle Paul as a Jewish theologian to be ignored.[78]

The German Christians preached the divine election of the German people and the saving work of Adolf Hitler and the finding of God’s revelation, not in the Scriptures of dead orthodoxy, but in the events of history.[79]  The German Christian movement replaced Jesus with the belief that “race, nationality and the nation [the Volk] [are] orders of life granted and entrusted to us by God, for whose preservation God’s law requires us to strive.”[80]

The Ordinance concerning the Restoration of Orderly Conditions in the German Evangelical Church (the “muzzling decree”) was made public by decree on January 4, 1934, which dictated the authority of the Reich Bishop to link up the Protestant Church with the National Socialist state, prohibited all church political statements, and enforced the Aryan Paragraph.[81]  The Pastors’ Emergence League (Pfarrernotbund), led by Martin Niemöller, with 7,000 members, representing about 37 percent of all serving Protestant ministers, protested the new decree of the Reich Bishop.[82]  The leadership of the Pastors’ Emergency League publicly broke away from Reich Bishop and declared that it was not bound by his orders.[83]  By February 1934, over 70 protesting pastors had been sent to concentration camps.[84]

Earlier in 1931, Martin Niemöller had been called to the Dahlem parish in Berlin, the most prestigious Protestant church in Germany with a congregation of professional men, high-ranking government officials and military officers.[85]  Initially, Niemöller approved of Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933, the Nazi economic plans and hoped that Hitler would revitalize the churches to counteract the growing secularization of Germany.[86]  However, the “German Christians” soon requested Hitler to be the interpreter of the scriptures and claimed that God had “set his seal on the Third Reich,” arguing that Christ was an Aryan and “the maintenance of racial purity [was] a commandment of God and Christian duty.”[87]

As of May 1934, Niemöller maintained Luther’s position of loyalty to the Reich as long as scriptural theology was not endangered.[88]  There was no protest during 1933 and early 1934 over the increased anti-Semitic Nazi policies, except the persecution against converted Jews.[89]  As Anna Rauschning stated in her book, No Retreat, “[b]y the beginning of 1934 there was no God in Germany.”[90]

A week after Hitler became both chancellor and Reich president upon Hindenburg’s death on August 2, 1934; the National Protestant Church Synod convened and by its Nazi majority approved the “coordination” of the provincial churches into the Reich Church with all pastors taking the oath of loyalty and obedience to Adolf Hitler, Führer of the German people and state.[91]  Martin Niemöller and certain protesting Protestant leaders and Bishops Wurm and Meier, who directed the resisting churches in Württemberg and Bavaria, were dismissed and placed under “protective custody” and the old church leadership received general Gestapo harassment.[92]

The German Christian movement became the very essence of evil and the embodiment of the Antichrist.  In his Berlin Diary on November 15, 1934, foreign correspondent William Shirer commented that Hitler in his attack against the Protestant church was gradually forcing on the country “a brand of early German paganism which the ‘intellectuals’ like Rosenberg are hatching up.”[93]  Rosenberg was one of Hitler’s ‘spiritual’ and ‘intellectual’ advisors and his book Myth of the 20th Century, which was selling in Germany second only to Mein Kampf, was called “a hodgepodge of historical nonsense” by William Shirer.[94]  Rosenberg had been appointed on January 24, 1934 deputy of the Führer for the supervision of the spiritual and ideological training of the National Socialist party.[95]

The German Christianity movement adopted the paganism of National Socialism, as outlined in the attack on Christianity in Alfred Rosenberg’s Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelisch geistigen Gestaltenkampfe unserer Zeit (“Myth of the 20th Century) published in 1930.[96]  Rosenberg argued that Christianity could be reformed and saved from the Judeo-Roman disease and maintained that Jesus was not Jewish but a Nordic Aryan savior.[97]  The Mythus was a summary of the ideology of German vőlkisch mysticism as it developed in the 1920s from the myth of Nordic blood overcoming and replacing the old sacraments.[98]

Rosenberg wrote of the concept of Rasenseele, “race-soul,” in which body and soul are one and inseparable, that “Soul means race viewed from within . . .  And vice versa, race is the externalization of soul.”[99]  Since character and soul are in the blood, the Jew with his creed in the blood is the disease that threatens the body of humanity from within that cannot be changed with a Jew’s denial of Judaism, or Christian conversion.[100]  According to Rosenberg, the metaphysical nature of race-soul requires the complete extermination of the Jew and his Judaism from humanity, for a non-Aryan can never become an Aryan.[101]

With Rosenberg as the Party’s spiritual leader, Catholic bishops in Germany at that time before Hitler’s attack against the Communists in March of 1933 excluded National Socialists from worship and regarded the Party as anti-Christian.[102]  However, the Catholic Church in Rome favored the anti-Bolshevism of National Socialism and had reached an understanding with Italian Fascism in 1929.[103]  In August 1931, Hermann Göring from the Nazi party was received by Cardinal Pacelli, the Pope’s secretary of state to improve the Church’s image of National Socialism.[104]  The nomination of Eugenio Pacelli as Nuncio in Munich in May 1917 was one of the pivotal events in 20th century German Catholicism after he later became the Nuncio in Berlin and then Pope Pius XII and determined the ecclesiastical and political destiny of German Catholics.[105]

During the 1930s, the Catholic bishops did oppose the attack by Alfred Rosenberg’s Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts and his efforts to create a neopagan state religion.[106]  Cardinal Faulhaber defended the Old Testament against Nazi efforts to de-Judaize the Christian religion and spoke out against Rosenberg’s “new paganism.”[107]  From the pulpit of St. Michael’s Church in Munich, Cardinal Faulhaber during December of 1933 preached against the Nazi denunciation of the Old Testament because the books were Jewish.[108]  His sermons were directed supposedly against theological anti-Semitism and not political anti-Semitism, for he did not intend to comment on the Jewish persecution or defend Germany’s Jews.[109]

However, Saul Friedländer remarked that Faulhaber’s Advent sermons contained the “common clichés of traditional religious anti-Semitism.”[110]  Faulhaber’s sermons distinguished between the people of Israel as a vehicle of Divine Redemption before the death of Christ and their dismissal by God for not recognizing Christ’s revelation, in which  the “daughters of Zion received their bill of divorce and from that time forth, Ahasuerus wanders, forever restless, over the face of the earth.”[111]  Faulhaber’s sermons also distinguished the Old Testament between its transitory value and its permanent value concerned only with those religious, ethical and social values that remain as values for Christianity.[112]  After a meeting with Hitler, Faulhaber issued an Episcopal letter to be read in churches in Bavaria in January 1937 that encouraged cooperation between Church and State in combating communism and called for respect for the Church’s rights under the 1933 Concordat between the Nazi Reich and the Vatican.[113]

The major opposition organization to the German Christians and to challenge by means of a “confession” to the adoption of the Aryan Paragraph was the Pastors Emergency League in September 1933.[114]  Under the leadership of Bonhoeffer and Niemőller, the Pastors’ Emergency League became the Confessing Church (Bekenntnis-Kirche), which in May 1934 adopted the Barmen Confession drafted by the Swiss theologian Karl Barth and proclaimed the church to be accountable only to the Christ of the Scriptures.[115]  The name Confessing Church was chosen because its members confessed their faith in the Old and New Testaments despite Nazi opposition.[116]  Karl Barth was dismissed from the University of Bonn faculty in 1935 for not signing the Nazi loyalty oath and moved to Basel to continue conducting his seminars for German theologians and to continue his anti-Nazi writings.[117]

The Barmen Theological Declaration was confiscated by the Secret State Police as dangerous to the state and such other publications by the Confessing Church were pursued also by the Special Courts for judgment.[118]  The Reich Ministry for Church Affairs implemented the Law for Safeguarding the German Evangelical Church in December 2, 1935, in which all circulars and information bulletins of the Confessing Church were considered illegal publications and to be confiscated by the State Police.[119]

Although the Confessing Church and other Christian churches objected to the “German Christianity” movement, the Reich Church and Hitler’s campaign in the destruction of all human rights, they failed to present united opposition against the Hitler Reich and were silent with the atrocities against the Jews.[120]  Except for some members such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Confessing Church was not against Hitler or the Nazi Reich, but opposed the German Christian movement that attacked Christian doctrine.[121] While the Confessing Church defended Jews who had converted to Christianity, the majority of the movement agreed with the German Christians that Germany must eliminate its Jews and Judaism was an immoral influence on German Christians.[122]

On June 4, 1936, the Provisional Board and Council of the Confessing Church[123] did send a Memorandum to Hitler protesting the anti-Christian and pagan character of the Nazi Reich and condemning anti-Semitism, racialism, concentration camps, the actions of the secret police, the violation of the ballot, the oaths of allegiance contrary to God’s Word, the destruction of justice in the civil law courts and the corruption of public morals.[124]  Unfortunately, there were no other actions of comparable significance taken by the Confessing Church as an organization during the twelve year conflict between the Church and the Nazi Reich.[125]

However, more than 800 pastors of the Confessing Church were arrested[126] and three of the protesting leaders were placed in concentration camps with one dying in Sachsenhausen.[127] Over 3,000 pastors from all the churches went to prison for various periods during the Nazi era.[128]

As examples of Nazi persecution of the church, Pastor Hans Karl Hack was sentenced to 8 months in prison for “malicious attacks on state and party” and for misuse of the pulpit.[129]  Pastor Wilhelm Jannasch was sentenced for 2 months in prison for interceding for Martin Niemoller, who was in a concentration camp.[130]  Protestant leader Ludwig Steil who defended the Jews, died in a concentration camp and Protestant leader Karl Stellbrink, who criticized the war, died in a concentration camp.[131]  Protestant war critics Helmut Thielicke and Hanns Lilje were sent to concentration camps.[132]  Bishop Otto Dibelius of Prussia was a continuing opponent to Nazi policies[133] and was placed on trial for breaches of the Conspiracy Law in June 1937.[134]  In November 1937, Pastor Paul Schneider was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp and died 18 months later for refusing to leave his parish upon orders of the Gestapo.[135]

When the Jewish deportations began, Pastor Heinrich Grüber, a Protestant minister, and his group of clergymen did protest for Jews who had been wounded in the First World War and those who had been awarded high military decorations and for the elderly and widows of those killed in the First War.[136]  Pastor Grüber did attempt to help Christian Jews to emigrate from Germany and set up a relief agency, Protestant Committee for Christian Non-Aryans, to expedite passports, visas and other documents and to comfort the non-Aryan Christians in Germany.[137]  He was arrested before Christmas 1940 and sent to Sachsenhausen and then Dachau, when he tried to reach the concentration camp of Gurs in southern France, where German Jewish refugees and Jews from Baden and Saarpfalz were interned.[138]

Protestant politico-religious opposition to the Nazi policies was carried out by the Oster circle, the Kreisau circle and the Beck-Goerdeler group.[139]  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a member of the Oster resistance, which did save the lives of some Jews.[140]  Helmut, Count von Moltke, created the Kreisau circle with pastors Poelchau and Gerstenmaier.[141]  The Beck-Goerdeler group of Beck, a retired general, and Goerdeler, a former mayor of Leipzig, worked on the July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler with the Kreisau circle and von Stauffenberg.[142]  In April 1945, Bonhoeffer was hanged at Flossenburg Prison in Berlin.[143]

Niemőller’s trial began on February 7, 1938 and he was confined for seven years in concentration camps, ending up in Dachau until liberation by Allied troops.[144]  In 1945, he led the Confessing Church in the Stuttgard Declaration of Guilt to acknowledge the guilt it shared with the German people for World War II, but he was denounced as a traitor to Germany by the general public.[145]

On November 10, 1938, Hitler launched his pogrom known as Kristallnacht against the Jews in Germany to determine any public opposition to his actions to Judenrein Germany.  No German organizations condemned the Nazi actions during Kristallnacht, except for a few brave clerics, who suffered punishment.[146]

Pastor Julius von Jan in Swabia told his congregation that “Houses of worship, sacred to others, have been burned down with impunity – men who have loyally served our nation and conscientiously done their duty have been thrown into concentration camps simply because they belong to a different race.  Our nation’s infamy is bound to bring about Divine punishment.”[147]  Jan was beaten and imprisoned and his home was vandalized.[148]  Bernhard Lichtenberg, rector of Saint Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin, was a prominent German prelate who condemned the destruction against the Jews.[149]  After Kristallnacht, Pastor Karl Barth, pointing out the Christian blindness to the linkage of Christian faith to the persecution of the Jewish people, wrote:

Many of the best men in the Confessing Church still close their eyes to the insight that the Jewish problem and even more the political question, in particular and in general, have today become a question of the faith.[150]

On November 15, 1938 after Kristallnacht, Bishop Martin Sasse of Thuringia issued his pamphlet, Martin Luther on the Jews: Away with Them! (Martin Luther über die Juden: Weg mit Ihnen!), supporting the destruction of Jewish property and including excerpts from Luther’s 1543 pamphlet, Against the Jews and Their Lies.[151]  On November 21, 1938, Walter Grundmann called for the establishing of a research institute to investigate the Judaism problem at the University of Jena, where he was on the faculty of theology since 1936.[152]

In March 1939, Bishop Heinrich Oberheid and other German Christian leaders from eleven regional churches met in Bad Godesberg outside Bonn and drafted the Godesberg Declaration asserting that National Socialism is an extension of Martin Luther’s efforts to repudiate Judaism and that Christianity is in opposition to Judaism.[153]  The Confessing Church, the Reformed Confederation for Germany and the World Council of Churches issued statements opposed to the Declaration, but primarily with regard to excluding baptized non-Aryans from the church.[154]

On May 6, 1939, Protestant theologians and pastors meeting at Wartburg Castle launched the opening of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life (Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben).[155]  Wartburg Castle was were Martin Luther fled from his enemies on May 4, 1521 to translate the New Testament into German over a ten month period.[156]  On May 6, 1939, the Institute revised the New Testament at Wartburg Castle, which purged Jewish references for the Nazi Reich.[157]

The Institute’s objective was to dejudaized the church in Germany by writing revised biblical interpretations and liturgical materials.[158]  The Institute redefined Christianity as a Germanic, Aryan religion whose founder, Jesus, was not a Jew but fought to destroy Judaism and fell in that struggle.[159]  Also, the Institute argued that Paul, as a Jew, had falsified Jesus’ message by changing it from a local movement of Aryan opposition against Jewry.[160]

Walter Grundmann, the academic director of the Institute and professor of New Testament at the University of Jena, claimed that the present era was similar to the Reformation where Protestants have to overcome Judaism as Luther overcame Catholicism.[161]  Grundmann said any opposition to National Socialism within the church arose from Jewish influence, such as claims from Jewish scholars that Jesus was a Jew.[162]

Grundmann claimed that the Jews destroyed the Germans’ völkisch (racial) thinking and with the support from Bolshevism are striving for world domination of Jewry (Weltherrschaft des Judentums).[163]  In defining the Institute’s purpose, Grundmann said that the war against the Jews was a spiritual battle in which “Jewish influence on all areas of German life, including on religious-church life, must be exposed and broken.”[164]  Grundmann had the benefit of prior German theologians and Assyriologists, writing that Jesus was not a Jew, but Aryan, and Galilee at his time was populated partly by non-Jews, Aryans.  The Institute incorporated Teutonic myths into Christian settings, including prayer, with the goal to illustrate that the teachings of Jesus and the Teutonic myths were essentially identical and the essence of Christianity was Aryan.[165]

The Institute’s great achievement was the publication of a dejudaized version of the New Testament in 1940, Die Botschaft Gottes (The Message of God), which become the most popular of Nazi-era bibles.[166]  Previously, Hans Schöttler, director of the German Christian movement’s Bible school in Bremen had published in 1934 Gottes Wort Deutsch (God’s Word in German), a bible in the spirit of National Socialism.[167]  In 1934, the German Christians published a nazified hymnal, So singen deutsche Christen with militaristic and racist themes and the removal of Jewish and Hebrew references.  In October 1939, Bishop Weidemann published a hymnal, Lieder der kommenden Kirche (Songs of the Coming Church) for the German Christian movement, adding 20th century folksongs.[168]

In June 1941 as a joint project of the National Union of German Christians, the Working Group of German Christian church leaders and the Institute, the hymnal Grosser Gott wir loben dich! (Holy God, We Praise Thy Name) was published and purged of references to the Old Testament and Judaism with many hymns referring to the Führer, Volk and Fatherland.[169]  In 1941, the Institute created a new catechism of nazified liturgical materials under the title Deutsche mit Gott: Ein deutsches Glaubensbuch (Germans with God: A German Catechism), which promoted Teutonic and Nordic sources of German religiosity.[170]

The Institute became a successful achievement of the German Christian movement, which claimed a membership of over 600,000 pastors, bishops, professors of theology, religion teachers and laity and created a nazified Christianity.[171]  Although the Institute was disbanded after the war, its major achievements of removing the Old Testament from church teachings, portraying an Aryan Jesus and dejudaizing the New Testament and hymnals were not repudiated after the war, but continued to have influence in Germany as Institute theologians continued to lead respectable careers in religious positions.[172]

As summarized by Professor Susannah Heschel, the Institute changed “Christian attention from the humanity of God to the divinity of man: Hitler as an individual Christ, the German Volk as a collective Christ, and Christ as Judaism’s deadly opponent.”[173]  The theological change reflected the Nazi supersession of Christianity.[174]  However, Hitler gave the German people something that the traditional German churches could no longer provide and that of a religious belief in a meaning to existence beyond the narrowest self-interest and material things.[175]

When the Institute was disbanded after the war, Grundmann’s career continued during the postwar years within the Protestant church in the German Democratic Republic, similar to other Institute theologians who continued to have active careers.[176]  After the war, the Institute members claimed they were scholars of Judaism and defenders of the church rather than “Nazi anti-Semitic propagandists.”[177]

Susannah Heschel wrote that the success of Institute members after the war in retaining professorships and church leadership positions was “facilitated by a collaboration of allied officials and church leaders in concocting a fiction of Christianity’s resistance to National Socialism.”[178]  Both universities and churches dismissed the connection between Nazis’ anti-Semitism and expressions of Christian theological anti-Judaism.[179]

In the postwar period, the anti-Semitism of Christian theology was not recognized as racial anti-Semitism, but as an expression of historical or dogmatic truths about Jews and Judaism.[180]  However, German theologians during the Nazi era used racism as a tool to Aryanize Christianity and to use racial theory to provide scientific legitimacy of a racial hierarchy to religion and the degeneracy of the Jews.[181]

Walter Wüst, professor of linguistics at the University of Munich and University Rector from 1941 to 1945, became head of the Ahnenerbe, a research center formed by SS Chief Heinrich Himmler to study Indo-Germanic origins, and redefined the German Christian religion as a racial phenomenon by stating “[t]oday we know that religion is basically a spiritual-physical human activity and that it is thereby also racial.”[182]

Hitler recognized the threat of Catholic resistance to National Socialism and wrote in Mein Kampf that a confrontation with the Catholic Church must be avoided based upon the consequences of the Kulturkampf with Bismarck.[183]  The German Catholic center Party fought the persecution of the Catholic Church during the 1870s, referred to as the Kulturkampf, in which Catholics were viewed as an “enemy within” Bismarck’s new Reich.[184]

To remove the Catholic Church from the political stage and avoid the Bismarck church conflict, the Nazi Reich concluded a Concordat with the Vatican on July 10, 1933 that guaranteed the freedom of the Catholic religion and its schools and was signed by the papal Secretary of State, Monsignor Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII).[185]  The Concordat provided Hitler with the needed prestige at the time of the increased anti-Semitism by the Third Reich.[186]  The Concordat gave Hitler his first major diplomatic victory and entrance into legitimate international society.[187]  The Catholic Church became the first foreign power to sign a bilateral treaty with Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church overturned the earlier ban on Catholic membership in the Nazi Party.[188]

A secret annex to the Concordat was finalized shortly after the promulgation, granting Catholic clergy an exemption from any conscription for military service.[189]  Since Germany was forbidden under the Versailles Treaty to raise an army, this provision indicated the Vatican’s knowledge of future German rearmament and general military service.[190]

For this Concordat, Hitler offered to Pacelli greater Catholic school funding, increase in Catholic teachers, more school buildings and more educational places for Catholic students, while Hitler was conducting mass dismissals of Jewish teachers and university professors and drastic reduction in Jewish students under the Law Against Over-Crowding of German Schools and Universities on April 25, 1933.[191]  Hitler abolished Germany’s Catholic political and social associations in exchange for certain benefits and privileges to the Catholic Church in Rome.[192]

The Concordat authorized the papacy to impose the 1917 Code of Canon Law of a new “top-down” power relationship on German Catholics, who had been very independent of Vatican authority.[193]  Pacelli had been the principal architect of the 1917 Code to establish a new power relationship between the papacy and the Church.[194]  The 1917 Code became the means for the Vatican to control the universal Church by withdrawing local discretion and imposing infallibility in the areas of faith and morals to the papacy.[195]  Pacelli as the Papal Secretary of State had worked toward a concordat since his appointment as Papal Nuncio in Germany in 1920.[196]

During a cabinet meeting on July 14, 1933, Hitler boasted that Pacelli’s guarantee of nonintervention allowed the Reich to resolve the Jewish problem.[197]  The minutes stated that “[Hitler] expressed the opinion that one should only consider it as a great achievement.  The concordat gave Germany an opportunity and created an area of trust that was particularly significant in the developing struggle against international Jewry.”[198]  On July 22,1933, Hitler wrote to the Nazi Party “[t]he fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgment of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church.  This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism is hostile to religion is a lie.”[199]

In the summer of 1933, Monsignor Ludwig Kaas, head of the Catholic Center Party and the last democratic party in Germany, persuaded his party members to vote for Hitler’s Enabling Act, which gave Hitler total dictatorial powers in a one-party Nazi state.[200]  Kaas was Pacelli’s close friend and, on Pacelli’s urging, Kaas disbanded the Catholic Center Party.[201]  The Enabling Act provided Hitler the power to pass laws and to make treaties with foreign governments without the consent of the Reichstag.[202]  Kaas’ endorsement of the Enabling Act was linked to the first treaty under the Enabling Act of the Reich Concordat.[203]

Ex-chancellor Heinrich Brüning from the Center Party commented later in 1935 about the Reich Concordat that:

[b]ehind the agreement with Hitler stood not the Pope, but the Vatican bureaucracy and its leader, Pacelli.  He visualized an authoritarian state and an authoritarian Church directed by the Vatican bureaucracy, the two to conclude an eternal league with one another.  For that reason Catholic parliamentary parties, like the Center, in Germany, were inconvenient to Pacelli and his men, and were dropped without regret in various countries.  The Pope [Pius XI] did not share these ideas.[204]

After Pacelli’s election to pope on March 2, 1939, Brüning relayed to everyone, who would listen during his exile in London, that Pacelli forced the disbanding of Germany’s Center Party in exchange for the Concordat that demoralized potential Catholic protest and resistance and silenced and surrendered German Catholics to Hitler’s power.[205]  Almost half the population of Hitler’s new Greater Reich with Austria and the Sudetenland was Catholic, including a quarter of the SS.[206]  In 1939, the official Catholic population of “Greater Germany” represented 40.3 per cent of the total population.[207]

The largest and most powerful Catholic communities in the world abdicated their sociopolitical associations and democratic party politics in 1933, conveying an impression of Catholic endorsement of Hitler.[208]  Hitler delivered to Pacelli his dream of a super concordat that would impose the full force of canon law equally on all German Catholics and in return Hitler received the complete voluntary withdrawal of political Catholicism by the disbanding of the Center Party, the sole surviving democratic party.[209]

During the 1920s and 1930s, there were Catholic groups that considered the real enemies of Germany and the Church to be the Marxists, the Jews and Freemasons and there were many Catholic priests who were supporters of the National Socialists, such as Josef Roth who later became an official in Hitler’s Ministry for Ecclesiastical Affairs.[210]  In 1933, the well-known Catholic theologian Karl Adam of Tübingen declared that:

. . . not only were National Socialism and Catholicism not in conflict one with the other, but belonged together as nature and grace.  In Adolf Hitler Germany at last had found a true people’s chancellor. ‘Now he stands before us, he whom the voices of our poets and sages have summoned, the liberator of the German genius.  He has removed the blindfolds from our eyes and, through all political, economic, social and confessional covers, has enabled us to see and love again the one essential thing: our unity of blood, our German self, the homo Germanus.’[211]

The Catholic theologian Karl Eschweiler of Braunsberg described the National Socialist truth and the Catholic truth were the same and he approved of the compulsory sterilization law enacted on July 14, 1933.[212]  Bishop Berning of Bremen declared from the pulpit that Catholics should serve the new Germany with love.[213]  During this time, the Catholic books and periodicals appeared with the approval of Church authorities to align themselves with National Socialism.[214]  The Catholic bishops indicated that they supported or acquiesced to the destruction of all anti-Nazi organizations and they had no objection to the Nazi movement monopolizing the state and society as long as the Nazis held the same attitude to the Church as Mussolini’s relationship of “live-and-let-live.”[215]

Monsignor Hartz of Schneidemühl in his pastoral letter issued for Lent 1934 praised Hitler as saving Germany from “the poison of Liberalism . . . [and] the pest of Communism . . . “[216]  Bishop Hilfrich of Limburg also on Lent 1934 declared that the Church has always supported the principle of secular authoritarian leadership.[217]  Canon Algermissen saw the German people’s natural values, given by God, symbolized in the swastika and called for a close link between natural and supernatural values, between the swastika and the cross, a “synthesis of Teutonism and Christianity.”[218]  Dr. Anton Stonner, an expert on religious instruction, remarked on the similarities between Christian institutions of mission and monastery and the leadership principles followed by the S.A. and S.S.[219]  Dr. Jakob Hommes declared the Nazi movement a healthy force, preventing the suicide of Western civilization threatened by individualism, rationalism and humanitarianism, and Franz Taeschner, a Catholic publicist, praised “the Führer, gifted with genius,” who had been sent by providence to achieve fulfillment of Catholic social ideas.[220]

Archbishop Gröber declared in his Handbuch the “Führer of the Third Reich has freed the German man from his external humiliation and from the inner weakness caused by Marxism and has returned him to the ancestral Germanic values of honor, loyalty and courage . . . “.[221] Both Gröber’s Handbuch and the Catholic theologian Professor Otto Schilling defended the right of the German people to Lebensraum and to regain the lost Eastern European territories and the colonies from the First World War.[222]

However, the position of the Catholic Church in Germany on the Nazi Reich was mixed with both support and opposition among the general population.[223]  Many German Catholics were more humiliated than felt protected by the Concordat.[224]  On November 29, 1933, Dr. Muhler, head of Catholic Action in Munich, was arrested for spreading reports about the torture and murder in the concentration camp at Dachau near Munich.

During the Blood Purge of several hundred people on June 30, 1934, the Nazis murdered the head of Catholic Action in Berlin Dr. Erich Klausener, the Catholic youth leader Adalbert Probst, editor of Der Gerade Weg Dr. Fritz Gerlich and the Catholic student leader Dr. Fritz Beck.[225]  After the Blood Purge of prominent Catholic leaders, the German Catholic Church was silent to Hitler’s religious killings for the defense of the state and the silence of the German bishops destroyed the last moral authority in Germany.[226]

When the “Pulpit Paragraph” for the abuse of the pulpit for political purposes in December 1934 was enforced by imprisonment of many Catholic priests to concentration camps, Monsignor Bernard Lichtenberg was the sole church official to protest against the atrocities.[227]  Monsignor Lichtenberg in the Berlin diocese protested against anti-Semitism and human-rights abuses from 1933 until his death on the way to Dachau in 1943.[228]

Bishop von Galen of Münster denounced the Nazi euthanasia program and the Nazi attacks on Church teachings and Church properties from the pulpit during July and August of 1941.[229]  However, the Bishop of Münster still preached of the “honored duty” and moral obligation to fight in the wars undertaken by the Nazi Reich for German Volk and Vaterland against the evils of “godless Bolshevism.”[230]

Many Catholic priests were sent to concentration camps under the charge of “misuse of the pulpit.”[231]  Father Franz Seitz, a parish priest from the Palatinate in Western Germany, was the first German priest to be sent to Dachau in 1940, although Polish clergymen had arrived in 1939.[232]  Father Rupert Mayer of Munich was imprisoned for six month in 1937 for preaching against Nazi anti-Semitism, which was followed by a time in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then under house arrest in a Benedictine monastery in Bavaria during the war.[233]  Father Max Joseph Metzger, a priest in the Freiburg diocese, was an open opponent of Hitler’s wars and was condemned to death in 1943 by the Gestapo.[234]

The Christian church opposition to the violence and immorality of National Socialism sent over 2,720 clergymen to Dachau of which almost 95 percent were Catholic.[235]  When the American Army reached Dachau on April 26, 1945, there were 326 German Catholic priests alive after thousands passed through the camp and had died of starvation, disease or were murdered.[236]

Bishop Johann Neuhäusler informed the Holy Father and the other bishops about the Nazi injustice and violence and was “cooled off” by the Gestapo beginning on February 4, 1941in Gestapo prisons in Munich and Berlin, then two months in Sachsenhausen-Otanienburg and Dachau from July 12, 1941 until April 24, 1945 and rescued by the Americans on May 4, 1945 in the South-Tyrol.[237]  Father Franz Goldschmitt was in Dachau from December 16, 1942 to liberation in May 1945 and wrote about Dachau in Zeugen des Abendlandes (“Western Witnesses”).[238]

Gordon C. Zahn, a Catholic sociologist, in German Catholics and Hitler’s War concluded, after reviewing all of the relevant statements of the German Catholic hierarchy made from 1933 to the death of Hitler, that the majority of the Catholic hierarchy reaffirmed its judgment for the German Catholic population of having a moral obligation to obey the legitimate authority of the Nazis.[239]  The Catholic Military Bishop, Franz Josef Rarkowski, was the spiritual leader of the military and encouraged the soldiers’ duty to Führer, Volk and Vaterland until bitter defeat at war’s end.[240]

Guenther Lewy in his book The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany concluded that the Catholic Church in Germany “shared the widely prevailing sense of nationalism and patriotism” and the “bishops, many of the lower clergy and their parishioners concurred in certain Nazi aims.”[241]  In interpreting all of the facts, Guenther Lewy wrote:

When thousands of German anti-Nazis were tortured to death in Hitler’s concentration camps, when the Polish intelligentsia were slaughtered, when hundreds of thousands of Russians died as a result of being treated as Slavic Untermenschen, and when 6,000,000 human beings were murdered for being ‘non-Aryan,’ Catholic Church officials in Germany bolstered the regime perpetuating these crimes. The Pope in Rome, the spiritual head and supreme moral teacher of the Roman Catholic Church, remained silent. In the face of these greatest of moral depravities which mankind has been forced to witness in recent centuries, the moral teachings of a church, dedicated to love and charity, could be heard in no other form but vague generalities.[242]

Sadly, Professor Lewy further stated that “in the final analysis, then, the Vatican’s silence only reflected the deep feeling of the Catholic masses of Europe” and the “failure of the Pope was a measure of the Church’s failure to convert her gospel of brotherly love and human dignity into living reality.”[243]  In his essay in Commentary (February 1964), Lewy writes:

Finally, one is inclined to conclude that the Pope and his advisers – influenced by the long tradition of moderate anti-Semitism so widely accepted in Vatican circles – did not view the plight of the Jews with a real sense of urgency and moral outrage.  For this assertion no documentation is possible, but it is a conclusion difficult to avoid.[244]

Before Pope Pius XI died, he condemned Hitler during a public appearance on October 21, 1938, comparing Hitler to Julian the Apostate (the Roman Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus) who attempted to “saddle the Christians with responsibility for the persecution he had unleashed against them.”[245]  Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII), the Vatican’s secretary of state, was provided a detailed report of Pope Pius XI’s position by the papal nuncio in Berlin.[246]  Pius XI considered breaking relations with Hitler’s Germany, but Pacelli dissuaded him and Pius XI died before taking any action.[247]  After the death of Pius XI on February 10, 1939, Pacelli prevented the distribution of Pius XI’s written speech, denouncing Nazism and recalling the papal nuncio from Berlin, and Pacelli destroyed all of the copies and its printing plates.[248]

When Cardinal Pacelli was selected as Pope Pius XII, Hitler was the first head of state that he notified of his selection and he instructed the official Vatican paper, L’Osservatore Romano, to cease its anti-German statements.[249]  Cardinal Pacelli had spent twelve years in service in Germany and was supportive of German conservative nationalism.  Pius XII was pro-Nazi to the end of the war, for he perceived the war as a battle to the death against Judeo-Bolshevism.[250]

Pius XII was very much aware of the persecution of the Jews in Europe from the many official reports.  Konrad von Preysing, the Bishop of Berlin, wrote to Pius XII on 17 January 1941:

Your Holiness is certainly informed about the situation of the Jews in Germany and the neighbouring countries.  I wish to mention that I have been asked both from the Catholic and Protestant side if the Holy See could not do something on this subject, publish an appeal in favour of these unfortunates.[251]   

In March 1942, Giuseppe Burzio, the Vatican’s representative in Bratislava, reported to the Vatican of the deportation of 80,000 Slovak Jews to the Polish death camps.[252]  Also, in March 1942 Gerhart Riegner of the World Jewish Congress and Richard Lichtheim of the Jewish Agency reported to the Vatican through Filippo Bernardini, the Swiss nuncio in Bern, that more than a million Jews were exterminated by the Germans in Poland and Europe.[253]  Conrad Gröber, archbishop of Fribourg, reported to the pope on 14 June 1942 of the massacres of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen in Russia and that “[t]he Nazi conception of the world is characterized by the most radical anti-Semitism, going as far as the annihilation of Jewry, not only in its spirit but also in its members.”[254]

Beginning in the fall of 1942, the Vatican ambassadors from Britain, Brazil, Poland, Belgium and the United States tried to pressure Pius XII to publicly protest the atrocities in Poland against the Jews and Poles by the Nazis.[255]  On 13 December 1942, Sir Francis d’Arcy Osborne, the British ambassador at the Vatican wrote in his diary:

The more I think of it, the more I am revolted by Hitler’s massacre of the Jewish race on the one hand, and, on the other, the Vatican’s apparently exclusive preoccupation with the effects of the war on Italy and the possibilities of the bombardment of Rome.  The whole outfit seems to have become Italian.[256]    

The Pope’s Christmas Eve broadcast on December 24, 1942 was hoped to be a clear denunciation of the Nazi extermination of the Jewish people, but his evasive words were shocking with no mention of the term Nazi or Jew.[257]  The Pope’s famous statement intended to protest and denounce Jewish extermination by the Nazis was “[h]umanity owes this vow to those hundreds of thousands who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, are marked down for death or gradual extinction.[258]  Mussolini, who scoffed at the broadcast, remarked that:

[t]he Vicar of God, who is representative on earth of the Ruler of the Universe should never speak; he should remain in the clouds.  This is a speech of platitudes which might better be made by the parish priest of Predappio.[259]

When Harold Tittmann, Assistant to the U.S. President’s Personal Representative at the Vatican, expressed disappointed in the Christmas speech, the Pope stated that he could not name the Nazis without including the Communists.[260]  Tittmann speculated that the Pope’s unwillingness to comment about Nazi atrocities in Poland was based upon the fear of the German people rebuking him similar to when they accused Pope Benedict XV of pro-Allied sentiments during the First World War.[261]

Also, the Catholic Church was against using Palestine as a sanctuary for Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis.  In June 1943, the apostolic delegate in Washington wrote to Myron Taylor, the U.S. representative to the Vatican, that to give a large part of Palestine to the Jewish people would interfere with the religious rights and attachment of Catholics to the Holy Land and, if a “Hebrew Home” is desired, a “more fitting territory than Palestine” could be easily found.[262]  In May 1943, Cardinal Luigi Maglioni, the Vatican’s secretary of state, gave one of the reasons for the pope’s refusal to rescue 2,000 Jewish children from Slovakia was the fear of an entry of Jews into Palestine would threaten Catholic interests.[263]

Guenter Lewy summarized the failure of Pacelli to issue a warning to the Jews of Europe once the exterminations were known by stating:

A public denunciation of the mass murders by Pius XII, broadcast widely over the Vatican radio and read from the pulpits by the bishops, would have revealed to Jews and Christians alike what deportation to the East entailed.  The Pope would have been believed, whereas the broadcasts of the Allies were often shrugged off as war propaganda. Many of the deportees, who accepted the assurances of the Germans that they were merely being resettled, might thus have been warned and given an impetus to escape.  Many more Christians might have helped and sheltered Jews, and many more lives might have been saved.[264]

On October 16, 1943, the Germans emptied the ancient Jewish Ghetto in Rome within sight of the Apostolic Palace of more than 1,200 Jews, who were arrested and held in a temporary jail at the Italian Military College within a few hundred yards from the Vatican before they were taken to Auschwitz.[265]  The Jewish ghetto area survived as a residential district for the poorer Jews of the city until 1943.[266] Rome’s Jewish community was the longest-surviving Diaspora in Western Europe for over 2,082 years with about 7,000 in central Rome at the time of German occupation.[267]

The German ambassador to the Holy See, Weizsäcker, informed the Pope that his government would honor the extra-territoriality of the Vatican and its 150 properties around Rome, if the Holy See would cooperate with the occupying power.[268]  No voice was ever raised by the Vatican as the Italian Jews were sent by box car to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.[269]

Settimia Spizzichino, the only Jewish woman to survive the deportation to Auschwitz from Rome, was interviewed by the BBC in 1995 and said:

I came back from Auschwitz on my own.  I lost my mother, two sisters, a niece, and one brother. Pius XII could have warned us about what was going to happen.  We might have escaped from Rome and joined the partisans.  He played right into the Germans’ hands.  It all happened right under his nose.  But he was an anti-Semitic Pope, a pro-German Pope.  He didn’t take a single risk.  And when they say the Pope is like Jesus Christ, it is not true.  He did not save a single child.  Nothing.[270]

Professor Wistrich wrote that:

Pius XII’s refusal to make a public denunciation of the Roman razzia (roundup) was no different from the position he had adopted when vast numbers of Jews had been deported from across Europe in 1942 or murdered in Russia, the Ukraine, and Poland. Had such a protest been made, it is quite possible that more Catholics might have helped to rescue Jews in occupied countries or that more Jews might have fled in time from their Nazi hunters.  Nor did the Vatican oppose discriminatory laws against Jews or the social segregation that resulted, even as the Holocaust was raging in the heart of Europe. . . the Jews . . . were still identified theologically as a ‘deicide’ people in most Catholic minds . . .[271]  

Gordon C. Zahn in his book German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars held that the German Catholic clergy become channels of Nazi control over Catholics as proclaiming the required Christian duty of support to Hitler.[272]  The Catholic leadership rallied their “followers to the defense of Volk, Vaterland and Heimat as Christian duty.”[273]  A pastoral letter of Archbishop Gröber issued for the People’s Memorial Day on March 15, 1942, and adopted by Bishop Galen, praised the victorious German soldiers advancing into Russia “who were fighting a crusade against Bolshevism and were protecting Europe against the Red tide.”[274]  The archdiocesan chancery of Breslau issued a payer in May 1942, asking for God’s blessing for the German soldiers so that “their weapons would be victorious in the struggle against godless Bolshevism.”[275]  Archbishop Jäger favored the Nazi campaign against the Slavic Untermenschen (sub-humans) and considered Russia as a country whose people, “because of their hostility to God and their hatred of Christ, had almost degenerated into animals.”[276]

One fourth of the SS were Catholic, but no camp guards, Einsatzgruppen troops, or Catholic Nazi leaders, including Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels, were ever denied the sacraments.[277]  If it was necessary to keep silent about mass murder of millions in order to hold on to the German faithful and not lose millions of Catholics, then that faith is dead.[278]  Lewy wrote that the “Church, in its dealings with the Nazis, compromised its absolute spiritual essence . . . faced with an absolute evil, such as the Germans posed  . . . the Church failed by not bearing witness to her moral essence . . . in the face of an upsurge of monstrous barbarism . . . [the Church was] . . . guided by ‘reasons of state’.”[279]

Gordon Zahn said that the German Catholic bishops and most Evangelical leaders called for the martyrdom of Christians in serving Nazi ideals, but were silent about the murder of innocents.[280]  Zahn highlighted in his book German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars that it was an indisputable historical fact:

. . . at no time was the German Catholic population released from its moral obligation to obey the legitimate authority of the National Socialist rulers under which those Catholics were place by the 1933 directives of their spiritual leaders; at no time was the individual German Catholic led to believe that the regime was an evil unworthy of his support.[281]

Professor John Conway stated in The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933-1945 that the Nazi campaign against the Protestant churches could not have been achieved without the fatal weakness of the faith of the millions of Christian church members.[282]

In 1949, Pius XII excommunicated all Communist Party members worldwide, but was silent with the Nazis.  Hitler was never excommunicated and he died on the baptized rolls of the Roman Catholic Church.[283]  When Cardinal Adolf Bertram of Breslau who led German Catholicism during the war heard of Hilter’s death on April 30th, Bertram requested all parish priests of his diocese to “hold a solemn requiem mass in memory of the Führer.”[284]

At the war’s end, the Vatican and its associates helped thousand of Nazi war criminals, including extermination camp commandant Franz Stangl of Treblinka and others, escape Germany.[285]  A Franciscan monk in Genoa obtained a refugee passport in the name of Ricardo Klement and a visa for Argentina and in the middle of July 1950 Adolf Eichmann arrived in Buenos Aires as Ricardo Klement.[286]

Bishop Alois Hudal, rector of the German Catholic church in Rome and representative of the Nazis in Rome during the war and a personal friend of Pope Pius XII, helped Nazi war criminals escape to South America.[287]  Hudal provided false papers and hiding places in Rome for Nazi criminals.[288]  Hudal hid Otto Wächter, the German Governor of the Ukrainian territories, who died in his arms.[289]  Earlier in 1937, Hudal had published The Foundations of National Socialism, dedicating it to Hitler, the “Siegfried of German hope and greatness,” and explaining that Nazi ideology and Christian faith were compatible.[290]

The previous Nazi supporters in the Catholic and Protestant hierarchies continued to advance within their respective churches, such as Bishop Wilhelm Berning, a virulent anti-Semite and a member of Göring’s state council, who was made an archbishop in 1949.[291]  Pro-Nazi clergy retained control of the church and continued with successful careers.[292]  On March 26, 1957, the West German Federal Constitutional Court upheld the continued validity of Hitler’s Concordat for the German Federal Republic.[293]

In 1948, the German Evangelical Conference at Darmstadt proclaimed that the Holocaust was a call to the Jews to cease their rejection and ongoing crucifixion of Christ.[294]  In 1953, Pius XII excommunicated the communist states of Hungary, Rumania and Poland, but he was silent with the neo-pagans of the Third Reich.[295]  Pius XII was silent while eighteen percent of Polish priests were murdered by the Nazis, but the Pope appealed to the Allies to commute the death sentences of the Nazi war criminals condemned at Nuremberg.[296]

When our children wept in the shadow of the chopping block,

We heard not the warmth of the world,

For You chose us from among the nations,

You loved us and longed for us.

And day and night the ax devours,

As the Holy Christian Father in the City of Rome

Would not emerge from his sanctuary with the image of the

Redeemer

To stand for even a day in the midst of the pogrom.

To stand for even a day, not one single day,

In the place where for years, like a scapegoat,

A small child has stood,

Nameless,

A Jew.

And there is much ado about portraits and sculptures

And works of art to be protected from the bombs,

But the true works of art, the heads of the little ones,

In the end will be crushed against roadways and walls.

“From among All the Nations” by Natan Alterman.[297]

The Holocaust raised a crisis in Christianity, in which 1900 years after Jesus proclaimed the Gospel of love, his own people were murdered by baptized Christians.  The Christian church may not have collaborated openly with the Nazis, but they kept their silence.  Professor Wistrich wrote that “the annihilation of the Jews had a profoundly symbolic as well as an ideological and political meaning: it simultaneously brought the Christian anti-Semitic tradition to a twisted and horrific climax, while destroying every positive value that Christianity had ever contained.”[298]  Emil Fackenheim wrote “the ‘Final Solution’ was the result of ‘a bi-millennial disease within Christianity itself, transmuted when Nazism turned against the Christian substance.’”[299]

Although the Bulgarian Orthodox Church opposed the Jewish persecution by the Nazis, the centuries of anti-Semitism could not be overcome in their messages to the people.[300]  Metropolitan Stefan of Sofia in September 1942 delivered a sermon saying that God had already punished the Jews “for having nailed Christ to the Cross” by driving them from country to country and depriving them of their own homeland and it is God and not man, who determines the Jewish fate and man has no right to persecute them.[301]

Pastor Martin Niemőller survived the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Dachau and narrowly escaped execution[302] and as a vocal religious leader against Nazism Niemöller earned the right to say in March 1946 that:

Christianity in Germany bears a greater responsibility before God than the National Socialists, the SS and the Gestapo.  We ought to have recognised the Lord Jesus in the brother who suffered and was persecuted despite his being a communist or a Jew.[303]

During the German occupation of Western European countries, such as Holland, the attitude toward Jews changed with anti-Semitism creeping up where before the war it did not exist in Holland and it was hoped among the Jews in hiding that this attitude would pass.[304]  The diary writings of Anne Frank contained sadness and suffering, but also an idealistic hope of joyous days returning “because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”[305]  People like to identify idealistically with her faith in the ultimate redemption of humanity in her Diary; however, the world seems not to care for redemption but to only ignore or rewrite history for its own agenda of self-interest.  Near the end of the war, Anne Frank died with the redemption of humanity in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at age sixteen.[306]

Martin Niemőller in his book, Exile in the Fatherland: Martin Niemőller’s Letters from Moabit Prison on why Nazism was successful, especially during the 1930’s, was frequently expressed by him in his famous parable of indifference.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.[307]

However, his parable, universalizing the Holocaust by shunning distinctions between the dissidents and the Jews and suggesting that the hostility to Jews in Nazi Germany was common for all dissidents, ignores the mystery of that evil’s mass appeal to anti-Semitism.[308]  When Niemőller was arrested in 1938, there were millions of Germans, including the Christian clergy who could have protested, but most were more enthusiastic about their Fűhrer than the fate of a few dissident pastors.[309]  The pseudo-spiritual unity of the Third Reich led to the Holocaust and the eventual collapse of the nation that spawn that demonic world.[310]

The Memorandum which Martin Niemőller and nine other leaders of the Confessing Church sent to Hitler on June 4, 1936 stated:

We beg . . . that our people may be free to pursue their way in the future under the sign of the cross of Christ, that our grandchildren may not one day curse the fathers for having built up a state on earth for them and left it behind, but shut them out of the Kingdom of God.[311] (Emphasis added).

Ordinary men and women were involved in the routine and daily murder of millions of defenseless and innocent men, women and children as “only a job.”[312]  Most were not members of the SS or even the Nazi Party and Nazi ideology did not motive their behavior.[313]  The majority of the manpower to operate the death camps in Poland was composed of the Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Latvians with supervision by German Order Police Battalions of ordinary lower and middle class people.[314]

David S. Wyman in The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945 wrote that the Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy but a Christian tragedy, a tragedy for Western civilization and a tragedy for all humankind.[315]  The perpetrators arose from a Christian culture and the bystanders most able to help were Christians.[316]  The enormities of the Nazi atrocities are beyond moral outrage to ever be concealed or forgotten as expressed by the Soviet wartime correspondent Vasilii Grossman in the Red Star, October 1943:

People arriving from Kiev say that the Germans have placed a cordon of troops around the huge grave in Babi Yar where the bodies of 50,000 Jews slaughtered in Kiev at the end of September 1941 are buried.  They are feverishly digging up corpses and burning them.  Are they so mad as to hope thus to hide their evil traces that have been branded forever by the tears and the blood of Ukraine, branded so that it will burn brightly on the darkest night?[317]

The largest single Nazi shooting of Jews in the Soviet Union ensued on the western outskirts of Kiev in a ravine known as Babi Yar on September 29 and 30, 1941.[318]  Dina Pronicheva, one of the few survivors of Babi Yar, testified about the actions of the local Ukrainian auxiliary policemen who prepared the Jews for slaughter by stripping them and chasing them one by one up a hill.

The people reached the crest and there, through a cut in a wall of sand, neared the ravines . . . Before my very eyes people went insane, they turned gray, all around there were heartrending cries and moans.  All day long, there was machine-gun fire.  I saw how Germans took children away from their mothers and threw them from the precipice into the ravine.[319]

Do the deep-seated prejudices still remain in Eastern Europe with insignificant Jewish populations today when the memorial plaque at Babi Yar was desecrated in 2003 by anti-Semitic hoodlums?[320]

In the summer of 1944 when the Germans left the killing fields of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, rumors spread among the local populations that some of the Jewish victims had been buried in their clothes without any search for hidden money, gold, and diamonds in the seams of the garments and without the removal of gold teeth.[321]  Rachel Auerbach, visiting Treblinka on November 7, 1945 with the Polish State Committee for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes on Polish Soil, described the scene that was repeated at Belzec and Sobibor in the search of treasures:

Masses of all kinds of pilferers and robbers with spades and shovels in their hands were there digging and searching and raking and straining the sand.  They removed decaying limbs from the dust [and] bones and garbage that were thrown there.  Would they not come upon even one hard coin or at least one gold tooth?  They even dragged shells and blind bombs there, those hyenas and jackals in the disguise of man.  They placed several together, set them off, and giant pits were dug in the desecrated ground saturated by the blood and the ashes of burned Jews . . . [322]

Has the Holocaust shut out the people of Europe from the Kingdom of God?  Before Hitler came to power, the churches had a powerful presence and influence in Europe.  Catholic theologian Professors Didier Pollefeyt at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and Jürgen Manemann at the University of Münster, Germany, have stated that Europe has entered a post-Christian period for having purged itself of the Jews and European Christendom has lost its Christianity.[323]  Have they killed their God?  Is the Christian church in Europe dead forever and are they left with the curse of Cain filling the void? May they be erased from the Book of Life, and let them not be inscribed with the righteous. Psalms 69:29. Has the first generation died without repentance and have the second and third generations inherited the curse of Cain?

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?  Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ Matthew 7:21-23.

 Depart from me, all evildoers, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.  The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord will accept my prayer.  Let all my foes be shamed and utterly confounded, they will regret and be shamed in an instant. Psalms 6:9-11.

Uri-Zvi Grinberg’s poem entitled “They Have Killed Their God” describes the appearance of Jesus in a small village in Eastern Europe.[324]

He is looking for his brothers – he is looking for his people. When he does not find them, he asks a passerby, ‘Where are the Jews?’ – ‘Killed,’ says the passerby. ‘All of them?’ – ‘All of them.’ – ‘And their homes?’ – ‘Demolished.’ – ‘Their synagogues?’ – ‘Burned.’ – ‘Their sages?’ – ‘Dead.’ – ‘Their students?’ – ‘Dead too.’ – ‘And their children?’ What about their children? Dead too?’ – ‘All of them, they are all dead.’ And Jesus begins to weep over the slaughter of his people. He weeps so hard that people turn around to look at him, and suddenly one peasant exclaims, ‘Hey, look at that, here is another Jew, how did he stay alive?’ And the peasants throw themselves on Jesus and kill him too, killing their God, thinking they are killing just another Jew.[325]

When the genocide of the Jews began, the Christian churches were paralyzed and they failed to grasp how dangerous Nazi anti-Semitism was to the future of Christianity in Europe.[326]  As Wiesel has stated by trying to kill the Jews, the Christians killed their God.[327]

As in the 1930s and 1940s, Christianity is under attack worldwide by Islamic Jihadism and the secular universalism of ignorance and church members are asleep or deluded.  The sermon on the 4th Sunday before Easter 1934 delivered by Martin Niemöller in Germany could be delivered in the churches around the world today for we are once again being thrown into the Tempter’s sieve:

We have all of us – the whole Church and the whole community – been thrown into the Tempter’s sieve, and he is shaking and the wind is blowing, and it must now become manifest whether we are wheat or chaff! Verily, a time of sifting has come upon us, and even the most indolent and peaceful person among us must see that the calm of a meditative Christianity is at an end . . .

It is now springtime for the hopeful and expectant Christian Church – it is testing time, and God is giving Satan a free hand, so that he may shake us up and so that it may be seen what manner of men we are!

Satan swings his sieve and Christianity is thrown hither and thither; and he who is not ready to suffer, he who called himself a Christian only because he thereby hoped to gain something good for his race and his nation, is blown away like chaff by the wind of this time.[328]

The Presbyterian theologian Arthur C. Cochrane wrote that the message from the Barmen Theological Declaration in 1934 out of the German Christian struggle showed that anti-Semitism “struck a blow at the heart of the Christian faith” and the church today must recognize and acknowledge “the indissoluble unity of Israel and the church, of Jews and Christians.[329]  Cochrane profoundly wrote in 1970:

“Salvation is from the Jews” – not only two thousand years ago but in every generation as well . . .

. . . the Jewish question is the question about Jesus Christ, that the spirit of Antisemitism is the spirit of antichrist, and that where the Jews are hated and persecuted, the faithful followers of the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, will also be hated and persecuted.  They realized that in the last analysis the Church Struggle and World War II were waged because of Israel and that in spite of the Holocaust, Israel could not be annihilated . . . [Jer. 31:35-36]

The new theological understanding of Israel was accompanied by a profound sense of the enormous guilt of Christians against their Jewish brothers.  It was learned that if the church is to look to the rock from which it was hewn and to the quarry from which it was dug, it must look to Abraham our father and to Sarah who bore us (Isa. 51:2).  And if it is to look to the future, the hope of Israel is the only hope of the church and the world, namely, the faithfulness of God to his promises to Israel fulfilled in the Messiah who has come and who is yet to come.

This, then, is the message of Barmen for the contemporary churches.  But have our churches and congregations heard and believed that message?  I leave it as a question.[330]

In January 1980, one of the largest Protestant churches in Europe, the Rheinlander Synod, issued overwhelmingly a statement on the Jewish people as follows:

. . . recognition of Christian co-responsibility and guilt for the Holocaust . . . new biblical insights concerning the continuing significance of the Jewish people for salvation history . . . the insight that the continuing existence of the Jewish people, its return to the Land of Promise, and also the creation of the State of Israel are signs of the faithfulness of God toward God’s people . . .[331]

Christian theologian Franklin H. Littell has stated that the Jew is a beacon to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and for the Christian is the anchor by which a vague “faith” or “love of humanity” or “spirituality” can be prevented from floating into nothingness with Christian identification with the God of Israel.[332]  For the End of Days is “a vision proclaimed by Jewish prophets: the Kingdom of God, in which the peoples and tribes of the farthest corners of the earth shall gather about the Hill of the Lord and hear His voice and do His will.”[333]

Littell has written that the Jews who perished in Hitler’s Europe perished for a truth which the Christians, except for those few who kept the Christian faith and were also hated and persecuted, betrayed: that “the Author and Judge of history was made manifest to us out of the Jews.”[334]  The reality which the Christian culture-religionists have not begun to grasp is the fact that most of the martyrs for Christ in the 20th century were Jews and the moral claims of the Christian church in Europe died at Auschwitz.[335]

Yet, the continuing existence of the Jews, God’s witnesses on earth, should be a beacon for strengthening Christian faith, since their eternal survival proves the presence and existence of God.  The rebirth of the Jewish state of Israel is the guarantee for the fulfillment of God’s scriptural promises to the Christians.  Unfortunately, the lessons from the Holocaust has yet to be considered in most Christian seminaries and churches and the rooting out of the underlying anti-Semitism of replacement theology in Christian teachings in seminaries and churches has not occurred.

Be glad with Jerusalem and rejoice in her, all you who love her; exult with her in exultation, all you who mourned for her . . . Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river and the wealth of nations like a surging stream . . . You will see and your heart will exult, and your bones will flourish like grass; the hand of the Lord will be known to His servants, and He will show anger to His enemies.  For behold, the Lord will arrive in fire and His chariots like the whirlwind, to vent His anger with wrath, and His rebuke with flaming fire.  For the Lord will enter into judgment with fire and with His sword against all mankind; there will be many who will be slain by the Lord.

. . .

I [know] their actions and their thoughts; [the time] has come to gather all the nations and tongues, they will come and see My glory.  I will put a sign upon them and send some of them as survivors to the nations – Tarshish, Pul, Lud, the Archers, Tubal and Javan, the distant islands who have not heard of My fame and not seen My glory – and they will declare My glory among the nations.  They will bring all your brethren from all the nations as an offering to the Lord . . . to My holy mountain, Jerusalem, says the Lord; just as the Children of Israel bring the offering in a pure vessel to the House of the Lord.    

. . .

And they will go out and see the corpses of the men who rebelled against Me, for their decay will not cease and their fire will not be extinguished, and they will lie in disgrace before all mankind. Isaiah 66:10-24.

 I looked, and there before me was a pale horse!  Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.  They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth  . . . I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.  They called out in a loud voice, How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?  Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed. Revelation 6:8-11.

 

[1] Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church’s Confession Under Hitler, (1st ed. 1962), p. 22.

[2] Ibid., p. 34.

[3] James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History, (1st ed. 2001), pp. 71-72.

[4] Ibid., p. 72.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., p. 74.

[7] Erwin W. Lutzer, Hitler’s Cross: The Revealing Story of How the Cross of Christ Was Used as a Symbol of the Nazi Agenda, (1st ed. 1995), p. 29.

[8] Ibid., p. 26.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid., pp. 26-27.

[11] Ibid., p. 28.

[12] David Patterson, Overcoming Alienation: A Kabbalistic Reflection on the Five Levels of the Soul, (1st ed. 2008), p. 141.

[13] David Patterson, Emil L. Fackenheim: A Jewish Philosopher’s Response to the Holocaust,(1st ed. 2008), p. 41.

[14] Ibid., p. 40.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Lutzer, p. 29.

[17] Patterson, Emil L. Fackenheim: A Jewish Philosopher’s Response to the Holocaust, p. 42.

[18] Ibid., pp. 42-43.

[19] Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany,(1st ed. 2008), pp. 41-42.

[20] Stewart W. Herman, It’s Your Souls We Want, (1st ed. 1943), p. 88.

[21] Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, p. 42.

[22] Ibid., p. 43.

[23] Ibid., pp. 43-44.

[24] Ibid., p. 44.

[25] Ibid., p. 45.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, Volume One: Preliminary History and the Time of Illusions 1918-1934, (1st ed. 1988), p. 89-90

[28] Ibid., p. 99.

[29] Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, p. 47.

[30] Ibid., p. 55-57.

[31] Ibid , p. 57.

[32] Konrad Heiden, Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, (1st ed. 1944), p. 636.

[33] Scholder, vol. I, p. 3.

[34] Ibid., pp. 4-5.

[35] Franklin H. Littell and Hubert G. Locke, The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1974), p. 129.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Heiden, p. 636.

[38] Scholder, vol. I, pp. 136-137.

[39] Ibid., p. 137.

[40] John Weiss, Ideology of Death, Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany, (1st ed. 1996), p. 34.

[41] Jeremy Cohen, Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion From the Bible to the Big Screen, (1st ed. 2007), p. 119.

[42] Scholder, vol. I, p. 146.

[43] Gorden C. Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars: A Study in Social Control, (1st ed. 1962), ps. 3-4.

[44] Ibid., p. 5.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Scholder, vol. I, p. 207.

[47] Littell and Locke, p. 132.

[48] John S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933-1945, (1st ed. 1968), p. 11.

[49] Ibid., p. 12.

[50] Gordon Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars: A Study in Social Control, (1st ed. 1962), p. 74.

[51] Ibid., p. 75. See Kevin P. Spicer, Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2007), p. 261.

[52] Louis P. Lochner, What About Germany?, (1st ed. 1942), p. 246.

[53] Roy S. Durstine, Red Thunder, (1st ed. 1934), p. 137.

[54] Lochner, p. 246.

[55] Scholder, vol. I, p. 222.

[56] Littell and Locke, p. 243.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Scholder, vol. I, p. 223.

[59] Conway, p. 15.

[60] Hans B. Gisevius, To the Bitter End, (1st ed. 1947), pp. 4-5.

[61] Anna Rauschning, No Retreat, (1st ed. 1942), p. 136.

[62] Gisevius, pp. 5, 83.

[63] Ibid., p. 5.

[64] Ibid., p. 12.

[65] Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, (1st ed. 1964), pp. 30-31.

[66] Lewy, pp. 3-4.

[67] Ibid., pp. 50-51.

[68] Lutzer, p. 101.

[69] Ibid.

[70] Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Vol. 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933-39 (1st ed. 1997), p. 42.

[71] Littell and Locke, p. 132.

[72] Ibid., p. 133.

[73] Lutzer, p. 124.

[74] Ibid., p. 125.

[75] Ibid., pp. 126-127.

[76] Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2001), p. 126.

[77] Ibid.

[78] Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, (1st ed. 2008), pp. 71-72.

[79] Cochrane., p. 76.

[80] Ibid., p. 82.

[81] Scholder, vol. II, pp. 20-21, 25.

[82] Ibid., pp. 22-23.

[83] Ibid., p. 26.

[84] Littell and Locke, p. 134.

[85] Ibid., p. 136.

[86] Ibid., p. 137.

[87] Ibid.

[88] Ibid.

[89] Ibid., pp. 137-138.

[90] Rauschning, No Retreat, p. 173.

[91] Littell and Locke, p. 135.

[92] Ibid.

[93] William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941, (1st ed. 1941), p. 24.

[94] Ibid.

[95] Lewy, p. 151.

[96] Cochrane, p. 80. Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelisch geistigen Gestaltenkampfe unserer Zeit (“Myth of the 20th Century), Munich: Hoheneichen, 1934.

[97] Spicer, p. 302.

[98] Scholder, vol. I, p. 190.

[99] David Patterson, A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad, (1st ed. 2011), p. 15.

[100] Ibid., p. 16.

[101] Ibid.

[102] Heiden, p. 424.

[103] Ibid.

[104] Ibid.

[105] Ibid., p. 54.

[106] Zahn, p. 87.

[107] Ibid., pp. 87, 101.

[108] Cornwell, pp. 161-162.

[109]Ibid., p. 162.

[110] Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I, p. 48.

[111] Ibid.

[112] Ibid.

[113] Cornwell, p. 181.

[114] Scholder, vol. I, p. 480.

[115] Lutzer, pp. 132-133.

[116] Lochner, pp. 252-253.

[117] Littell and Locke, p. 140.

[118] Ibid., p. 47.

[119] Ibid., pp. 48-49.

[120] Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, (2nd ed. 2003), pp. 206-207.

[121] Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, p. 4.

[122] Ibid., p. 5.

[123] Prager and Telushkin, p. 279.

[124] Ibid., pp. 207-208.

[125] Ibid., p. 208.

[126] Lutzer, p. 144.

[127] Prager and Telushkin., p. 210.

[128] Ibid., p. 48.

[129] Littell and Locke, p. 45.

[130] Ibid.

[131] Ibid., p. 143.

[132] Ibid.

[133] Ibid.

[134] Conway, p. 209.

[135] Ibid.

[136] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, (2nd revised and enlarged ed. 1964), p. 130.

[137] Herman, pp. 178-179, 234.

[138] Arendt, p. 130.

[139] Littell and Locke, p. 144.

[140] Ibid.

[141] Ibid., pp. 145-146.

[142] Ibid., p. 146.

[143] Ibid., p. 145.

[144] Lutzer, pp. 144-145.

[145] Ibid., p. 146.

[146] Mitchell G. Bard, 48 Hours of Kristallnacht, Night of Destruction/Dawn of the Holocaust: an Oral History, (1st ed. 2008), p. 187.

[147] Ibid.

[148] Ibid.

[149] Ibid.

[150] Littell and Locke, p. 176.

[151] Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, p. 76.

[152] Ibid., p. 78.

[153] Ibid., p. 81.

[154] Ibid., pp. 81-82.

[155] Ibid., p. 1.

[156] Ibid., p. 13.

[157] Ibid.

[158] Ibid., p. 1.

[159] Ibid.

[160] Ibid., p. 8.

[161] Ibid., pp. 1-2.

[162] Ibid., p. 2.

[163] Ibid.

[164] Ibid., p. 3.

[165] Ibid., p. 105.

[166] Ibid., p. 106.

[167] Ibid., p. 107.

[168] Ibid., p. 115.

[169] Ibid., p. 118.

[170] Ibid., p. 126.

[171] Ibid., p. 3.

[172] Ibid., p. 24.

[173] Ibid., pp. 164-165.

[174] Ibid., p. 165.

[175] Heiden, p. 774.

[176] Herschel, The Aryan Jesus, pp. 23-24.

[177] Ibid., p. 165.

[178] Ibid., p. 276.

[179] Ibid., p. 277.

[180] Ibid., p. 278.

[181] Ibid., p. 286.

[182] Ibid., p. 21.

[183] John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, the Secret History of Pius XII, (Penguin ed. 2008), p. 105.

[184] Ibid., p. 193.

[185] Harry James Cargas, When God and Man Failed: Non-Jewish Views of the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1981), p. 20.

[186] Ibid.

[187] Littell, p. 52.

[188] Carroll, p. 227.

[189] Ibid., p. 505.

[190] Ibid.

[191] Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, [new preface], pp. xii, 153.

[192] Ibid.

[193] Ibid., p. 7.

[194] Ibid., p. 41.

[195] Ibid., p. 42.

[196] Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, p. 57.

[197] Cornwell, p. 7.

[198] Ibid.

[199] Ibid., p. 130.

[200] Ibid., pp. xiii, 92.

[201] Ibid., p. xiii.

[202] Ibid., p. 136.

[203] Ibid.

[204] Ibid., pp. 149-150.

[205] Ibid., p. 218.

[206] Ibid., p. 215.

[207] Zahn, p. 54.

[208]Cornwell, p. xiii.

[209] Ibid., p. 85.

[210] Levy, p. 6.

[211] Ibid., p. 108.

[212] Ibid., pp. 108-109.

[213] Ibid., p. 111.

[214] Ibid., p. 109.

[215] Ibid., p. 133.

[216] Ibid., p. 160.

[217] Ibid.

[218] Ibid.

[219] Ibid.

[220] Ibid., p. 161.

[221] Ibid., p. 164.

[222] Ibid., p. 165.

[223] Zahn, p. 72.

[224] Heiden, p. 635.

[225] Lewy, p. 169.

[226] Ibid., pp. 170-171.

[227] Ibid., pp. 171-172.

[228] Cornwell, p. 187.

[229] Zahn, pp. 72, 83.

[230] Ibid., pp. 87, 96.

[231] Zahn, p. 87.

[232] Johann Neuhäusler, What Was It Like in the Concentration Camp at Dachau?: An Attempt to Come Closer to the Truth, (1st ed. 1960), p. 50.

[233] Cornwell, p. 187.

[234] Zahn, p. 134.

[235] Neuhäusler, pp. 25-26.

[236] Lewy, p. 309.

[237] Neuhäusler, pp. 4, 6.

[238] Ibid., pp. 3-4.

[239] Cargas, p. 21.

[240] Zahn, pp. 142, 158.

[241] Cargas, pp. 21-22.

[242] Lewy, p. 341.

[243] Lewy, p. 304; Cargas, p. 27.

[244] Cornwell, p. 295.

[245] Bard, p. 188.

[246] Ibid.

[247] Ibid.

[248] Cornwell, p. xvii.

[249] Weiss, p. 353.

[250] Ibid., p. 354.

[251] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 137.

[252] Ibid., 138.

[253] Ibid.

[254] Ibid., p. 130.

[255] Ibid., p. 138.

[256] Ibid., p. 139.

[257] Cornwell, pp. 291-292.

[258] Ibid., p. 292.

[259] Ibid., p. 293. (Predappio was Mussolini’s native village.)

[260] Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945, (1st ed. 1992), p. 264.

[261] Ibid.

[262] Mitchell G. Bard, The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance that Undermines America’s Interests in the Middle East, (1st ed. 2010),, pp. 242-243.

[263] Ibid., p. 243.

[264] Lewy, p. 303.

[265] Carroll, pp. 44-45, 524.

[266] Cornwell, p. 26.

[267] Cornwell, p. 300.

[268] Ibid.

[269] Carroll., p. 524.

[270] Cornwell, pp. 317-318.

[271] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, pp. 146-147.

[272] Lewy, pp. 232-233; Carroll, pp. 45-46.

[273] Lewy, p. 233.

[274] Ibid., p. 231.

[275] Ibid.

[276] Ibid.

[277] Carroll, p. 351.

[278] Ibid.

[279] Lewy, p. 341.

[280] Carroll, p. 351.

[281] Zahn, p. 73.

[282] Conway, p. 329.

[283] Carroll, p. 44.

[284] Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945, (1st ed. 2007), p. 661.

[285] John K. Roth and Michael Berenbaum, Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications, (1st ed. 1989), p. 309.

[286] Isser Harel, The House on Garibaldi Street, New York: The Viking Press (1st ed. 1975), p. 176.

[287] Weiss, p. 390.

[288] Cornwell, p. 267.

[289] Hilberg, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945, pp. 266-268.

[290] Weiss, p. 390.

[291] Ibid., pp. 389-390.

[292] Ibid., p. 390.

[293] Lewy, p. 93.

[294] Roth and Berenbaum, p. 309.

[295] Weiss, p. 390.

[296] Ibid.

[297] Alan L. Berger and David Patterson, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Drawing Honey From the Rock, (1st ed. 2008), pp. 153-154.

[298] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 136.

[299] Ibid., p. 147.

[300] Nechama Rec, When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland, (1st ed. 1986), p. 10.

[301] Ibid.

[302] See Hubert G. Locke, ed., Exile in the Fatherland: Martin Niemőller’s Letters from Moabit Prison, (1st English translated ed. 1986).

[303] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust , p. 119.

[304] Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler, The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank, The Definitive Edition, (Reprinted with previously unpublished material 2001), pp. 303-304.

[305] Ibid., p. 333.

[306] Tom Segev, Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends, (1st ed. 2010), p. 174.

[307] Locke, p. viii.

[308] Lawrence L. Langer, Using and Abusing the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2006), pp. 112-113.

[309] Ibid.

[310] Ibid., pp. 114-115.

[311] Cochrane, p. 278.

[312] Langer, Lawrence L., Art From the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology, (1st ed. 1995), p. 93.

[313] Ibid.

[314] Ibid., pp. 95- 96.

[315] David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945, (1st ed. 1984), p. xii.

[316] Ibid.

[317] Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine,(1st ed. 2005), p. 1.

[318] Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower, The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization, (1st ed. 2008), p. 291.

[319] Ibid., p. 303.

[320] Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine, p. 207.

[321] Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, (1st ed. 1987), p. 379.

[322] Ibid.

[323] Berger and Patterson, pp. 54-55.

[324] Elie Wiesel, A Jew Today,(1st ed. 1978), p. 182.

[325] Ibid. pp. 182-183.

[326] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 132.

[327] Elie Wiesel and Philippe-Michaël de Saint-Cheron, Evil and Exile,(1st ed. 1990), p. 68.

[328] Conway, p. VII.

[329] Littell and Locke, pp. 201-202.

[330] Ibid., p. 202.

[331] Marcia Sachs Littell, Holocaust Education: A Resource Book for Teachers and Professional Leaders, (1st ed. 1982), p. 10.

[332] Littell and Locke, p. 17.

[333] Ibid.

[334] Ibid.

[335] Ibid.

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THEOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL ANTI-SEMITISM AMPLIFYING INTO THE MOST HORRIFIC POLITICAL ANTI-SEMITISM FROM 1933 TO 1948

 Martin M. van Brauman

 

 

A boor cannot know, nor can a fool understand this: When the wicked bloom like grass and all the doers of iniquity blossom, it is to destroy them till eternity.  But You remain exalted forever, Lord.  For behold Your enemies, O Lord, for behold, Your enemies shall perish; dispersed shall be all doers of iniquity. Psalms 92: 7-10.

Theological and cultural anti-Semitism roared into the 20th century with a vengeance in governmental laws with political anti-Semitic agendas for the achievement of certain political ambitions.  Political anti-Semitism was on a world scale that was going to change the course of history comparable only for the Jews to the destruction of the Second Temple and Jerusalem by Titus in 70 C.E.

From 1933 to 1948, Amalek returned as the Fűhrer and Haman returned as the anti-Semitic British Colonial Secretary and they bloomed and blossomed until the point in time for the rebirth of Israel.[1]  The period of the Holocaust begins with the rise of the Nazi Reich with Hitler appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933 to the dissolution in 1948 of the Displaced Persons (“D.P.”) Camps in Central Europe, with the survivors emigrating either to Israel or to the West.[2]  On August 2, 1934, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, president of Germany, died and under Hitler’s Enabling Act governmental powers were vested in Hitler as both the chancellor and Reich president.

The Holocaust under Nazi ideology had two central fundamentals: the planned, total annihilation of the entire Jewish race and a quasi-apocalyptic, religious component whereby the death of the victim becomes an integral ingredient in the drama of Nazi salvation.[3]  Yet out of the ashes, the surviving European Jews, especially those in the D.P. camps, played a critical part in the forces that enabled Palestinian Jews to fight for independence in 1948.[4]

During the Weimar Republic of the 1920s, the overwhelming majority of the Evangelical clergy remained monarchists and denounced from the pulpit parliamentary sovereignty, Western liberalism and democratic socialism as un-German, anti-Christian and Jewish.[5]  Only a minority of Protestant clerics stood against Nazi political anti-Semitism, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoeller and Martin Dibelius, who all came from the Calvinist school of the German Protestant church.[6]

Hitler had the anti-Semitic teachings of Luther and the support from the long European experience of theological and cultural anti-Semitism.  Since the world did not want the Jews, then logically the “Final Solution” (die Endlősung) must be extermination following Luther’s diatribes against the Jews.  National Socialism, as a pseudo-religious ideology, owed its image of the Jew to Christian anti-Semitism with Nazi racial biology the driving force behind the Final Solution.[7]  The Final Solution for National Socialism was part of an apocalyptic and salvation ideology that envisioned the attainment of Heaven by bringing Hell on earth, the last destruction before salvation.[8]

In 1939, Dr. Hermann Rauschning wrote in Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations with Adolf Hitler on his Real Aims “that Hitler and his movement are the apocalyptic riders of world annihilation,” when earlier Hitler had exclaimed to his inner circle at Wachenfeld House in Obersalzberg during 1933 that when war comes “[w]e shall not capitulate – no, never . . . We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us – a world in flames.” [9]  During the meeting, Hitler hummed the central recurring theme in Götterdämmerung,[10] the twilight of the gods – the conclusion of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, when in the final Act III of the Ring cycle the castle Valhalla and the assembled gods are totally consumed by fire.  As Hitler proclaimed on many occasions to understand National Socialism, one must understand Wagner.

Earlier in 1933, Hitler related to his inner circle at the Brown House in Munich his personal views on religion and the future destruction of the German churches:

But for our people it is decisive whether they acknowledge the Jewish Christ-creed with its effeminate pity-ethics, or a strong, heroic belief in God in Nature, God in our own people, in our destiny, in our blood  . . . One is either a German or a Christian.  You cannot be both.[11]

. . .

Do you think these liberal priests, who have no longer a belief, only an office, will refuse to preach our God in their churches?  I can guarantee that, just as they have made Haeckel and Darwin, Goethe and Stefan George the prophets of their Christianity, so they will replace the cross with our swastika.[12]

Hitler allowed the “Aryan of Jesus” nonsense of Chamberlain and other “professors” to explore Nordic religion movements to create unrest and help disintegrate the Christian church.[13]  Hitler privately had less use for Christianity than Alfred Rosenberg and repeatedly stated in 1933 that “One is either a German or a Christian. You cannot be both . . . We need free men who feel and know God in themselves.”[14]  Hitler’s objective was to rise up an Aryan paganism that was superficially Christian, but supported a racist canon with the mission to “dejudaize” Christianity.[15]  Hitler was quoted saying that “Conscience is a Jewish invention. It must be done away with.”[16]  The Catholics and Protestants wanted a re-Christianization of Germany society and they believed that the Nazi regime responded to that hope of religious reinvigoration with its attack against the communist who were atheists.[17]

Germany was on the way by the end of the 1930s of becoming a racist and vicious anti-Semitic society and the Nazi regime was racing ahead on this path with growing popular support.[18]  Under the redemptive mythology of National Socialism, Hitler used the Jew as the embodiment of Satan, who had to be removed from German society and the world for the cleansing of the individual and society and for the spiritual, moral and physical redemption of Aryans to gain control of themselves and dominance over all subhuman races.[19]  The religious leader Karl Barth said at the time that “It is impossible to understand National Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam.”[20]

By combining messianic hopes and expectations to historic Christian anti-Semitic ideas and social Darwinist perversions of natural science, National Socialism created a powerful appeal and force in its struggle for the souls of the German elites and of the general population that traditionally had held restrained anti-Semitic beliefs.[21]  Out of social Darwinism emerged the theory that most personal and social problems were inherited from bad genes and an eugenics movement evolved by the 1920s in Germany, England and the United States, promoting active intervention to ensure that only superior people survived to create a perfect society.[22]

Behind the purpose of Ellis Island in the United States to screen undesirables was Darwin’s theory of evolution and primitive genetic theory, in which poverty, disease and illiteracy was hereditary traits passed to future generations thereby weakening the nation’s gene pool.[23]  After World War I, the growing popularity of eugenics contributed to the establishment of the quotas and immigration restrictions favoring Northern Europeans.[24]  Dr. Harry H. Laughlin, a eugenics consultant hired by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, asserted that certain races were inferior and eugenics movement author Madison Grant wrote that Jews, Italians and others were inferior because of alleged differences in skull size.[25]

The new immigration laws, setting quotas by nationality and country basis, went into effect on July 1, 1921, limited immigration to a total of 355,000 quota immigrants per year (immigrant children and wives of American citizen were not counted) and restricted immigration from eastern and southern Europe.[26]  The U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 established quotas by country of origin with the intent to exclude as many Jewish, Slavic and Italian immigrants as possible.[27]

In 1941 prior to America’s entry into the war, opinion polls indicated that 75 to 85 percent of Americans opposed opening up immigration quotas to help Jewish refugees.[28]  President Roosevelt did nothing to change the policy even when the extermination of the Jews were fully known, except passing the issue to the State Department known to have a policy of avoidance and obstruction with regards to any Jewish rescue.[29]

For the period of 1933 to 1945, only 36 percent of the quota for immigration from Germany under the National Origins Law of 1924 was actually used because American consulates reported to Washington that anti-Jewish persecutions by the Nazis were greatly exaggerated.[30]  Representative Martin Dies, the chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee stated that “we must ignore the tears of the sobbing sentimentalists . . . and permanently close, lock and bar the gates of our country to new immigration waves and then throw the keys away.”[31]  In 1939, Senator Robert Wagner attempted to pass a law to allow 20,000 Jewish children from Germany to be admitted to the United States, but the bill was easily defeated by a coalition of anti-Jewish groups, the Catholic welfare conference and conservative women’s organizations, arguing that there was no emergency to justify the immigration.[32]

The Germans took the racial hygiene science further than other nations by its extreme anti-Semitic element.[33]  Professor Ludwig Woltmann, editor of a Nordic racial supremacy journal, believed “the Germanic race has been selected to dominate the earth.”[34]  In 1895, German eugenicist Alfred Ploetz founded the Society for Racial Hygiene and promoted the purifying of the Aryan race by selection.[35]

Eugenics was the doctrinal basis for the initial forced sterilizations and killings by the Nazis of homosexuals, the elderly, the disabled and the chronically sick.[36]  Conservative party leader Ernst Haeckel insisted on death for “incurables” and the mentally ill and believed that Jews carried hereditary diseases of blood and brain.[37]  Konrad Lorenz, a Nobel scientist praised among Nazi circles, shared Oswald Spengler’s belief in the popular The Decline of the West (1920) that racial purity can prevent cultural declines and proposed a biological racial hygienic solution of a deliberate, scientifically founded race policy in the elimination of degenerate races.[38]

The roots of Nazism was drawn from the occultism that spawned the Thule Society, the Germanenorden, the Völkisch movement, Pan-Germanism and other nationalist cults that believed in the Aryan god-men.[39]  William Shirer in 1940 commented in his Berlin Diary that the Nazi regime awoke the “primitive, tribal instinct of the early German pagans . . . to whom brute strength was not only the means but the end of life . . . [and] . . . [i]t is this primitive racial instinct of ‘blood and soil’ which the Nazis have reawakened in the German soul . . . and which has shown that the influence of Christianity and western civilization on German life and culture was only a thin veneer.”[40]

During his trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann declared himself to be and all of his life a Gottgläubiger, a Nazi term for “those who had broken with Christianity and ascribed to ‘a higher Bearer of Meaning,’ an entity somehow identical with the ‘movement of the universe,’ to which human life, in itself devoid of ‘higher meaning,’ is subject.”[41]  The Nazis used the designation of Gottgläubig, “god-believing,” to correspond to the characteristic piety of the German and people of similar blood, which excluded Christian church members and Jews.[42]

Nazi anti-Semitism adopted “Christian” anti-Semitism while rejecting fundamental Christian theology, which it saw as a Jewish invention.[43]  The Nazi accusations against the Jews were that there was a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world; that Jewish influence is satanic and Jews are out to corrupt the civilizations of their host peoples and countries; that the Jews are parasites and bloodsuckers; that they kidnap and kill Christian children and so on.[44]

In 1934, Hitler discussed the full impact of the coming National Socialist revolution:

Our revolution is not merely a political and social revolution; we are at the outset of a tremendous revolution in moral ideas and in men’s spiritual orientation.  Our movement has at last brought the Middle Ages, medieval times, to a close.  We are bringing to a close a straying of humanity.  Of truth and conscience: The Ten Commandments have lost their validity.  Conscience is a Jewish invention.  It is a blemish, like circumcision.  A new age of magic interpretation of the world is coming, of interpretation in terms of the will and not of the intelligence.  There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the scientific sense.[45]

The war against the Jews, bellum judaicum, and the Final Solution primarily took shape in Hitler’s Mein Kampf in 1924.[46]  Eventually, a pocket-sized edition of Mein Kampf was published for the German troops at the front and total sales of Hitler’s bible reached 5,950,000 copies during the war.[47]  Hitler outlined his goal of achieving Aryan racial superiority in Mein Kampf:

A state which in an age of racial pollution devotes itself to cultivation of its best racial elements must someday become master of the earth . . . We all sense that in a far future mankind may face problems which can be surmounted only by a supreme Master Race supported by the means and resources of the entire globe.[48]

Hitler’s ideas in Mein Kampf combined three concepts that became the underpinning for the Final Solution and the Holocaust.[49]  First, he turned political anti-Semitism into a racial doctrine whose purpose was the destruction of the Jews and, second having defined Bolshevism as a Jewish conspiracy for world domination; he transformed anti-Bolshevism into a holy crusade to liberate Russia and the Eastern territories from their Jewish masters.[50]  Finally, using race as a rationale, he transformed the imperialist drive for world power into a concept of Lebenstraum for a perfectly homogeneous German race, extending into Eastern Europe.[51]

Hitler’s salvation history in Mein Kamp was based upon the myth of the Aryan race and its rise in history through the great cultures of the past and their destruction by intermarriage with inferior races.[52]  Salvation meant the restoration of a great culture through biological regeneration, resulting in a new age of the master race.[53]  Hitler stated that “[b]y defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”[54]  The Nazi redemptive ideology of anti-Semitism radically transcended the traditional Christian anti-Semitism of the past by its exterminatory march to the Holocaust.[55]

Hitler was obsessed with the concept of the “chosen people” and its imagined power and, since there could not be two chosen people, Hitler’s messianic salvation necessitated the elimination of the people who had personified chosenness for over three thousand years.[56]  Hitler held “an almost metaphysical antagonism to the Jew,” an actual war of the gods’ type of anti-Semitism:

 Israel, the historic people of the spiritual God, cannot but be the irreconcilable enemy of the new, the German, Chosen People.  One god excludes the other.[57]

Hitler saw “the whole hated doctrine of Christianity, with its faith in redemption, its moral code, its conscience, its conception of original sin, [as] the outcome of Judaism.”[58]  Hitler perceived himself as a “Germanic warrior ‘Christ’” and “the chosen redeemer of a secular Salvationist religion,” a new political religion called National Socialism.[59]  Hitler’s vision of an anti-Jewish Jesus, a Siegfried, developed out of the Austrian Catholicism of his childhood.[60]  During the establishment of the religious foundations of Nazidom of the 1930s, required reading and memorizing was Friedrich Wolfgang Lindenberg’s ridiculous biography of Hitler, Hail Our Führer, which “attributes to this maniacal Austrian qualities heretofore possessed only by the Man of Galilee.”[61]

Anti-Semitism was an essential component of National Socialist ideology,[62] a political religion which was based upon a pseudo-science of a myth of a pure race and racial superiority.[63]  On theological grounds, National Socialism may be explained as man’s natural hatred of God’s chosen people as the witnesses to the God, who exercises grace in judgment.[64]  Anti-Semitism is the sign of man’s enmity to the grace of God.[65]  Hitler and his legions, like Haman, was driven “. . . to destroy, to slay and to exterminate all Jews, from young to old, children and women . . . and to plunder their possessions.Esther 3:13.

Chaim Kaplan wrote from the Warsaw Ghetto in his diary of 10 March 1940 that Nazi anti-Semitic hatred was deeper than political ideology.[66]

It is a hatred of emotion, whose source is some psychopathic disease.  In its outward manifestation it appears as physiological hatred, which sees the object of its hatred as tainted in body, as lepers who have no place in society . . . But the founders of Nazism and the party leaders created a theoretical ideology with deeper foundations.  They have a complete doctrine which represents the Jewish spirit inside out.  Judaism and Nazism are two attitudes to the world that are incompatible, and for this reason they cannot co-exist side by side.  For 2,000 years Judaism has left its imprint, culturally and spiritually, on the nations of the world. It stood fast, blocking the spread of German paganism . . . Two kings cannot wear one crown.  Either humanity would be Judaic or it would be pagan-German.  Up until now it was Judaic.  Even Catholicism is a child of Judaism, and the fruit of its spirit . . . The new world which Nazism would fashion, would be pagan, primordial, in all its attitudes.  It is therefore ready to fight Judaism to the finish.[67] 

Nazi anti-Semitism was based more upon the hatred of the Jewish character and the social morality posed by Jews and Jewish values than upon general racism or the scapegoat thesis.[68]  To Hitler, all attempts to solve the Jewish “Problem” through conversion or assimilation were pointless.[69]  Since every other solution had been tried and had failed over thousands years, the Nazis would implement the “Final Solution” in order to make all German controlled territory Judenrein (free of Jews) and to obtain Lebensraum (living space) for Germans to expand into Eastern Europe.  To Hitler, the destruction of European Jewry was more important than winning the war.[70]  The Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz wrote:

Serious people. Responsible people, thought that Hitler’s notions about the Jews were, at best, merely political bait for disgruntled masses, no more than ideological window dressing to cloak a naked drive for power. Yet precisely the reverse was true.  Racial imperialism and fanatic plan to destroy the Jews were the dominant passions behind the drive for power.[71]

Most of the German church clergy agreed that Germany had a right to Lebensraum at the expense of “Judeo-Bolshevism.”[72]  The official church Handbuch (handbook), written by Archbishop Gröber, called Bolshevism despotism “in the service of a group of terrorist led by Jews.”[73]  Upon the Nazi invasion of Russia, Bishop Michael Rackel declared the war “truly a crusade, a holy war for homeland and people, for faith and Church, for Christ and his most holy Cross.”[74]

Most Christian leaders outside of Germany were horrified by the Nazi terror and yet there was not a perceived failure of Christianity generally in Germany.[75]  Protestant clergy in Holland, Denmark and Scandinavia denounced the Nazi deportation of Jews and many ordinary Catholic clergy in France and Italy protected Jewish citizens.[76]  However, the anti-Semitism of medieval Christianity remained embedded within the German and Austrian church establishment, which had never been diminished by any liberal enlightenment.[77]  Also, the anti-Semitic feelings which were disseminated in Germany by völkisch ideology had been absorbed and were shared by German Protestantism.[78]

On February 28, 1933 after the Reichstag fire started by Hitler and blamed on the Communists, the legal basis for the future concentration camp system was declared by Hitler under Hindenburg’s emergency decree “For the Protection of People and State,” which promised protection against Communist acts of violence.[79]  The Nazis used this law to create the impression of a Communist threat in order to carry out mass arrests of their political opponents and society’s undesirables.  In March 21, 1933, Heinrich Himmler, then Commissioner of Police for Munich, announced in the paper, Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten:

On Wednesday, March 22, 1933, the first concentration camp will be opened in the vicinity of Dachau.  It can accommodate 5,000 people.  We have adopted this measure, undeterred by paltry scruples, in the conviction that our action will help to restore calm to our country and is in the best interests of our people.[80]

Thus, the first concentration camp of the Third Reich from hell was born nine miles from Munich with a large iron gate bearing the deceptive inscription “Arbeit macht frei (“Work makes you free”).[81]  Theodor Eicke’s motto was adopted by the camps to represent during the mid-1930s the concept of incarceration of asocials or citizens used as tools for the International Jew, in which hard work would bring about structure and re-education.[82]  The motto became the 20th century version of Dante’s Lasciate ogni speranza (All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter Here) at the Gate of Hell.[83]  Just as Dante remarked to Charon,

Seeing these words inscribed in somber hue

Upon the lintel of a gate, I said,

‘Their meaning, master, is too hard for me.’[84]

Dachau became the “training school” for the professional torturers and executioners for the future concentration camps of Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Papenburg, Esterwegen, Mauthausen, Flossenberg, Belsen, Auschwitz and others.[85]  The future commandant of Belsen and the chiefs of Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Auschwitz had their apprenticeship at Dachau in torture and murder.[86]

In Hitler’s first “Memorandum on the Jews” on September 1919, he distinguished between anti-Semitism for purely emotional reasons, which leads to pogroms, and “rational” anti-Semitism, which must lead to the systematic legal struggle to remove Jews from society, and with both resulting in the final goal of removing the Jews completely.[87]

Rational anti-Semitism of the Jews began on April 1, 1933 (the April First pogrom) when the Nazis initiated a boycott of Jewish businesses and was followed by racial laws barring Jews from civil service jobs and teaching positions in schools and universities.[88]  In 1933, nationalist students interrupted Albert Einstein’s lectures in Berlin and immediately thereafter he was deprived of his professorship and membership in the Prussian Academy of Sciences.[89]  His books were burned publicly on May 10, 1933 and the “great” German Nobel Prize-winning Nazi physicists Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard attacked what they called Einstein’s “Jewish physics” and his so-called relativity theories that undermined true German Aryan science.[90]

In 1933, the Nazis convinced the German public to solve the employment problem by replacing Jews by Gentiles wherever the Jews held too high a percentage of jobs based upon the ratio of Jews to Gentiles in the general population.[91]  The Nazis persuaded the German public that too many of the high positions in the universities and professions had been monopolized by Jews and drastic action was required.

The Law for the Restoration of the Regular Civil Service on April 7, 1933 under paragraph 3 ordered the immediate retirement of civil servants of non-Aryan origin.[92]  On the same day was passed the Law Concerning the Admission to the Legal Profession, which removed the Jews from the judiciary.[93]  The Law Against the Overcrowding of the German Schools and Universities on April 25, 1933 set a 1.5 percent quota on the total number of Jewish students in high schools and universities for the country and a maximum of 5 percent for any school.[94]  When the Jews were excluded from the practice of law in 1933, the great majority of Berlin lawyers and in some courts a majority of the judges were Jews.[95]

Also in April of 1933, the Nazi government announced new laws that required all citizens to document their racial descent.  Since the churches were the custodians of baptismal records and marriage registrations for generations, the churches supplied the Certificates of Aryan Descent to prove Aryan status by showing all four grandparents were Christian.[96]  The objective was to replace the religious distinction between Christianity and Judaism with the racial laws of Aryan versus Jew. [97]  Under the first set of regulations issued in 1933, the non-Aryan category included quarter, half, three-quarter and full Jews.[98]  After the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935, all of the quarter Jews and some of the half Jews were removed from the non-Aryan category.[99]

On October 4, 1933, the Editorial Control Law placed all newspaper and periodical editors under the control of the Reich press chief Otto Dietrich, thereby ending the free press.[100]  The Law established courts under the Reich League of the German Press to punish and purge editors deemed contrary to Nazi ideology.[101]  On December 12, 1933, major German press services were merged into the official German News Agency, which was placed under the control of Dietrich’s Press Office in the Propaganda Ministry.[102]  The Nazis also gained control of the press by acquiring newspapers and periodicals at forced prices.[103]  By 1939, the Nazis controlled 1,500 publishing houses and over 2,000 newspapers and by 1945 the Nazis controlled 82.5 percent of total press circulation.[104]

In March 1933, Hitler appointed Josef Goebbels head of the Propaganda Ministry and by 1939 his ministry included departments for propaganda, the domestic press, the foreign press, the periodical press, radio, film, writers, theater, fine arts, music and popular culture.[105] Der Völkische Beobachter, the national official daily paper of the Nazi party, translated Nazi ideology into an ongoing anti-Semitic narrative of events.[106]  The daily was founded in 1920 and in 1923 Alfred Rosenberg became its editor until 1938 when Wilhelm Weiss became editor and circulation exceeded 1 million by 1940 and 1.4 million by 1944.[107]

The Active Propaganda Division in the Propaganda Ministry was responsible for visual propaganda with political posters and the weekly Wandzeitungen (Word of the Week) wall newspapers represented visual propaganda in everyday occurance in Nazi Germany from 1937 to 1943.[108]  Daily life brought the German masses through central public places of transportation (railroad stations, streetcars, subways, buses and major pedestrian intersections) and bystanders could spend a few minutes observing the colorful anti-Semitic Word of the Week posters and papers.[109]  The anti-Semitic consensus of the German public formed by the Propaganda Ministry during the 1930s created the public hatred, contempt and indifference toward the Jews that allowed the Nazis to proceed unimpeded towards the Final Solution.[110]

Both Goebbels and Dietrich held doctorates from prestigious German universities and the staffs of the Reich Press Office and of the Propaganda Ministry were highly educated people, who constituted a large number of anti-Semitic intellectuals.[111]  An enormous amount of intelligence and talent was involved in the production and distribution of anti-Semitic propaganda among the various governmental departments and ministries designed to enrage Germans against the Jews and justify a war of self-defense against international Jewry’s drive for world domination and Jewry’s determination to destroy Germany and the German people.[112]

In August of 1933, a meeting was set up in Lindau, Switzerland with Ernst Hanfstaengl, who was within Hilter’s inner circle, and Max Steuer, a Jewish lawyer from New York representing various wealthy members of the American Jewish community such as the Speyers and the Warburgs.[113]  These families were prepared to finance the emigration to the United States of all German Jews, particularly recent arrivals from Eastern and Central Europe, who wanted to leave.[114]   Although Hanfstaengl thought that it was a chance to handle an insoluble problem, Hitler responded to him by saying “Do not waste my time, I need the Jews as hostages.”[115]

During a social meeting in the Reich Chancellery in 1933, Hitler told his guests about “Jews as hostages” in that:

The Jews, he said, laughing, were Germany’s best protection.  They were the pledge that guaranteed that foreign powers would allow Germany to go her way in peace.  If the democracies did not withdraw their boycott, he would take from the German Jews as much of their property as would cover the damage done to Germany by the boycott.  We’ll show them how fast they’ll have to stop their anti-German propaganda!  The Jews will yet make Germany’s fortune!  Everybody laughed.  Hitler went on to say that there must, of course, come a time when there would be nothing left to take from the Jews.  But then he would still hold their lives in the palm of his hand: their precious Jewish lives.  The company burst out laughing again.[116] 

Before 1933, the Nazi party established the Kinship Research Office (“RSA”) to investigate the racial background of new party members.[117]  After the Nazi obtained power, the RSA became a governmental genealogy office under the Ministry of the Interior.[118]

Under the Nazi plan, if Christians were to be reclassified as Aryans, the Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants could not be treated as legitimate Christians.[119]  However, tens of thousands of Jews had been baptized over the centuries in Germany.[120] In April 1933, the size of the official Jewish community was over 500,000, but there was also an equal number non-Aryan Christians of Jewish descent.[121]  For converted Jews, the arbitrary line was the year 1880 before Jewish emancipation and assimilation into German society, in which racially Jewish descendants baptized before that date may be counted as Aryan, but those baptized after the date remained racially Jewish.[122]

The central Nazi objective when Hitler achieved power was to identify and destroy Germany’s Jews, regardless of their assimilation, intermarriage, religious association, or even Christian conversion.[123]  German Jews were the most assimilated in Europe and the Nazis defined a Jew by ancestry and blood, not just by religious affiliation.[124]  When the Nazis made the “Jew” a biological identity of the blood more than just a religious and culture identity, conversion was no longer a solution but only genocide.  Only after their identification could Jews be targeted with property confiscation, ghettoization, deportation and extermination.[125]  The IBM Hollerith punch card and card sorting system supplied through IBM’s German subsidiary, Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft, or Dehomag (German Hollerith Machine Company), formed a genocidal partnership with the Third Reich and ensured huge profits for Thomas Watson and IBM in New York.[126]

An adversary [Satan] stood against Israel, and enticed David to take a count of [the people of] Israel . . . This matter was bad in God’s eyes . . . I Chronicles 21:1, 7.

The custom-designed IBM technology for the Nazis provided an unprecedented speed and accuracy to the Nazis in identifying Jews in census reports, governmental registrations and racial-ancestry programs as well as in organizing railway transportation and concentration camp registrations.[127]  During the war years, IBM Hollerith systems kept the railways of Nazi controlled Europe on schedule and provided information on freight car locations and cargo tracking.[128]  Nearly every Nazi concentration camp operated a Hollerith department to keep track of work assignments, transfers, general death and inmate statistics by Personal Inmate Cards, in which prisoners were identified not by name but by a personally assigned Hollerith five or six digit number.[129]

The Hollerith systems provided the magical scheduling process that allowed millions of Jews to step onto train platforms throughout Europe, travel for two or three days by rail, then step onto a ramp at a death camp and within an hour be marched into a gas chamber hour after hour, day after day.[130]  The Hollerith systems assisted Germany with its general commercial, social and military infrastructure and allowed it to conduct a war with blitzkrieg efficiency.[131]

During the opening of the new IBM facility in Berlin to manufacture machines to Nazi specifications, Willy Heidinger, a rabid Nazi and head of Dehomag, publicly announced that “Dehomag were with the Nazi race scientists who saw population statistics as the key to eradicating the unhealthy, inferior segments of society . . . We are very much like the physician, in that we dissect, cell by cell, the German cultural body . . .  on a little card . . . [and] . . . our Physician [Adolf Hitler] can take corrective procedures to correct the sick circumstances . . . rooted in our race.”[132]

On May 1933, IBM’s Dehomag subsidiary secured the first major contract with the Nazis to conduct the census on the 41 million people living in the state of Prussia, three-fifths of the German population in four months.[133]  By June 16, 1933, one-half million census takers were recruited from the “nationalistically minded” along with SA and SS to create a virtual census army to obtain data about every household, which was reduced to punch cards in IBM’s operations in Berlin, bringing together pseudo-science and official race hatred.[134]

After the war began, Watson’s personal representatives primarily operated out of the Swiss office of IBM for instructions, profit funneling and coordination of IBM’s activities throughout Europe and for placing IBM technology at the disposal of Hitler’s Final Solution and territorial domination.[135]  When trains needed to run on time from ghetto to concentration camp, IBM provided the solutions and no solution was out of the question for Germany even identifying the Jews by name on a punch card.[136]

The Hollerith punch cards exposed from every corner of Germany all those of Jewish blood and enabled the Nuremberg Laws to be enforced with efficiency and complete effectiveness by the Nazis.[137]  Some 400 laws were adopted between the time Hitler came to power and the beginning of World War II that robbed the Jews of everything and demonized their religion.[138]  Edwin Black commented in IBM and the Holocaust that “the dawn of the Information Age began at the sunset of human decency.”[139]

Along with IBM, other American corporations had made possible the genocide conducted by Hitler against the Jews, such as the Ford Motor Company and its anti-Semitic Dearborn Independent and The International Jew, the Carnegie Institution and its eugenics research, the Rockefeller Foundation and its Standard Oil and General Motors.  The Ford Motor Company through its Cologne plant supplied trucks to Hitler that rolled his army of death across Europe during the war to such an extent that a 1945 U.S. Army report called Ford “the arsenal of Nazism” with the “consent” of the company in Dearborn.[140]  Ford’s German subsidiary, Ford-Werke, used slave labor from Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944 and 1945.[141]  Ford’s International Jew, volume 4, quoted “Imagine for a moment that there were no Semites in Europe. Would the tragedy be so terrible now? Hardly! . . . Some day they will reap what they have sown.”[142]

The Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune funded research on the pseudo-science called eugenics, in which the Nazis benefited to support their programs of racial hygiene, Rassenhygiene, to purge the German nation of Jewish blood.[143]  The Rockefeller Foundation supported financially the German eugenics research programs under the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, which influenced Hitler’s race ideology in Mein Kampf and later fueled the Nazis’ implementation of sterilization and mass extermination.[144]  When Hitler demanded in 1935 racial genetic fractions to determine the full Jew, the half-Jew and the quarter-Jew for the Nuremberg race laws, the race ancestry charts created by Harry H. Laughlin of the Carnegie Institution and American eugenicists provided the answers to their eugenic hero, Adolf Hitler.[145]

The dean of Nazi racial hygiene was Professor Otmar von Verschuer at the Institute for Heredity, Biology and Racial Purity, University of Frankfurt, who provided the Final Solution its intellectual respectability.[146]  His most promising assistant at the Institute was Dr. Josef Mengele, who later carried out Verschuer’s research on the human subjects at Auschwitz as the “Angel of Death.”[147]  Later, Verschuer, as director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, still was closely involved in his protégé’s research at Auschwitz.[148]  Mengele’s overall objective and that of Verschuer was to test various genetic theories in support of Hitler’s racial theories, especially testing twins.[149]  The Rockefeller Foundation and the eugenics science it sponsored was the inspiration behind Mengele’s medical experiments on twins as a control group in the death camps to discover the secrets in genetic engineering to produce a master race.[150]

Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors and its German division, Adam Opel A.G., made the three-ton Blitz truck that motorized the German military and powered the Nazi war machine that quickly rounded up and exterminated the Jews of Europe.[151]  Alfred Sloan was one of the primary founders of the American Liberty League, an anti-Semitic group formed to rally Southern votes against Roosevelt in the 1936 election, and which funded the Sentinels of the Republic that provided anti-Semitic campaigns and labeled Roosevelt’s New Deal as the “Jew Deal.”[152]

GM working with Standard Oil developed an important gasoline additive tetraethyl lead to boost octane for a faster and more mobile Wehrmacht.[153]  In a partnership of GM and Standard Oil contributing the technology with the German chemical company, I.G. Farben, they built ethyl plants in which after the war Nazi armaments chief Albert Speer stated that the invasion of Poland in 1939 would not have been possible without the ethyl additive.[154]  Along with trucks, Opel’s Brandenburg plant built airplane engines for the Luftwaffe’s JU-88 bombers, built land mines and torpedo detonators for the military.[155]

During the Nuremberg trial of I.G. Farben on August 27, 1947, General Telford Taylor, the U.S. prosecutor, read the indictment of wholesale enslavement, plunder and murder against the 23 executives of the world’s largest chemical company as “the men who made war possible . . . the magicians who made the fantasies of Mein Kampf come true.”[156]  I.G. Farben greatest claim to infamy was the development of the Auschwitz-Birkenau facilities into the first industrialized killing machine with Zyklon B to run the gas chambers and slave labor to run its nearby Buna-Werke factory.[157]  IG’s Bayer pharmaceutical division supplied the test prototype serums and drugs used by Josef Mengele at Birkenau with his experiments on identical twins to prove his racial theories.[158]

The opening act of annihilation began with the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 (Hitler’s “rational” anti-Semitism) that reduced the Jews to surplus people by taking their property, their livelihood and citizenship.  The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor prohibited marriages between Jews and “citizens of German or kindred blood.”[159]  The Reich Citizenship Law restricted citizenship only to people “of German or kindred blood.”[160]  The new Marriage Law of Greater Germany recognized only the marriage performed by civil officials in the name of the Reich as a public act not a private act for the good of the Volk under the new State religion.[161]

After the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, many Jews thought that the discriminatory measures would cease, if they accepted life as second-class citizens.[162]  However, the underlying purpose of the Laws was to deprive German Jews of German citizenship and of protection under the laws.[163]  By the middle of 1938, most Jewish businesses had been seized by Aryan Germans.[164]

Then came the announcements under penalty of immediate arrest that Jews were forbidden to speak, greet, acknowledge greetings, correspond, deliver to or receive objects from Gentiles.[165]  Jews were forbidden to enter public places, such as theaters, cinemas, restaurants, cafes, schools, parks, post office, city hall, or libraries.[166]

On March 28, 1938, the Law on the Legal Status of Jewish Religious Organizations (Gesetz über die Rechtsverhältnisse der jüdischen Kultusvereingungen) stripped Jewish religious nonprofits of their protected status as public bodies, but were treated as only registered associations subject to various tax burdens and discriminations.[167]  On April 26, 1938, the Law on the Registration of Jewish Assets (Verordnung über die Anmeldung jüdischen Vermögens) placed the property of German Jews under state control.[168]

On August 17, 1938, the Law on the Amendment of Family and First Names (Zweite Verordnung zur Durchführung des Gesetzes über die Änderung von Familien und Vornamen) required Jewish women and men to assume the compulsory names of “Sara” and “Israel,” respectively, if they did not have first names that were included on a list of recognized Jewish first names.[169]  With the yellow Star of David, it was a return to the yellow patches of the Middle Ages.[170]  As stated by Herman Kruk in his diary from the Vilna Ghetto, “I put myself in the hands of fate and wear the yellow patch, as Christ wore the crown of thorns. This is how I shall go with the . . . “[171]  Livia Bitton Jackson as a thirteen year old in Somorja, Hungary, described the feeling of humiliation when hearing the proclamation that all Jews must wear a six pointed yellow star or face immediate arrest.[172]  She wrote:

My God, what next? A yellow star? The Middle Ages, evil tales of long ago.  I used to hate Jewish history in the after-school Hebrew class. I hated the misery, the suffering, the badge. The Jew badge.[173]

In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria and 183,000 more Jews fell under Nazis control.[174]  Before the Anschluss (Annexation) of Austria, the IBM subsidiary in Austria was working feverously with the Hollerith punch card operations to identify the Jewish population from the 1934 Austrian census for forced expulsion.[175]  Before Hitler under the Munich Pact of September 30, 1938 marched into the Germanic Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, IBM was in Czechoslovakia after Hitler took power in 1933 registering Jewish property and families as defined by the Nuremberg Laws for Hollerith punch cards throughout Czechoslovakia.[176]  On May 17, 1939, 750,000 census takers swept through the Greater Reich’s 22 million households, 3.5 million farmhouses and 5.5 million shops and factories registering on Hollerith punch cards some 80 million residents according to their ancestry and property holdings in the spirit of the Nuremberg Laws.[177]  Later, IBM subsidiaries throughout Europe would assist the Nazis in turning populations in the invaded countries into punch cards to make all Europe Jew-free.[178]

President Roosevelt initiated an International Conference in Evian-les-Bains, France to address the Jewish refugees being forced out from Germany and Austria in July 1938, but the organizers emphasized the conference was to focus on political refugees from all countries.[179]  The Polish government of the thirties acted to promote mass emigration of Jews in the League of Nations with France to the island of Madagascar and with England for immigration to Palestine.[180]  The Polish government at the Evian Conference demanded, along with Romania, that emigration from Poland and Romania should be discussed.[181]

Earlier on June 4, 1936, the prime minister General Felicjan Slawoj-Skladkowski of Poland declared in parliament that physical attacks on Jews were wrong, but attacks against Jewish economic survival was “of course [owszem]” all right.[182]  Pogroms occurred against the shtetl of Przytyk in central Poland between 1936 and 1939 and in Brest-Litovsk in the Belorussian area of Poland on May 13, 1937.[183]  In 1937, the Polish foreign minister Józef Beck told the Polish parliament that Poland had room for only half a million Jews and had over 3 million that needed to leave.[184]  Over three hundred and fifty Jews were murdered in Poland between 1935 and 1939.[185]

In Poland, Catholicism was identified with Polishness and the leading Catholic primate Augustyn Cardinal Hlond on February 29, 1936 declared

. . . that the Jews fight against the Catholic Church, that they are free-thinkers, and constitute the vanguard of atheism, of the Bolshevik movement and of revolutionary activity. It is a fact that Jewish influence upon morals is fatal, and their publishers spread pornographic literature.  It is true that the Jews are committing frauds, practicing usury and deal in white slavery . . . let us be just. Not all Jews are like that . . it is not permissible to hate anyone. Not even Jews.[186] 

Hlond’s speeches portrayed Jews as a satanic group, acting collectively to corrupt the non-Jewish population.[187]

Violent anti-Semitic attacks were part of the daily life for all Jews in Poland as encountered by Lucy Dawidowicz in 1938, while visiting Vilna and observing that “[i]t wasn’t so much an ideology or a racist philosophy as it was raw and ungovernable hatred, different from what was happening in Germany.”[188]  She contrasted that the anti-Semitism of the Nazis had been “orchestrated from above,” while it “erupted spontaneously [and] volcanically” in Poland.[189]

As prime minister of Romania, Octavian Goga of the National Christian Party initiated anti-Semitic decrees in 1937 that stripped Romanian Jews of citizenship and other rights.[190]  During the war, Marshal Ion Antonescu, the Romanian dictator, murdered between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews within his territory.[191]  In the Ukraine, approximately 900,000 Ukrainian Jews, 60 percent of Ukrainian Jewry, were murdered.[192]  The pro-Nazi Roman Catholic priest Josef Tiso, president of the Slovak state during the war, was directly responsible for the deportation of over 80,000 Jews to die in Poland after 1942.[193]

When America, the sponsoring nation of the Evian Conference, set forth its unwillingness to open up U.S. immigration, it doomed the Conference.[194]  It seemed that the Conference was planned by the U.S. State Department to divert refugees from the United States and delay international pressure to liberalize U.S. immigration laws.[195]  Not only were the Western nations unwilling to accept Jewish refugees, but they were unwilling to criticize the Nazi anti-Semitic legislation and preferred to treat it as an internal German matter.[196]  Golda Meir, an observer at the Evian Conference and the future Israeli prime minister, wrote “I don’t think that anyone who didn’t live through it can understand what I felt at Evian – a mixture of sorrow, rage, frustration and horror.”[197]

The Australian minister explained that his country could do nothing more for Jewish refugees and had no desire to import a “racial problem” by “encouraging any scheme of large-scale racial migration.”[198]  The Canadian representative raised economic uncertainties and unemployment problems.[199]  The British delegation was able to avoid mentioning Palestine and claimed a lack of resources for its refusal, but vaguely promising to investigate a limited number of refugees being settled in East African colonies.[200]  Argentina only needed “experienced agriculturalists,” which would eliminate most Jewish refugees.[201]  Belgium would not invite such obligations “whose consequences she cannot foresee.”[202]

Foreign correspondent William Shirer at the Evian Conference wrote in his Berlin Diary that:

The British, French, and Americans seem too anxious not to do anything to offend Hitler.  It’s an absurd situation.  They want to appease the man who is responsible for their problem.  The Nazis of course will welcome the democracies’ taking the Jews off their hands at the democracies’ expense.[203] 

The Conference made it clear that the world did not want the German and Austrian Jews, or any Jews.  Hitler offered “his” Jews to the international community and he knew the offer would be refused.[204]  Roosevelt feared he would risk his voter popularity, if he accepted Jewish refugees.[205]  Roosevelt chose not to send a high-level official, but instead sent a businessman and close friend Myron C. Taylor to represent the U.S. at the conference in which thirty-two countries offered excuses for not accepting the Jewish refugees.[206]

Only the Dominican Republic responded with proposed agricultural colonies for the German and Austrian refugees.[207]  The dictator, General Rafael Trujillo, had ordered the massacre and violent expulsion of Haitian workers in 1937 and the Evian conference offered him the opportunity to improve his image and seek millions of dollars for refugee settlement compensation.[208]

Responding to Evian, the German government was able to explain with great pleasure how “astounding” it was that foreign countries criticized Germany for their treatment of the Jews, but none of them wanted to open up immigration to them when “the opportunity offer[ed].”[209]  The conference provided an excellent propaganda justification for Germany’s policy against the Jews.[210]  Earlier in 1934, Hitler told his inner circle that:

My Jews are a valuable hostage given to me by the democracies.  Anti-Semitic propaganda in all countries is an almost indispensable medium for the extension of our political campaign.  You will see how little time we shall need in order to upset the ideas and the criteria of the whole world, simply and purely by attacking Judaism . . . Anti-Semitism, continued Hitler, was beyond question the most important weapon in his propagandist arsenal, and almost everywhere it was of deadly efficiency.[211] 

The conference closed by forming the Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC), which would convene in London on August 3rd to decide on Jewish refugee resettlement.[212]  Taylor reported to Secretary of State Cordell Hull that the Evian meeting had accomplished its purpose in creating the IGC and hopefully forcing Germany to be involved with the process of resettlement.[213]

During the Evian conference, Alfred Rosenberg, head of the Nazi party’s Foreign Policy Office, published his resettlement solution to the Jewish refugee problem as the island of Madagascar in the Vőlkischer Beobachter.[214]  The island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean was taunted by European anti-Semitics, such as Paul de LaGarde, as a place for French Jews when France imposed a protectorate over the island in 1885.[215]  Poland proposed it as a destination for its unwanted Jews and discussed it with French negotiators through 1938.[216]  Poland had such interest in the Nazi Madagascar plan during the Evian conference in order to rid their country of Jews that there was a 1938 Polish mission to Madagascar.[217]

All the proposed dumping grounds for the Jews such as Madagascar, the Nisko reservation near Lublin, Poland, and arctic Russia were unworkable for the Nazis and murder proved easier.[218]  In 1941, the German writer Raimund Pretzel (under the pseudonym Sebastian Haffner) stated

If the Nazis have ever had a propagandist success in Germany even among their sworn enemies, it was their advertisement of this attitude of the Western Governments, who offered the suppliant fugitives nothing but vague prospects of being sent, later on, to New Guinea – of course not all at once – while they were being tortured to death in the concentration camps.[219]

Further Nazi appeasement occurred on September 29, 1938, when France and Britain, without the Czechs’ consultation, negotiated the Munich Agreement, recognizing Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proudly announcing “My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour.  I believe it is peace for our time.”[220] Earlier on September 10th, Goring’s speech at the Nuremberg Nazi Party rally delivered Hitler’s message on the fate of Czechoslovakia by proclaiming that “[a] petty segment of Europe is harassing human beings [Sudeten Germans] . . . This miserable pygmy race [the Czechs] without culture – no one knows where it came from – is oppressing a cultured people and behind it is Moscow and the eternal mask of the Jew devil . . .”[221]

On October 27, 1938, Germany arrested and expelled 18,000 Polish Jews living in Germany by cattle cars to the Polish border.  Only 4,000 were allowed into Poland with the rest stranded at the border.[222]  Herschel Grynszpan’s family was stranded at the border, while he was working in Paris.[223]  On November 6, Herschel, seeking revenge for his destitute family, entered the German Embassy in Paris and shot Ernst vom Rath, the Third Secretary, who died on November 9th.[224]  Herschel told French investigators that “[m]y people have a right to exist on this earth.”[225]

Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels, realized that the killing was an opportunity to destroy the Jewish communities in Germany and Austria.[226]  The Nazis denounced the killing as a “declaration of war” and part of a worldwide Judeo-Masonic conspiracy.[227]  In honor of Martin Luther’s birthday on the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938, known as Kristallnacht or the “night of broken glass,”[228] the Nazis attacked Jewish communities by destroying over 200 synagogues and 7,000 Jewish businesses, sending over 35,000 Jews to concentration camps and killing over 1,200 Jews.[229]

The Jewish community in Aachen, Germany existed since the time of the Carolingian Empire and Charlemagne sent a Jew among his delegation in 797 CE to the Caliph Harun al-Rashid in Baghdad.[230]  The Aachen synagogue built in 1862 with the inscription over the front door from Isaiah of “[F]or my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” was destroyed on Kristallnacht.[231]

They have sent Your Sanctuary up in flames; to the ground have they desecrated the Abode of Your Name.  In their heart, they said – their rulers all together – they have burned all of God’s meeting places on earth.  Our signs we have not seen; there is no longer a prophet, and there is none among us who knows for how long. Until when, O God, will the tormentor revile, will the foe blaspheme Your Name forever? Why do You withdraw Your hand, even Your right hand? Remove [it] from within Your bosom!  For God is my King from days of old, working salvations in the midst of the earth. Psalm 74:7-12.

While political leaders in some countries condemned the violence of Kristallnacht, the leaders in Britain had no sympathy for the German Jewish refugees as typified by Neville Chamberlain.[232]  Chamberlain, in a private letter on July 30, 1939 of Kristallnacht, wrote that “I believe the persecution arose out of two motives: A desire to rob the Jews of their money and a jealousy [sic] of their superior cleverness . . . No doubt Jews aren’t a loveable people; I don’t care about them myself – but that is not sufficient to explain the Pogrom.”[233]

When President Roosevelt was asked five days after the November 9th pogrom, whether U.S. immigration restrictions against Jews would be eased, he replied with a resounding and unqualified – No![234]  Roosevelt graciously agreed to allow the 15,000 German Jews currently visiting in the United States to remain, but he resisted any increase of immigration quotas from Nazi-occupied countries, any action against Germany, and any mobilization of any international coalition against Hitler.[235]  A combination of factors, such as economic insecurity, diplomatic isolationism, and anti-Semitism, kept the United States from assisting Germany’s Jews.[236]

The mass migration of Eastern European Jews to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries intensified informally expressed anti-Semitism that did not overtly contradict America’s founding principles of equality and religious pluralism.[237]  Unconscionably, thousands of Jews who might have immigrated to the United States under existing quotas were denied entry due to barriers raised by many anti-Semitic bureaucratic officials, who essentially became Hitler’s accessories to murder.[238]  The State Department’s Breckinridge Long with his subordinates obstructed the entry of thousands of Jewish refugees, resulting in 90 percent of the quotas for German and Italian immigrants unfilled during the war.[239]

Breckinridge Long, responsible for refugees during the Roosevelt administration, was an obsessed anti-Semitic who thought Mein Kampf was “eloquent in opposition to Jewry and to Jews as exponents of Communism and Chaos.”[240]  When Henry Morgenthau’s U.S. Treasury Department attempted to license the transfer of money from Jewish charities to fund relief and rescue of Jews, Long and other State Department officials delayed the transfers for months.[241]  The State Department was encouraged with this delay by a December 1943 cable from the British government opposing such relief programs because “of the difficulties of disposing of any considerable number of Jews should they be rescued.”[242]

Based upon an investigation of the State Department, a document dated January 13, 1944 entitled “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of this government in the murder of the Jews” reported not only did the State Department officials fail to use the American government at their disposal to rescue Jews from Hitler, they sought to prevent such rescue, they actively obstructed private relief organizations, they tried to stop the flow of information to Jewish and other organizations about the Holocaust and they issued false and misleading statement to hide their crime.[243]

The War Refugee Board, created in January 1944 without any military resources diverted to the Board, was a sick joke by obtaining the admission of less than 1,000 refugees.[244]  Although too late, the Board was free to work on the Jewish refugee issue without obstruction from the American State Department and the British Foreign Office.[245]

The world would not intervene to save the Jews as evident by doing nothing with respect to immigration quotas.  A month before Kristallnacht, the Nazis had cancelled the passports of all German Jews and required them to reapply for new documents marked with the letter “J” to identify them as Jews to the world.[246]

On November 12th after Kristallnacht, the Executive Order Pertaining to the Restoration of the Appearance of Streets in Respect of Jewish Business Premises made the victims responsible for the damage and fined the Jews as a whole one billion Reichsmarks.[247]  The Jews were excluded from all businesses and all claims were denied by the insurance companies.[248] Following that night, the Jews were removed from the economy by legislation.

Hitler used Kristallnacht as a test to determine the public reaction in Germany to attacks against Jews and he was empowered by the German public’s acquiescence.[249]  As historian Joseph Tenenbaum stated “It is doubtful if without the demonstrable failure of Evian on July 6-13, and the Munich betrayal of September 29-30, the Nazis would have dared to stage the ‘Crystal Night’ pogrom of November 9-10.”[250]

On 24 November 1938, Hitler told the South African Defense Minister Oswald Pirow in Berlin that “world Jewry” (referring to American Jews) regarded their European coreligionists as “the advance troops for the Bolshevization of the world” and the Jewish “invasion” from the east and Hitler declared that “one day the Jews would disappear from Europe.”[251]  On January 21, 1939, Hitler told the Czech foreign minister that

We are going to destroy the Jews.  They are not going to get away with what they did on November 9, 1938. The day of reckoning has come.[252]

Nine days later Hitler publicly declared war on the Jews in the Reichstag on the anniversary of his obtaining power.[253]  On January 30, 1939, Hitler made his internationally publicized speech:

In the course of my life I have often been a prophet and have usually been mocked for it.  At the time of my struggle for power it was the Jews in particular who scoffed at the prophecy according to which I would assume the leadership of the state and of the entire people and, among other things, would bring the Jewish problem to a satisfactory conclusion.  I think that the echoes of the laughter of those days are now sticking in the gullets of the Jews.[254]

Today, let me once again be a prophet: if international finance Jewry inside and outside of Europe should succeed once more in plunging nations into another world war, the consequence will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.[255]

Resentment and apocalypse are imbedded in the declaration of January 1939.[256]  Hitler was donning the mantle of a prophet, suggesting a religious pronouncement with the anti-Semitic theme of a Jewish war fomented by world Jewry.[257]  In future speeches, Hitler repeated the role of prophet and the theme of Jewish mocking, such as on September 30, 1942.[258]  While exterminations were occurring, Hitler declared, “In the past, in Germany, the Jews laughed at my prophecy.  I do not know if they are still laughing today or if their desire to laugh has already passed.  Right now, however, I can assure you that it certainly will pass.”[259]   Also during this same Nazi rally in the Berlin Sportpalast, Hitler repeated his prophesy that “it will not be the Aryan peoples, but rather Jewry, that will be exterminated” to an enthusiastic overflowing audience.[260]

Beginning in 1939, the Nazis started the “euthanasia” program using poison gas and lethal injections to murder over 80,000 mentally and physically handicapped Germans.[261]  The success of Operation T4 (named because of its headquarters at 4 Tiergarten Strasse, Berlin) proved the feasibility of mass murder by ordinary people and the government bureaucracy would cooperate in the mass murder.[262]  The German bureaucracy, the “machinery of destruction,” was ready to meet the professional challenge in solving the Jewish Problem aided by the emerging Nazi Jewish laws.[263]  Raul Hilberg commented that the German bureaucrat “beckoned to his Faustian fate.”[264]

During the summer of 1939, aboard the ship S.S. St. Louis Jewish refugees, of whom half of the 937 were women and children, were fleeing Nazi Germany and its concentration camps.[265]  They were caught in Goebbels’ propaganda machine between corrupt Cuban officials, rejecting any disembarkation without additional bribes being paid in spite of valid Cuban visa permits, and an indifferent world.[266]  Anti-Semitism was imported to Cuba by Falangist Spanish exiles and pro-Nazi agents leading up to an anti-Semitic rally in May 1939, when German-Jewish refugees on the SS St. Louis were being denied landing rights in Havana.[267]

How could the world criticize Germany for its treatment of its Jews, when President Roosevelt and all other countries rejected them as a burden no one wanted?[268]  With knowing that the passengers of the St. Louis would return to the death camps of Nazi Germany, Cordell Hull, the U.S. Secretary of State, answering for Roosevelt simply stated that it was “a matter for the Cuban government” with respect to their “final solution.”[269]  This indifference can be understood only in terms of widespread anti-Semitism.[270] The tragedy of the SS St. Louis was the world reaction regarding the fate of the Jews, which encouraged Hitler to begin a more abhorrent pogrom leading to the complete destruction of the entire Jewish population of Europe.  As pessimistically remarked by the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, the world was divided between places where Jews could not stay and places where Jews could not go.[271]

The German radio stations announced: “Since no one will accept the shabby Jews on the St. Louis, we will have to take them back and support them” [in the concentration camps].[272]  In Paris, the French national chief of police, exercising considerable restraint, told the press that he “regretted our American friends, to whose country the majority of the refugees were eventually going, stopping at Cuba only en route, were not able to direct them to one of their ports instead of sending them back to Europe.”[273]

Most Jews hoped to immigrate to the United States, whose welcoming symbol, the Statute of Liberty, proclaimed on its base to the world the words of the Jewish poet Emma Lazarus of

Give me your tired, your poor,/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./ Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door![274]

Lazarus, a Sephardic Jew from a New York family, was inspired to write her poem New Colossus after learning of the terrible 1881 and 1882 pogroms in Russia against the Jews.[275]  However, the United States was admitting only 200,000 refugees.[276]

The United States was emerging from the Great Depression and it was argued that a flood of refugees would threaten the recovery and be a burden on the economy.[277]  Also, the country preferred an isolationist policy and there was a strong feeling of anti-Semitism with a general suspicion of foreigners.[278]  A 1938 poll by the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago found 72 percent were opposed to admitting a large number of German Jews to the United States.

While in Palestine to appease the Arabs, the British issued yearly immigration quotas on the number of Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Europe who could enter Palestine.[279]  The immigration quotas for 1935 and 1936 were 60,000 and 30,000 per year, respectively.[280]  The British White Paper for Palestine in 1939 proposed to limit Jewish immigration to 75,000 over the next 5 years with zero afterwards.[281]  The rationale in the British governmental papers indicated that if Jews came into Palestine, the Arabs would turn to the Axis Powers and Britain would lose its control over the Middle East and its oil.[282]  Also, an Arab Palestine with a Jewish minority was thought to be the best position for the British Empire and the fewer Jews the better.[283]

To embarrass the British Government, Adolf Eichmann, in charge of a Committee for Sending Jews Overseas, deported over 3,600 Jews from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia from the Romanian Black Sea port of Tulcia in September 1940 to Palestine without the necessary British immigration papers.[284]  Following the policy of Chamberlain’s White Paper, the Royal Navy intercepted the immigrants in Haifa and transferred them to the ship, Patria, for transfer to internment camps in Mauritius.[285]  The Haganah, the Jewish Agency’s military arm, placed explosives to prevent the ship from leaving Haifa.[286]  The explosive charge was too devastating and caused the death of 267 refugees, but General Wavell, the British Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East who like most British officers was pro-Arab, was intent on shipping the survivors to Mauritius until Churchill intervened and the survivors were allowed to remain in Palestine.[287]

On December 12, 1940, over 200 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe across the Black Sea and the Aegean for Palestine were drowned on the “illegal” ship Salvador, which sank in the Sea of Marmara.[288]  T.M. Snow, the head of the Refugee Section of the British Foreign Office, commented that “There could have been no more opportune disaster from the point of view of stopping this traffic.”[289]

On December 12, 1941, the SS Struma, an unseaworthy vessel, carrying Romanian Jews, left Constanza in the Black Sea for Palestine, but was held up for two months when it limped into Istanbul.[290]  With appalling sanitary conditions, the refugees suffered with dysentery and other health problems, while politicians casting lots negotiated their fate.[291]

The British ambassador to Turkey, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hegesson suggested that, rather than send the old substandard vessel back into the Black Sea where it would certainly sink, the charitable decision would be to allow the refugees to reach Palestine.[292]  The Colonial Office fraudulently asserted for political ends that somehow Nazi agents were masquerading as Jewish refugees and that the suggestion by the ambassador to Turkey was “absurdly misjudged on humanitarian grounds.”[293]  Lord Moyne, the Colonial Secretary, and Sir Harold Mac Michael, the High Commissioner, both denied the refugees’ admission to Palestine on the basis of the May White Paper that must be implemented in spite of whatever the cost in human lives.[294]

In February 1942, the SS Struma with damaged engines was towed out into the Black Sea to be cast adrift.[295]  After twelve kilometers out, a torpedo sunk the ship and out of the 769 men, women and children only one survived.[296]  The Struma tragedy was the watershed event that confirmed for Jews that rather than relying upon Britain for support they must prepare for armed resistance to fight the anti-Semitic immigration policy.[297]  The Struma tragedy resulted in the decision by the Extraordinary Zionist Conference in New York during May of 1942 to demand the recognition of a Jewish state in Palestine as an immediate war aim.[298]

Of the 522,000 German Jews living in Germany in 1933 (566,000 based upon Nazi racial definitions), more than 160,000 lived in the capital.[299]  In 1671, the Great Elector of Brandenburg granted Jews permission to resettle in Berlin.[300]  By May 1939 over half of the Berlin residents had fled Germany, but Berlin still had 65,000 residents plus an additional 9,000 by Nazi definition when the first deportations began in October 1941.[301]  Until March 1945, 65 transports to the east and 122 transports to Theresienstadt[302] deported over 55,000 Jews from Berlin, who were murdered in Lodz, Minsk, Riga, Piaski, Warsaw, Majdanek, Auschwitz, Theresienstadt and Sachsenhausen.[303]  After the war, only 1,900 deported Jews returned to Berlin, between 1,400 and 1,500 survived underground in the city and 4,700 were protected through marriages to non-Jews.[304]

On October 18, 1941, the first deportation of Berlin’s Jews was sent to the Lódz ghetto.[305]  Over 1,000 Jews arrived from Berlin by October 27, 1941 to the Lodz Ghetto.[306]  Wealthy German Jews transported to the Lodz Ghetto were reduced to begging within a few months of their arrival and suffered not only German brutalization but the indifference in the ghetto as being a foreign and destitute refugee.[307]

In the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names at Yad Vashem, there was a German speaking family from Berlin listed as died at house number 13 Flat 49, Adolf Hitler 79, Krauter Street, Lodz Ghetto: Icek Brauman, born 1903, accountant; Ruchla Brauman, born 1905, housewife; and Felicja Brauman, born 1935, child.  There was another German speaking family from Berlin listed as died at house number 13 Flat 63, Krauter Street 13, Lodz Ghetto: Wolf Abram Brauman, born 1907, hairdresser; Sara Brauman, born 1908, housewife; Tauba Brauman, born 1900, accountant; Porja Brauman, born 1900, housewife; Felicja Brauman, born 1928; Fela Brauman, born 1933, pupil.  By 1942, the Jews of Lodz were all death-bound with the Final Solution set in motion.[308]

Sara Grossman was 21 years old in the Lodz ghetto, and wrote about the Nazis’ deliberate death by starvation or disease:

Children where brought into the ghetto who couldn’t walk for lack of nourishment.  They just couldn’t walk. This is how rampant hunger was.  That is what malnutrition did to us. We were always on the lookout for some food, for some crumbs. You wouldn’t dare to leave a crumb on the table. You would put anything in your mouth.

I don’t think anything hurts as much as hunger. You become wild. You are not responsible for what you say and what you do. You become an animal in the full meaning of the word. You prey on others. You will steal. That is what hunger does to us. It dehumanizes you. You’re not a human being any more.

Slowly, slowly the Germans were achieving their goal. I think they let us suffer from hunger, not because there was not enough food, but because this was their method of demoralizing us, of degrading us, of torturing us. These were their methods, and they implemented these methods scrupulously.

Therefore, we had very many, many deaths daily. Very many sick people for whom there was no medication, no help, no remedy. We just stayed there, and lay there, and the end was coming.[309]   

Andreas Hillgruber, a German political history expert, argued that Hitler had four motives for the invasion of Russia with the primary motive of exterminating the Jewish Bolshevik leadership and the millions of Eastern European Jews.[310]  Hitler identified the other motives in a speech to senior officers of acquiring land for German settlers, imposing German domination over the Slavs and seizing raw materials necessary for the war.[311]  As Hitler told his generals before the invasion of Poland “[w]ho, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”[312]  The Nazis were convinced that anti-Semitism would become the common denominator that would unite all of Europe.[313]

With the military invasion of Poland and Russia, mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, were deployed by the SS to “purify” the area.[314]  The Einsatzkommandos could not have operated in Poland, Lithuania, Russia, the Ukraine and elsewhere without the logistical support and active cooperation of the Wehrmacht.[315]

The Einsatzgruppen had orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Bruno Streckenbach to annihilate all Jews in the territories occupied by the army.[316]  In 1939, Poland had a population of 3.3 million Jews, representing about 10 percent of the total population.[317]  By the spring of 1943, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered over 1,250,000 Jewish men, women and children simply because they were Jews.[318]  The mobile killing squads consisted of “ordinary men,” a cross section of the German population, and of many commanders who were college educated.[319]

Historian Martin Gilbert marks Chelmno on December 7, 1941 as the start of the Final Solution for on that day the Nazis realized that they could make Europe Judenrein.[320]  In the town of Chelmno, the Nazis began their experiment in moving masses of people to walk into the death camps by rounding up unsuspecting Jews under the guise of eastward resettlement and the Nazis set in motion the annihilation of six million Jews.[321]

The killing process began in the summer of 1941 and within six months the Wannsee Conference occurred, turning mass murder into industrialized genocide.[322]  Within less than a year, six killing centers complete with gas chambers were in place and the deportations from the ghettos of Poland to the death camps had started.[323]

In Lithuania, the Nazis sent Jews from the Vilna ghetto to the killing pits in a wooded area near the suburb of Ponary and ten kilometers southwest of Vilna on the road to Grodno.[324]  Giant pits were excavated by the prior Soviet occupying army to serve as storage tanks for airplane fuel.  During the German occupation, these pits became the killing site for 50,000 to 60,000 men, women and children, who were shot on the edge of the pit and fell into the mass graves.[325]

Although the Einsatzgruppe B was in charge of the extermination of all Jews in the Lithuanian area,[326] the Lithuanians manned the firing squad at the pits and were known as the Shaulists or the Sauliu Sajunga (the Riflemen’s association), who were a paramilitary nationalist organization.[327]  The victims’ clothes and other personal effects were booty for the Lithuanian murderers, who profited from the resale market in Jewish articles.[328]  Kazimierz Sakowicz, a Polish journalist who lived in Ponary near the killing pits,[329] recorded the mass executions for three years from his hiding place in his cottage attic and from his outside observations in his diary[330] and commented:

On November 1 [1941], God-fearing representatives of the Catholic Lithuanian nation liquidated four truckloads of Jews.  They have already begun shooting in their military clothing.  November 1 (Saturday) was All Saints’ Day.  It did not disturb their executions.[331]

Sakowicz in his diary commented that “[i]n Ponary after ‘Judgment Day’ [the Judgment Day massacre of 4,000 Jews in Ponary on April 5, 1943, which represented the liquidation of four ghettos in eastern Lithuania – Swieciany, Mikhalishki, Oszmiany and Soly][332] most people do not drink unboiled water because they are afraid that there is blood in the water.”[333]

At the Wannsee conference in a Berlin villa on the shores of Lake Wannsee during January of 1942, the bureaucratic arrangements for the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (“Endlősung der Judenfrage”) was implemented with the goal of exterminating over eleven million Jews from all areas to be conquered including England.[334]  The purpose of the Conference of the Staatssekretäre (Undersecretaries of State) was to enlist the active cooperation of all Ministries and the Civil Service towards the implementation of the Final Solution.[335]  At the Wannsee conference, Reinhard Heydrich became the “true architect of the Final Solution” by attaining the consensus among the central agencies.[336]  The members of the various branches of the Civil Service did not only express opinions, but contributed concrete propositions to the implementation of the Final Solution with extraordinary enthusiasm.[337]  Also, another purpose of the conference was to discuss the inclusion of Jews from non-German states and the question of mixed marriages.[338]

For the Holocaust, the Germans and local collaborators would use special language to “beautify” (verschönern) the murders and developed a subspecies as Victor Klemperer termed Lingua Tertii Imperii, the use of terminology to hide atrocities or Sprachregelung.[339]  Without Hitler and the Nazis, the Holocaust would not have occurred, but the anti-Semitic beliefs of the Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Belorussians made the Nazis’ extermination policy possible.[340]

The Vichy government under Marshal Philippe Pétain revived France’s anti-Semitic tradition supported by Catholic, socialist, racist and nationalist sources by enacting Statut des Juifs and other anti-Semitic legislation eliminating all Jewish presence in public life, dispossessing Jewish property and deporting eastward 80,000 Jews to the death camps.[341]  The Vichy government sponsored a propaganda campaign blaming the French defeat on Jewish politicians and Jewish financiers of the Third Republic.[342]

Without the full cooperation of the French police of rounding up Jews and substantial collaboration from the local administration to prepare detailed race censuses and identity cards, the Nazis could not have murdered so many French Jews.[343]  The Pétain government abolished the emancipation decree of 1791 and established concentration camps on French soil to hold French Jews, some of whom died of starvation and disease before transit on the death trains.[344]

The murder of millions in five years required the voluntary complicity of tens of thousands in public and private institutions: army, police, civil service, Foreign Office, railroads, postal services, utilities, bureaucrats, corporations, bankers, lawyers, judges, physicians and scientists.[345]  Professor Wistrich wrote that the organization of mass murder involved not only the immediate murderers, but tens of thousands of doctors, lawyers, diplomats, accountants, bankers, clerks and the railway workers who kept the trains running to the death camps.[346]

The culture of anti-Semitism that brought Hitler to power also brought voluntary cooperation in the destruction of the Jews.[347]  For example, IG Farben was involved not only in the Nazis’ predatory policies throughout Europe, but in their crimes by employing slave labor from concentration camps.[348]

Nora Levin, in her history of the Holocaust said:

In Hitler-Germany, a highly developed people devised the rationale and methodology for exterminating six million human beings – over a million of them children – and for converting them into fat for soap, hair for mattresses and bone for fertilizer.  For the Nazis, Jews became part of the non-human universe – the objects of functional exploitation, undifferentiated from other non-human matter in nature, and requiring the same detachment.  This new formulation enabled mass murderers to think of themselves as technicians following orders and to call mass murder “special treatment.”[349]

Hannah Arendt during the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem describes the typical S.S. mentality of which Eichmann was very proud of the “objective” attitude when talking about concentration camps in terms of “administration” and about extermination camps in terms of “economy.”[350]  The S.S. calculated the “absorptive capacity” of the various killing installations and the requests for slave workers from the numerous industrial enterprises established around the death camps with the purpose to kill through labor.[351]  German firms, such as I.G. Farben, the Krupp Werke and Siemens-Schuckert Werke, had established plants in Auschwitz and the Lublin death camps.[352]

Hannah Arendt in describing the death camps spoke about the calculated program of the Nazis to destroy not just the ideas and faith of people, but to destroy their humanity, by first removing all rights of citizenship or access to justice, the “juridical person.”[353] The second step in the destruction of one’s humanity was the destruction of the “moral person” by eliminating all decisions of conscience, and then the final step in destroying the human was the removal of the “individual person” by bringing all to the same state of malnutrition, of working to death and of disease.[354]  Primo Levi described work in Auschwitz as a “horrifying parody of work, useless and senseless – labor as punishment leading to agonizing death.”[355]

Primo Levi commented on the hollow men of the extermination camps after losing their family, their home, their country and their livelihood.[356]

Nothing belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand.  They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains. [357]

Hannah Arendt, in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, contends that the Nazi actions against the Jews were largely impersonal and the cumulation of decisions dispassionately concluded from a rationally formulated plan to remove all obstacles to the fulfillment of Germany’s destiny as defined by Nazi ideology.[358]  For the Nazis who organized the plans and made the decisions, the deprivation or emptiness of human spirit was so complete that they considered the Jews not in any human way, but disposable objects to be eliminated by way of a few freight trains, a few engineers and a few chemists.[359]  Primo Levi was amazed when he first arrived at Auschwitz of the mystery in “how can one hit a man without anger?”[360]

However, this deprivation of spirit afflicted the leaders of the West as evident by their silence in order to resolve their own “Jewish problem.”[361] Beginning in1942, the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor and Chelmno were fully operational.[362]  In May 1942, the Jewish Labor Bund sent a report to London stating that over 350,000 Jews had been murdered and the Nazis were planning to exterminate all European Jews.[363]  In August 1942, Gerhart Riegner, secretary of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, sent a telegram to London and Washington detailing the plan and implementation of the “Final Solution,” but both the Foreign Office and the State Department doubted the Riegner telegram.[364]

In 1942, the prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, advised Washington and London about the Jews being gassed at the Chelmno concentration camp and proposed Allied bombing of railroad lines leading to the death camps, but British and American military and political leaders were skeptical of the reports about Auschwitz and other death camps and did not consider bombing the camps or rail lines as a military priority.[365]  In November 1942, Rabbi Stephen Wise of New York publicly announced and the U.S. State Department confirmed the mass murder of 2 million Jews and the Nazi intention to murder all the Jews of Europe, which was further reported by the BBC.[366] In December 1942, Britain, the United States, the USSR and nine allies finally condemned the Nazi extermination of the Jewish people in Europe.[367]

Jewish leaders requested Roosevelt and Churchill to bomb the railway tracks leading to Auschwitz, but the requests were ignored.[368]  How strong is the chain of guilt that links 1,900 years of Christian hatred against the Jews to Nazi Germany’s systematic execution of a whole people.[369]  At Madison Square Garden in March 1943 to rally protest against Jewish extermination in Europe, the author and dramatist, Ben Hecht spoke to the crowd about the “veil of silence” around the Holocaust by saying:

The corpse of a people lies on the steps of civilization. Behold it. Here it is! And no voice is heard to cry halt to the slaughter, no government speaks to bid the murder of human millions end.[370]

In April 1943, an Anglo-American Bermuda conference was held to debate the public clamor for rescue initiatives for the Jewish population of Europe.[371]  However, no plans of rescue, no sanctuaries, no agreement to increase immigration to the U.S. or Palestine, nothing was proposed or done at the conference, except only silence while the Warsaw ghetto was destroyed by the Nazis.[372]  On June 19, 1943, Josef Goebbels proclaimed Germany to be Judenfrei (free of Jews).[373]  By the end of 1943, almost three million Polish Jews had perished about ninety percent of the prewar Jewish population.  In Western Belorussia, this Jewish destruction occurred with the German liquidation of ghettos and camps.[374]

However, some Jews escaped from the ghettos to the forests of Western Belorussia.  The Bielski Partisans hiding in the forests of Western Belorussia numbered more than 1,200 Jews by 1944 and became the largest armed rescue operation of Jews from the ghettos by Jews during the war.[375]  While the Soviet Army opened its Great Offensive on Belorussia and the Baltic states in 1944, the Jewish partisans were disrupting the arrival of German reinforcements by destroying important roads and bridges.[376]  From the beginning, the Bielski Partisans realized that fighting the Germans was not heroism, but heroism was to save a child, a woman, a human being and save as many Jews as possible in the forest.[377]

If the world really condemned the extermination of the Jews, why were those trains allowed to roll unhindered into Poland?[378]  Why were the tracks leading to Birkenau never bombed?[379] Why was nothing done at least to slow down the operations of the death camps?[380]  Birkenau was exterminating 10,000 Jews per day.[381]  Why did not a single Allied military aircraft try to destroy the rail lines converging on Auschwitz?[382]

After September 1943, American and British bombers reached all over Europe.[383]  By certainly in the fall of 1943, the Nazi death camps were within range of the Soviet air force, but there was no order from Stalin to bomb the gas chambers, in contrast to Nazi fantasy propaganda about Jewish domination of the Soviet regime.[384]  On August 20, 1944, 127 Flying Fortresses escorted by a 100 Mustang fighters dropped bombs on a factory less than 5 miles from Auschwitz-Birkenau and on other occasions bombed nearby industrial targets of Auschwitz III while flying over death camps and railway lines not considered as military targets.[385]

American planes, bombing the factories surrounding Auschwitz in 1944, took photos in broad daylight of the camp.[386]  In the summer of 1944, American bombers did strike at the Buna synthetic oil plant of I.G. Farben near Birkenau and on September 13, 1944 bombs were dropped in error from the intended military target and hit the SS barracks on the Auschwitz Main Camp killing 15 SS soldiers.[387]  Shalom Lindenbaum, who had been at Birkenau and worked at the slave labor camp for the Farben plant described the emotions from the September 13th bombing from the American planes:

We ceased to work, and the German soldiers and civilians ran to the shelters.  Most of us didn’t. So probably, we expressed our superiority feeling, and a kind of revenge.  We had nothing to lose, only expected to enjoy the destruction of the big factory which we were building for the I.G. Farben Industrie.  It was naturally so.

This happy feeling didn’t change also after the Americans indeed, began to bomb, and obviously we had casualties too – wounded and dead.  How beautiful was it to see squadron after squadron burst from the sky, drop bombs, destroy the buildings, and kill also members of the Herrenvolk.

Those bombardments elevated our morale and, paradoxically, awakened probably some hopes of surviving, of escaping from this hell. In our wild imagination we also saw a co-ordination between the Allies and the indeed small underground movement in the camp, with which I was in touch.  We imagined a co-ordinated destruction and escape; destruction from above by the bombers, and from our hands, while escaping, even if we have to be living bombs – to be killed.  Unfortunately, this never occurred.[388]

When requests to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the crematoria reached Washington, the War Department official who received the requests gave the instructions to “kill” the requests.[389]  However, Churchill understood the slaughter and wrote to Anthony Eden in July 1944: “There is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible single crime ever committed in the whole history of the world!”[390]  Martin Gilbert remarked in Auschwitz and the Allies that “In 1944, as that [Nazi] deception began to fail, and while a series of detailed reports of continuing Nazi atrocities were reaching the west, it was not German policy, but Allied skepticism and disbelief, as well as political considerations and even prejudice, that served to inhibit action.”[391]

Alexander Werth, a BBC correspondent based in Moscow, reported about the industrial scale of the Majdanek death camp near Lublin during its Red Army liberation in August 1944.[392]  However, the West thought the descriptions of such barbarism was inconceivable and Wert wrote “When I sent the BBC a detailed report on Majdanek in August 1944, they refused to use it; they thought it was a Russian propaganda stunt, and it was not until the discovery in the west of Buchenwald, Dachau and Belsen that they were convinced that Majdanek and Auschwitz were also genuine.”[393]

During a White House meeting about forming a Commission on the Holocaust, President Carter presented to Elie Wiesel from government archives the photos of where Wiesel was held prisoner during the war.[394]  Wiesel points out the chimneys of Auschwitz and Birkenau and asks whether these photos were available to President Roosevelt in 1944.[395]  After President Carter responded yes and that Roosevelt knew what was happening in Auschwitz, Wiesel asked why did Roosevelt refuse to bomb the railways leading to Birkenau?[396]

There was no answer and the president’s smile was gone.[397]  President Carter’s own actions in office and later out of office reflect his own visceral anti-Semitic nature that is anti-Jewish and anti-Israel without doubt and his biased whitewash of Arab abuses and terrorist violence.[398]  Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia has been a major donor to the Carter Center at Emory University[399] and the Carter Center and other Carter projects have received hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and other infamous Arab sources, such as Osama bin Laden’s brothers, Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, Saudi arms merchant Adnon Khashoggi, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Fund for Development, Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan and other despots and anti-Semitics.[400]

The lack of action during the war demonstrates that the free world did not, and does not, care whether Jews lived or died and whether they were annihilated one day or another.[401]  Even during the destruction of European Jewry, the British Colonial Secretary decided to allow only 30,000 entries for Jews emigrating from Nazi-held countries in 1944.[402]  Reprehensibly, only 8,000 Jews were rescued before immigration was canceled by Britain in December 1944 for Palestine.[403]   When the Germans began evacuating Greece in July 1944 and rail transportation was critically needed for German troops, the deportation of Jews continued on schedule without interference from the world.[404]

While Adolf Eichmann was in Hungary from April to July of 1944, he had the pleasure of personally sending Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz for extermination.[405]  The Nazis occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944.[406]  During the late spring and early summer of 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz and the remaining Hungarian Jews were driven into ghettos.[407]

From 1941 to 1943, 42,000 Jewish men were drafted into the labor service for the Hungarian army.[408]  The Jewish labor servicemen in the Hungarian army fighting on the Russian front were subject to slave labor conditions of working until death by exhaustion, starvation, disease, or frost bite while the guards and officers entertained themselves with the labor battalions’ misery.[409]  Sandor Brauman from Martonvasar died in a Hungarian Labor Battalion at age 43 in 1945 as listed at Yad Vashem.

Wiesel in his book, From the Kingdom of Memory, describes how they heard during the spring of 1944 in his childhood home of Sighet the distant sounds of cannons from the Russian front and assumed liberation from the Nazis was soon.[410]  Wiesel wrote that we did not know Eichmann was planning the deportation and extermination of the Jewish communities.[411]  Wiesel asks why did not the world tell us – for we could have fled to the mountains – “A mass escape would have had every chance of success.  But we did not know.”[412]

Richard Rubenstein related a Jewish plea to save Hungarian Jews:

When informed by Joel Brand, a Hungarian Jewish emissary, that there was a possibility of saving one million Hungarian Jews from extermination at Auschwitz through Adolf Eichmann’s infamous “blood for trucks” deal, Lord Moyne (the British High Commissioner in Egypt in 1944) replied, “What shall I do with those million Jews? Where shall I put them?”  Lord Moyne and his government understood that Hitler’s “final solution” was the most convenient way of solving the problem of disposing of one group of surplus people for themselves as well as for the Germans.  The British government was by no means averse to the “final solution” as long as the Germans did most of the dirty work.[413]

During a speech on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem on July 10 1944, David Ben-Gurion said:

What have you done to us, you freedom-loving peoples, guardians of justice, defenders of the high principles of democracy and the brotherhood of man? What have you allowed to be perpetrated against a defenseless people while you stood aside and let them bleed to death? . . . If instead of Jews, thousands of English, American, or Russian women, children, and the aged had been tortured every day, burnt to death, asphyxiated in gas chambers – would you have acted in the same way?[414]

The Holocaust was unique because the Jews were not and never had been a menace to Germany, except in the anti-Semitic mythology that the German people accepted without question.[415]  This Satanic delusion was contained in Hitler’s Last Testament, when he wrote “[i]t is not true that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939 . . . [i]t was willed and prepared exclusively by those statesmen who were either of Jewish origins or worked for Jewish interests.”[416]

Hitler’s last political testament dictated on April 29, 1945 in his Berlin bunker blamed the Jews for their own death and once again guilty of their own fate, since the Jews were behind the massive Anglo-American bombings of Germany and the atrocities committed by the Jewish–Bolshevik enemy and prophesied a postwar retribution against international Jewry.[417]  However, the seeds of this evil have found many disciples, imitators and potential heirs to the Nazi anti-Semitic legacy in the Middle East, in which the Nazi madness planted during the 1930s and 1940s has emerged in the Muslim and Arab world.[418]

In July 1945 before the end of the war, general elections in Britain removed the Conservative Party and installed the Labor Party with Prime Minister Clement Attlee, appointing the new Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, who continued the infamy of the White Paper.[419]  In 1929, Bevin attributed the Arab Riots in Palestine to Arab indignation against the power of Jewish money, which was ridiculous with the Zionist movement struggling with lack of funds and the burden of defending Jewish communities against Arab attack.[420]

Bevin was against allowing into Palestine the Holocaust survivors, who were interned in the Displaced Persons camps in Germany.[421]  Bevin wrote a British diplomat that the Jews “have gone through, it is true, the most terrible massacre and persecution,” and indifferently added, “but on the other hand they have got through it and a number have survived.”[422]  Bevin believed that “the Jews were organizing a world conspiracy against poor old Britain” and with the Soviet Union would attempt to bring down the British Empire.[423]  The first U.S. ambassador to Israel, James G. Mc Donald, traveling through London on August 3, 1948, recorded in his diary the following notation:

Facing Bevin across his broad table, I had to tell myself that this was not Hitler seated before me but His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs . . . His bitterness at [American president] Mr. Truman was almost pathological: it found its match only in his other scapegoats – the Jews, the Israelis, the Israeli Government.[424]

The British Foreign Minister “graciously” set the immigration quota to 1,500 per month.[425]  Bevin’s policies were distinctly anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic.  In the summer of 1946, the British government increased its war on Jewish immigration to Palestine by severe quota limitations.[426]  The new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, was anti-Zionist and considered that British interests were served best by a pro-Arab policy.[427]  Sir Ronald Storrs, the British governor of Jerusalem, objected to the proposal that “Arab soil” should be the “involuntary dumping ground for people unacceptable elsewhere.”[428]

In March 1945, Lord Gort, the high commissioner for Palestine, wrote to the colonial secretary in London that “the establishment of any Jewish State in Palestine in the immediate future will almost inevitably mean the rebirth of National Socialism in some guise.”[429]   Blinded by his anti-Semitism, Gort was equating Zionism with Nazism, while ignoring the fact that the Arab nationalists were the ones who actively collaborated with Hitler.[430]

The Nazi-Zionist analogy was a favorite weapon of the pro-Arab British elites, while busy repressing the Jewish armed struggle for survival in Palestine and ignoring Arab atrocities committed against the Jewish communities.[431]  In June 1946 (Black Saturday), British troops raided Jewish settlements, searching for arms and arresting thousands.[432]

On August 12, 1946, the British announced that “illegal immigrants” would be deported to concentration camps in Cyprus.[433]  The deportations to Cyprus lasted from August 1946 until April 1948, in which 52,260 were sent to Cyprus.[434]  The British treated the detainees as prisoners of war and supplied food based upon 60 percent of the rations of a British solider, which was insufficient for young people and children.[435]  The Jewish Agency had to supply the additional food for their limited diet.[436]

The British upheld the monthly quota of certificates until the day of British departure from Palestine on May 15, 1948.[437]  The British totally ignored the UN decision that a port would be placed at the disposal of the Jews on February 1, 1948, which was not surprising since the British opposed the UN partition resolution of November 29, 1947 and did everything to interfere with its implementation.[438]

Of the tens of thousands of people guilty of Holocaust atrocities, a few hundred were put on trial and most were eventually released after a few years, but from the punishment of the scarred memories of the survivors there is no release.[439]  In Germany, the farce of self-de-Nazification after 1945 swiftly sanitized the Nazi past for the leadership in industry, science, medicine, the church and the universities.[440]

The vast majority of industrials, who employed slave labor, escaped punishment.[441]  The behavior of industrialists during the Third Reich was not simply the consequences of greed or fear, but simply they felt no guilt when they enslaved and murdered millions of sub-humans.[442]  The vast majority of physicians, health-care workers and scientists in the Nazi racial purification programs were never tried.[443]  German culture and society were different from those of other Western nations and German business leaders, bureaucrats, lawyers, military officers and civilian society who assisted in mass murder were creatures of a long history that made anti-Semitism normal among educated society.[444]

However, Gerald Reitlinger in 1952 asked the question “[a]re the Germans the only racial-political group in the world who are capable of setting back the clock to the early ages of man?  Is it, on the other hand, the age itself as a whole which is moving that way? Is the discarding of selected victims endemic in the overgrown modern ‘democratic’ State? Can it happen again and can it happen here?”[445]  The suffering of the Holocaust survivors did not end with the liberation of the camps; the world still did not want them.[446]  For the Jew, there existed no home in the world for “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in” as epitomized in the Robert Frost poem “The Death of the Hired Man.”

The Canadian government represented the attitude of most governments in unwilling to offer immigration to the surviving Jews with its officials declaring that “None is too many!”[447]  Without any country offering sanctuary, the Jewish survivors in Europe were kept in the places where they had suffered, which were referred to as Displaced Persons’ (“DP”) camps.[448]  Most DP camps were former concentration or slave labor camps, or barracks that housed the SS Death Heads.[449]

The displaced Jews were treated as United Nations nationals within the DP camps system, but there was no political body with the power to offer diplomatic protection or ensure their rights as they were herded into the camps by the occupation military authority.[450]  The German and Austrian DP camps still in 1946 contained over a quarter of a million Jewish refugees and these were not all of the Jews who wanted to leave Europe.[451]

During the summer of 1945, Earl Harrison, appointed by President Truman to lead a delegation to investigate conditions in the DP camps in Germany, summed up his report (the Harrison Report) by saying:

We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that we do not exterminate them.  They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops. One is led to wonder if the German people, seeing this, are not supposing that we are following or at least condoning Nazi policy.[452] 

The Jews, who attempted to return to their former countries and homes, were met with postwar anti-Semitism of “What, you’re back? Auschwitz must not have been so terrible after all.”[453]  The predominant motive for postwar anti-Semitism was that the populace feared the return of the Jews, whose homes and businesses they had confiscated.[454]  The historian Jan Gross explained the hatred for Jews in postwar Poland as:

Jews were perceived as a threat to the material status quo, security, and peaceful conscience of their Christian fellow citizens after the war because they had been plundered and because what remained of Jewish property, as well as Jews’ social roles, had been assumed by Polish neighbors in tacit and often directly opportunistic complicity with Nazi-instigated institutional mass murder.[455]

There were pogroms in Kraków in August 1945 and in Kielce (south of Warsaw) in July 1946 with over 1,500 Jews murdered by Poles within two years after the war.[456]  On July 4, 1946 in Kielce, Poland, nine-year old Henryk Blaszczk led the citizens to the community center building where 200 Jews were living and repeated the centuries-old anti-Semitic lie of ritual murder by Jews of Christian children by claiming to have been imprisoned by Jews where there were corpses of fifteen children.[457]  In the pogrom that followed, local Poles murdered forty-one Jewish people, including women, children and a seven-month-old fetus in broad daylight.[458]  The police and local militia assisted in the pogrom, while the Christian Church authorities declined to intervene.[459]

The Polish primate August Cardinal Hlond refused to publish a letter on ritual murder, anti-Semitism, or the mob killing of Jews in Kielce, which led the British ambassador to Poland to remark to London in August 1946 that “I fear the Polish clergy are fundamentally anti-Semitic.”[460]  Catholic clergy reinforced the post-1918 myth that the Jews plotted to enslave postwar Poland to Soviet Communism, although Jews accounted for less than 20 percent of the small prewar Communist Party.[461]

The Kielce massacre initiated the flight of Polish Jews to the displaced persons camps in allied-occupied Germany with the hope of reaching Palestine.[462]  From the end of the war in May 1945 until the birth of Israel in May 1948, almost seventy thousand Holocaust survivors left the DP camps, crossing borders at night, walking through forests and over the Alps to secret ports in southern France and Italy and with illegal boats to reach Eretz Israel.[463]

During the first conference of Holocaust survivors in Germany in July 1945, the concentration camp survivors declared:

We the remnant of the masses of European Jewry, who have been murdered as a people, whose sons and daughters have fought the hateful [enemy] in the forests of Europe, in the bunkers of the ghettos, in underground movements, in the ranks of the Allied armies, in the Jewish Brigade, and in the units of the Palestinian services, raise our voices as a people and demand:  the immediate establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the recognition of the Jewish people as an equal with all the Allied nations, and its inclusion in the peace conference.[464]  

Members of the Jewish Brigade traveled to DP camps to recruit refugees and organized transportation to Palestine.[465]  The Jewish Brigade was formerly a unit of the British Army of Jewish volunteers from Palestine who served under a Jewish flag in Italy during the war.[466]  Brigade members were active in Aliyah Bet (illegal immigration).[467] Bricah (escape) was an underground organization helping refugees across Europe to Italian ports and Mossad for Aliyah Bet was the organization that directed the illegal immigration from the Mediterranean ports to Palestine.[468]

In July 1947, the ship President Warfield joined the illegal immigration fleet transporting Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine and was renamed the Exodus 1947 and flew the Mogen David.[469]  The Exodus 1947 had 4,554 refugees (which was originally designed for 400 passengers): 1,600 men, 1,282 women, 1,017 young people and 655 children.[470] The Haganah[471] ship Exodus 1947, the desperate attempt by Jewish refugees from the concentration camps of Europe to find asylum in the Promise Land, became the national symbol for the State of Israel, in which her decks had seen the unwanted find strength in each other and in the strength to build a nation.[472]

On her decks teeming with refugees gazing longingly at Mount Carmel, the Exodus lost the battle to dock in Haifa by being stopped by the British navy and forced to re-embark the refugees on three British “cage” prison ships, a floating Auschwitz, for transport appallingly back to DP refugee camps in Germany, but the Exodus won the war of Israel’s birth through public opinion as the “ship that launched a nation.”[473]

It shall be on that day that the Lord will once again show His hand, to acquire the remnant of His people, who will have remained, from Assyria and from Egypt and from Pathros and from Cush and from Elam and from Shinar and from Hamath and from the islands of the sea. He will raise a banner for the nations and assemble the castaways of Israel; and He will gather the dispersed ones of Judah from the four corners of the earth. Isaiah 11:11-12.

For whatever the real reason, President Truman on November 29, 1947 instructed the American delegation to intervene in favor of partition with a U.N. resolution that divided Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.[474]  The same reason led Truman to recognize the State of Israel over the opposition from the State Department and his Secretary of State, George Marshall, who advised against recognition, warning Truman that Arab countries would cut off oil and unite to destroy the Jews.[475]

The State of Israel was not created by the Holocaust, but because of the Holocaust the attempt to establish a state almost failed.[476]  With the millions of Jews who were murdered, there were almost not enough Jews alive to fight for a state.[477]  If the German Reich had held out another year, it is possible that there would have been no Jewish survivors.[478]  The survivors were the basic reason for the mobilization of American Jews by the Zionists, which resulted in American pressure on Britain to turn the Palestine issue over to the United Nations.[479]  The pressure was compounded by the activities of the Jewish underground in Palestine and by illegal immigration organized by the Hagana.[480]

The link between the Holocaust and Israel is an indirect connection.[481]  Rabbi Greenberg wrote that the State of Israel was not a reward or a product or an exchange for the Holocaust, but it was a response to the total assault of death by an outpouring of life and the enduring covenant with the reestablishing and repopulating of the Land.[482]  The rebirth of the State of Israel is the Exodus of the 20th century.

Although the Holocaust survivors were a critical part in the fight for independence, the devastation of the Holocaust endangered the very struggle for independence.[483]  The considerations that led the majority of the nations to support partition were for purely political reasons.[484]  The partition decision of the United Nations did not establish the Jewish state, but the Palestine Jews and its military arm, which emerged from the Hagana, established Israel by their faith in God’s eternal promises.[485]

My Lord is my shepherd, I shall not lack.  In lush meadows He lays me down, beside tranquil waters He leads me.  He restores my soul.  He leads me on paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake.  Though I walk in the valley overshadowed by death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.  Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.  You prepare a table before me in view of my tormentors.  You anointed my head with oil, my cup overflows.  May only goodness and kindness pursue me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the House of the Lord for long days. Psalms 23:1-6.

 

 

 

[1] Abraham J. Heschel, Israel: An Echo of Eternity, (1st ed. 3rd Printing 1969), p. 17.

[2] Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2001), p. 242.

[3] Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, (2nd ed. 2003), p. 88.

[4] Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, p. 259.

[5] John Weiss, Ideology of Death, Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany, (1st ed. 1996), p. 34.

[6] Ibid., p. 34.

[7] Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, p. 42.

[8] Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, (1st ed. 1975), p. xxxvi.

[9] Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations with Adolf Hitler on his Real Aims. (1st ed. 1939), pp. 9, 15. ( Rauschning was part of Hitler’s inner circle during the 1930s and won election as the National Socialist President in the Danzig Senate.)

[10] Ibid., p. 15.

[11] Anna Rauschning, No Retreat, (1st ed. 1942), p. 57.

[12] Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p.58.

[13] Ibid., p. 59.

[14] Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany. (1st ed. 1964), p. 26.

[15] Philippe Burrin, Nazi Anti-Semitism: From Prejudice to the Holocaust, (1st English ed. 2005), p. 58.

[16] Marcia Sachs Littell, Holocaust Education: A Resource Book for Teachers and Professional Leaders, (1st ed. 1985), p. 18.

[17] Burrin, pp. 58-59.

[18] Ibid., pp. 62-63.

[19] Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, pp. 115-117.

[20] Franklin H. Littell and Hubert G. Locke, editors, The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust. (1st ed. 1974), p. 15.

[21] Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust , pp. 116-117.

[22] Lagnado, Lucette M. and Sheila C. Dekel, Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz, (1st ed. 1991), pp. 42-43.

[23] Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island, (1st ed. 2009), p. 8.

[24] Ibid., p. 335.

[25] Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. (1st ed. 2009), pp. 129-130.

[26] Cannato, p. 333.

[27] Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust,(1st ed. 2001), p. 188.

[28] Ibid., p. 189.

[29] Senor and Singer, p. 130.

[30] Walter Laqueur, Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany, (1st ed. 2001), p. 22.

[31] Ibid., pp. 22-23.

[32] Ibid., p. 23.

[33] Lagnado and Dekel, p. 43.

[34] Weiss, p. 129.

[35] Ibid., pp. 129-130.

[36] Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England, (1st ed. 2010), p. 52.

[37] Weiss, p. 130.

[38] Diane Ackerman, The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story,(1st ed. 2007), p. 84.

[39] Ibid.

[40] William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941, (1st ed. 1941), p. 582.

[41] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, (2nd revised and enlarged ed. 1964), p. 27.

[42] Stewart W. Herman, It’s Your Souls We Want, (1st ed. 1943), p. 73.

[43] Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust , p. 43.

[44] Ibid., p.42.

[45] Rauschning, Hitler Speaks. p. 220.

[46] Dawidowicz, p. 150.

[47] Shirer, Berlin Diary, p. 285.

[48] Ibid., pp. 85-86.

[49] Dawidowicz, p. 150..

[50] Ibid., pp. 150-151.

[51] Ibid., p. 151.

[52] Harry James Cargas, When God and Man Failed: Non-Jewish Views of the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1981), p. 170.

[53] Ibid.

[54] James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History, (1st ed. 2001), p. 256.

[55] Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, (1st ed. 2010), p. 21.

[56] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 8.

[57] Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 232.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Carroll., p. 240.

[60] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 123.

[61] Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 182.

[62] National Socialism, or Hitlerism, is the name of the movement founded by Adolf Hitler in 1919. Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church’s Confession Under Hitler, (1st ed. 1962), p. 19.

[63] Cochrane, pp. 21-22.

[64] Ibid., p. 22.

[65] Ibid.

[66] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 77.

[67] Ibid.

[68] Prager and Telushkin, pp. 138-140.

[69] Ibid. p. 139.

[70] Ibid. p. 141.

[71] Dawidowicz, p. 4.

[72] Weiss, p. 351.

[73] Ibid.

[74] Ibid., p. 368.

[75] Ibid., p. 350.

[76] Ibid.

[77] Ibid.

[78] Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, Volume One: Preliminary History and the Times of Illusions 1918-1934, (1st ed. 1988), p. 270.

[79] Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, (1st ed. 1996), p. 100.

[80] Dr. Johann Neuhäusler, What Was It Like in the Concentration Camp at Dachau?: An Attempt to Come Closer to the Truth, (1st ed. 1960), p. 7.

[81] Ibid., pp. 7-8.

[82] Dwork and van Pelt, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, pp. 101-102.

[83] Ibid., p. 361.

[84] Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, (The Folio Society 1979), p. 11.

[85] Barbara Distel and Ruth Jakusch, editors, Concentration Camp Dachau 1933-1945, (17 ed. 1978), p. 220.

[86] Ibid.

[87] Scholder, vol. I, p. 255.

[88] Mitchell G. Bard, The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance that Undermines America’s Interests in the Middle East, (1st ed. 2010), p. 1; Scholder, vol. 1, p. 264..

[89] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, pp. 241-212.

[90] Ibid.

[91] Roy S. Durstine, Red Thunder, (1st ed. 1934), p. 132.

[92] Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Flight From the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933-1946, (1st ed. 2009), p. 16.

[93] Ibid.

[94] Ibid.

[95] Konrad Heiden, Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, (1st ed. 1944), p. 589.

[96] Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945, (1st ed. 1992), p. 261.

[97] Deborah Hertz, How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin, (1st ed. 2007), p. 3.

[98] Ibid., pp. 9-10.

[99] Ibid., p. 10.

[100] Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (1st ed. 2006), p. 18.

[101] Ibid.

[102] Ibid.

[103] Ibid.

[104] Ibid., p. 19.

[105] Ibid., p. 20.

[106] Ibid., p. 26.

[107] Ibid.

[108] Ibid., p. 28.

[109] Ibid., p. 29.

[110] Ibid., p. 49.

[111] Ibid., pp. 271-272.

[112] Ibid., pp. 272-273.

[113] Ernst Hanfstaengl, Unheard Witness, (1st ed. 1957), pp. 221-222.

[114] Ibid. p. 222.

[115] Ibid.

[116] Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations with Adolf Hitler on his Real Aims, (1st ed. 1939), p. 94.

[117] Hertz, p. 10.

[118] Ibid.

[119] Ibid., p. 3.

[120] Ibid.

[121] Ibid., p. 10.

[122] Stewart W. Herman, Jr., It’s Your Souls We Want, (1st ed. 1943), pp. 24-25.

[123] Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Stratgic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation, (1st ed. 2001), p. 8.

[124] Ibid., p. 53.

[125] Ibid., p. 8.

[126] Ibid., p. 22.

[127] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 220.

[128] Black, IBM and the Holocaust, p. 265.

[129] Ibid., pp. 351-353.

[130] Ibid., pp. 425-426.

[131] Ibid., p. 117.

[132] Ibid., pp. 50-51.

[133] Ibid., p. 55.

[134] Ibid., pp. 56-59.

[135] Ibid., p. 73.

[136] Ibid., pp. 73-74

[137] Ibid., p. 108..

[138] Bard, p. 2.

[139] Black, IBM and the Holocaust, p. 104.

[140] Edwin Black, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust, (1st ed. 2009), p. 14.

[141] Ibid., pp. 122-123.

[142] Ibid., p. 15.

[143] Ibid., p. 20.

[144] Ibid., pp. 33-35.

[145] Ibid., pp. 42-43, 48.

[146] Lagnado and Dekel, pp. 43, 48.

[147] Ibid., pp. 46, 52, 75.

[148] Ibid., p. 59.

[149] Ibid., p. 60.

[150] Black, Nazi Nexus, p. 52.

[151] Ibid., p. 96.

[152] Ibid., pp. 109-110.

[153] Ibid., p. 107.

[154] Ibid., pp. 107-108.

[155] Ibid., p. 114.

[156] Diarmuid Jeffreys, Hell’s Cartel: I.G. Farben and the Making of Hitler’s War Machine, (1st ed. 2008), pp. 3-4, 7-8.

[157] Ibid., 301.

[158] Ibid., p. 327.

[159] Dwork and van Pelt, p. 94.

[160] Ibid.

[161] Herman, pp. 37-38.

[162] Bard, p. 2

[163] Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, A Lifelong Friendship, (1st ed. 2007), p. 106.

[164] Bard, p. 2.

[165] Ibid., p. 19.

[166] Ibid.

[167] Arendt, p. 85.

[168] Ibid.

[169] Ibid., p. 86.

[170] Cargas, p. 14.

[171] Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles From the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939-1944, (1st ed. 2002), p. 49.

[172] Livia E. Bitton Jackson, Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1980), p. 15.

[173] Ibid.

[174] Bard, p. 2.

[175] Black, IBM and the Holocaust, pp. 141-142.

[176] Ibid., pp. 157-159.

[177] Ibid., p. 169.

[178] Ibid., p. 173.

[179] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 57.

[180] Yehuda Bauer, The Death of the Shtetl, (1st ed. 2009), p. 16.

[181] Ibid.

[182] Ibid.

[183] Ibid.

[184] Nechama Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland, (1st ed. 1986), p. 18.

[185] Yehuda Bauer, The Death of the Shtetl, p. 16.

[186] Ibid., pp. 21-22.

[187] Ibid., p. 22.

[188] Allan Levine, Fugitives of the Forest: The Heroic Story of Jewish Resistance and Survival During the Second World War, (1st Lyons Press ed. 2009), p. xxvi.

[189] Ibid.

[190] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 188.

[191] Ibid.

[192] Ibid., p. 208.

[193] Ibid., p. 194.

[194]Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 57.

[195] Ibid.

[196] Ibid., p. 58.

[197] Ibid.

[198] Ibid., p. 57.

[199] Ibid.

[200] Ibid., p. 58.

[201] Ibid., p. 57.

[202] Ibid.

[203] William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941, (1st ed. 1941), p. 120.

[204] Weiss, p. 331.

[205] Ibid.

[206] Susan D. Bachrach, Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust, (1st ed. 1994), p. 27.

[207] Dwork and van Pelt, p. 100.

[208] Ibid.

[209] Bachrach, p. 27.

[210] Wiess, p. 331.

[211] Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 233.

[212] Dwork and van Pelt, p. 101.

[213] Ibid.

[214] Ibid., pp. 102-103.

[215] Ibid., p. 102.

[216] Ibid.

[217] Nechama Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland, p. 18.

[218] Dwork and van Pelt, p. 118.

[219] Dwork and van Pelt, p. 303.

[220] Bard, p. 3; Shirer, Berlin Diary, pp. 144-147.

[221] Shirer, Berlin Diary, pp. 125-126.

[222] Bard, p. 3.

[223] Ibid.

[224] Ibid., p. 4.

[225] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 61.

[226] Bard, p. 6.

[227] Ibid., p. 61.

[228] During the “night of broken glass,” the equivalent of half the Belgium glass industry’s annual production was destroyed. Ibid., p. 196.

[229] Wiess, pp. 331-332.

[230] Martin Gilbert, Holocaust Journey: Travelling in Search of the Past, (1st ed. 1997), p. 4.

[231] Ibid., p. 5.

[232] Bard, p. 188.

[233] Ibid.

[234] Cargas, p. 207.

[235] Bard, p. 189.

[236] Maria Mazzenga, American Religious Responses to Kristallnacht (1st ed. 2009), ps. 2-3.

[237] Ibid., p. 6.

[238] Ibid., p. 3.

[239] Ibid.

[240] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 189-190.

[241] Ibid., p. 190.

[242] Ibid.

[243] Ibid.

[244] Ibid.

[245] Ibid., p. 197.

[246] Bard, p. 174.

[247] Ibid., p. 196.

[248] Ibid.

[249] See Bard, p, 154.

[250] Bard, p. 183.

[251] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 68.

[252] Bard., pp. 198-199.

[253] Ibid., p. 199

[254] Burrin, p. 76.

[255] Wiess., p. 336.

[256] Burrin, p. 78.

[257] Burrin, p. 72.

[258] Ibid., p. 80.

[259] Ibid.

[260] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 248.

[261] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 220.

[262] Ibid., p. 221.

[263] Christopher R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942, (1st ed. 2004), p. 11.

[264] Ibid.

[265]Gordon Thomas and Max M. Witts, Voyage of the Damned, (1st ed. 1974), p. 262.

[266] Ibid.

[267] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 623.

[268] Thomas and Witts, p. 262.

[269] Ibid. p. 252.

[270] Jocelyn Hellig, The Holocaust and Antisemitism, A Short History, (1st ed. 2003), p. 44.

[271] Black, IBM and the Holocaust, p. 126.

[272] Thomas and Witts, p. 263.

[273] Ibid. p. 283.

[274] Bard, p. 177.

[275] Yaakov Astor, The Hidden Hand, Uncovering Divine Providence in Major Events of the 20th Century, (1st ed. 2007), pp. 88-89.

[276] Bard, p. 177.

[277] Ibid., p. 178.

[278] Ibid.

[279] David C. Holly, Exodus 1947, (Revised 2nd ed. 1995), p. 60.

[280] Ibid. pp. 60-61.

[281] Ibid. p. 61.

[282] Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, p. 214.

[283] Ibid., p. 215.

[284] Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p. 178.

[285] Ibid., pp. 178-179.

[286] Ibid., p. 179.

[287] Ibid., pp. 179, 181.

[288] Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, (1st ed. 1981), p. 21.

[289] Ibid.

[290] Norman Rose, ‘A Senseless, Squalid War:’ Voices from Palestine 1945-1948, (1st ed. 2009), p. 61.

[291] Ibid.

[292] Ibid., pp. 61-62.

[293] Ibid., p. 62.

[294] Ibid.

[295] Ibid.

[296] Ibid.

[297] Ibid., p. 63.

[298] James Parkes, A History of Palestine From 135 A.D. to Modern Times, (1st ed. 1949), p. 341.

[299]Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon and Chana Schütz, Jews in Nazi Berlin: From Kristallnacht to Liberation, (1st ed. 2009), p. x.

[300] Ibid. p. vii.

[301] Ibid., p. x.

[302] Theresienstadt, a former Czech fortress, served beginning in June 1942 as the initial deportation destination for German and Austrian Jews and functioned primarily as a transit camp to eastern extermination camps. Ibid., p. 221.

[303] Ibid., pp. x-xi.

[304] Ibid., p. xi.

[305] Arendt, p. 91.

[306] Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides, Lodz Ghetto, Inside a Community Under Siege, (1st ed. 1989), p. 176.

[307] James M. Glass, Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust: Moral Uses of Violence and Will, (1st ed. 2004), p. 38.

[308] Adelson and Lapides, p. 513.

[309] Dwork and van Pelt, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, pp. 122-123.

[310] Israel Gutman, Resistance and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, (1st ed. 1004), p. 100.

[311] Ibid.

[312] Louis P. Lochner, What About Germany? (1st ed. 1942), p. 2.

[313] Arendt, p. 154.

[314] Gutman, p. 100.

[315] Elie Wiesel, And the Sea Is Never Full: Memoirs, 1969 – ,(1st ed. 1999), p. 228.

[316] Gutman, p. 101.

[317] Yehuda Bauer, The Death of the Shtetl, p. 13.

[318] Gutman, p. 101..

[319] Ibid.

[320] Astor, pp. 49-50.

[321] Ibid.

[322] Gutman, p. 102.

[323] Ibid.

[324] Kazimierz Sakowicz, Ponart Diary 1941-1943: A Bystander’s Account of a Mass Murder, (1st English ed. 2005), p. xiii.

[325] Ibid.

[326] Ibid., p. 6.

[327] Ibid., p. 12.

[328] Ibib., p. 10.

[329] Ibid., p. xiv.

[330] Ibid., p. x.

[331] Ibid., p. 39.

[332] Ibid., pp. 67, 69.

[333] Ibid., p. 91.

[334] Weiss, p. 338.

[335] Arendt, pp. 112-113.

[336] James S. Pacy and Alan P. Wertheimer, Perspectives on the Holocaust: Essays in Honor of Raul Hilberg, (1st ed. 1995), p. 47.

[337] Arendt, p. 113.

[338] Pacy and Wertheimer, p. 39-40.

[339] Yehuda Bauer, The Death of the Shtetl, p. 11.

[340] Levine, p. 36.

[341] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 277.

[342] Julius, p. 16.

[343] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 277.

[344] Ibid.

[345] Weiss, p. 342.

[346] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 219.

[347] Weiss, p. 342.

[348] Burrin, p. 104.

[349] Cargas, p. 134.

[350] Arendt, p. 69.

[351] Ibid., p. 79.

[352] Ibid.

[353] Cargas, p. 143.

[354] Ibid., pp. 143-144.

[355] Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity, (First Touchstone Edition 1996), p. 178.

[356] Ibid., p. 27.

[357] Ibid.

[358] Cargas., p. 184.

[359] Ibid., pp. 185-186.

[360] Primo Levi, p. 16.

[361] Cargas, p. 186.

[362] Rose, p. 60.

[363] David Patterson, Along the Edge of Annihilation: The Collapse and Recovery of Life in the Holocaust Diary,(1st ed. 1999), p. 152

[364] Rose, p. 60.

[365] Levine, p. 55.

[366] Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair, Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, (1st ed. 1998), p. 195.

[367] Ibid.

[368] Cargas, p. 186.

[369] Ibid.

[370] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 193.

[371] Dwork and van Pelt, p. 289.

[372] Ibid.

[373] Hertz, p. 11.

[374] Nechama Tec, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, (1st ed. 1993), p. 186.

[375] Ibid., p. vii.

[376] Ibid,, p. 196.

[377] Ibid., p. 83.

[378] Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Memoirs, (1st ed. 1995), p. 74.

[379] Ibid.

[380] Ibid.

[381] Ibid.

[382] Ibid.

[383] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 195.

[384] Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, p. 96.

[385] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 195.

[386] Wiesel, And the Sea Is Never Full, p. 183.

[387] Martin Gilbert, Holocaust Journey: Travelling in Search of the Past, (1st ed. 1997), p. 145.

[388] Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, pp. 315-316.

[389] Gilbert, Holocaust Journey: Travelling in Search of the Past, p. 145.

[390] Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, p. 341.

[391] Ibid., p. viii.

[392] David Shneer, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2011), pp. 162-164.

[393] Ibid., p. 164.

[394] Wiesel, And the Sea Is Never Full, p. 183.

[395] Ibid.

[396] Ibid.

[397] Ibid.

[398] See Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 490.

[399] Bard, The Arab Lobby, p. 103.

[400] Ibid., pp. 134-135.

[401] Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, p. 74.

[402] David C. Holly, Exodus 1947, (Revised 2nd ed. 1995), p. 73.

[403] Ibid.

[404] Dawidowicz, p. 142.

[405] Ruth Gruber, Exodus 1947, the Ship That Launched a Nation, (1st ed. 2007), p. 5.

[406] Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, When the Danube Ran Red, (1st ed. 2010), p. 13.

[407] Ibid., p. 12.

[408] Ibid.

[409] Ibid., p. 48.

[410] Wiesel, From the Kingdom of Memory, p. 153.

[411] Ibid.

[412] Ibid., p. 128.

[413] Cargas, p. 138.

[414] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 185.

[415] Wiess, p. 384.

[416] Ibid.

[417] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 248.

[418] Ibid., p. 249.

[419] Mordechai Naor, HAAPALA, Clandestine Immigration 1931-1948, Ministry of Defense Publishing House, p. 41.

[420] Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p. 249.

[421] Ibid.

[422] Michael Makovsky, Churchill’s Promised Land, Zionism and Statecraft, (1st ed. 2007), p. 180.

[423] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 376.

[424] Ibid., p. 375.

[425] Holly, p. 61.

[426] Mordechai Naor, p. 61.

[427] Makovsky, p. 227.

[428] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 375.

[429] Ibid.

[430] Ibid.

[431] Ibid., pp. 378-379.

[432] Mordechai Naor, p. 61.

[433] Ibid.

[434] Ibid., p. 68.

[435] Ibid., p. 69.

[436] Ibid.

[437] Ibid, p. 100.

[438] Ibid.

[439] Lawrence L. Langer, Using and Abusing the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2006), p. 96.

[440] Ibid., p. 389.

[441] Weiss, p. 391.

[442] Ibid.

[443] Ibid.

[444] Ibid., p. 395.

[445] Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939-1945, (1st ed. 1953), p. 483.

[446] Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Memoirs, p. 145.

[447] Senor and Singer, p. 130.

[448] Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Memoirs, p. 145.

[449] Ibid.

[450] Dwork and van Pelt, p. 298.

[451] Parkes, p. 356.

[452] Howard Greenfeld, After the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2001), pp. 72-74.

[453] Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Memoirs, p. 145.

[454] Ibid.

[455] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession, p. 24-25.

[456] Ibid., p. 24.

[457] Kevin P. Spicer, Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2007), pp. 276-277.

[458] Ibid. p. 277.

[459] Ibid. p. 278.

[460] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession, p. 25.

[461] Ibid.

[462] Rose, p. 75, note.

[463] Ruth Gruber, Exodus 1947, the Ship That Launched a Nation, (1st ed. 2007), p. 4.

[464] Leni Yahil, The Holocaust, the Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, (1st English ed. 1990), p. 660.

[465] Howard Greenfeld, After the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2001), p. 92.

[466] Ibid.

[467] Ibid.

[468] Ibid., p. 93.

[469] Holly, p. 219.

[470] Ibid. p. 45.

[471] Haganah was the Defense Movement, which later becomes the Israeli Defense Force (“IDF”).

[472] Holly, p. 203.

[473] Ibid. pp. 213, 221.

[474] Bauer, p. 256.

[475] Ibid.

[476] Ibid.

[477] Ibid.

[478] Ibid.

[479] Ibid., p. 258.

[480] Ibid.

[481] Bauer., p. 259.

[482] Irving Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity, (1st ed. 2004), p. 339.

[483] Bauer., p. 259.

[484] Ibid.

[485] Ibid., p. 256.

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POLITICAL ANTI-SEMITISM

 Martin M. van Brauman

 

Political anti-Semitism represents the ideological weapon used by totalitarian movements and pseudo-religious systems.[i]  Norman Cohn in Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion wrote that during the Nazi years “the drive to exterminate the Jews sprang from demonological superstitions inherited from the Middle Ages.”[ii]  The myth of the Jewish world-conspiracy developed out of demonology and inspired the pathological fantasy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was used to stir up the massacres of Jews during the Russian civil war and then was adopted by Nazi ideology and later by Islamic theology.[iii]  Most people see anti-Semitism only as political and cultural anti-Semitism, whereas the hidden, most deeply rooted and most dangerous source of the evil has been theological anti-Semitism stemming historically from Christian dogma and adopted by and intensified with Islamic theology.[iv]

During the 1946 Nuremberg trials, Julius Streicher claimed he invented nothing anti-Semitic that was not previously asserted by Martin Luther.[v]  The princes of three Prussian provinces drove out the Jews following Luther’s advice and his advice foreshadowed the Protestant German-Christians of the Nazi movement.[vi]

Drawing upon the paganism of the medieval Christian Church, Martin Luther outlined the actions to be taken against the Jews in his pamphlet entitled Concerning the Jews and Their Lies (47:267)(1543): (1) burn all synagogues, (2) destroy Jewish dwellings, (3) confiscate the Jews’ holy books, (4) forbid rabbis to teach, (5) forbid Jews to travel, (6) forbid Jews to charge interest on loans to non-Jews and confiscate Jewish property, (7) force Jews to do physical labor and (8) expel the Jews from provinces where Christians live.[vii]  Luther preached to the German princes and nobles to drive out the Jews, the “storm troops of the Antichrist,” from Germany similar to their banishment from Spain and France.[viii]

Luther’s document Concerning the Jews and Their Lies was exhibited in a glass case in Nuremberg during Nazi party rallies.[ix] The Nazis made public after four centuries Luther’s anti-Semitic writings.[x]  Death was Luther’s final solution to the Jewish problem.[xi]  Luther’s pamphlet stated that:

We are at fault in not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord and of  the Christians which they [the Jews] shed for three hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and the blood of the children they [the Jews] have shed since then (which still shines forth from their eyes and their skins). We are at fault in not slaying them.

[Our rulers] must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in, proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone and marrow.[xii]

Luther’s theological teachings on the Jews influenced most of the important theological works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe, which portrayed Jewish persecution as a living and eternal testimony to the victory of Christianity.[xiii]  The words of Martin Luther, concerning the Jews, were not renounced by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America until 1994.

Many German Jews immigrated to Poland in the late 15th century, escaping the persecution in Western Europe.[xiv]  However, over the centuries in Poland with legal restrictions against owning land and other limitations forcing Jewish segregation, the Jews became the “other,” the killers of Christ, the exploitive urban capitalists and after 1920 the “Communist threat.”[xv]

Catherine the Great invited German Jews to come to Russia during the 18th century and offered religious freedom and economic stability, but they were later confined to the “Pale of Settlement” which she established later in 1791.[xvi]  When Czar Alexander II, who inaugurated an era of liberalism in Russia, was assassinated by revolutionaries, Jews were blamed and Czar Alexander III pursued anti-Jewish persecutions.[xvii]  Jews, who were cashiers, clerks, correspondence chiefs and bookkeepers in banks, heads of business departments and manufacturers, were driven out of Moscow to the Pale of Settlement into a state of destitution.[xviii]  By the 1890’s, Russian Jews without jobs had increased by nearly 30 to 40 percent of the people within the Pale.[xix]

In 1881, Constantine Pobyedonostsev, chief adviser to Czar Alexander III, offered his “solution” to the Jewish problem as having one-third of the Jews to emigrate, one-third to convert and one-third to die of hunger in the Pale.[xx]  After the 1881 pogroms, the ultimate purpose of Russian policy was the total elimination of the Jews.[xxi]  Both Alexander III and his son Nicholas II were fanatical anti-Semitics with the objective of clearing Russia of the Jews.[xxii]  From 1881 to 1930, the Czarist government’s anti-Semitic programs drove the mass emigration from Eastern Europe of over 4,000,000 Jews to Western Europe, the United States and especially to the urban centers of Germany and Austria.[xxiii]

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery created by the czarist secret police, alleged secret plans of a mythical international Jewish conspiracy for world domination.[xxiv]  By 1905, the revolutionary movement in Russia so threatened the czarist government that anti-Semitic propaganda, such as The Protocols, was used to rally the masses against the liberals and the revolutionaries.[xxv]

The Protocols were fabricated by Russians in Paris working as agents of the Okhrana (the czarist secret police) under the direction of the head of the organization, Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky [xxvi] between 1898 and 1903.[xxvii]  Rachkovsky was in charge of the Okhrana outside of Russia and was known for his notorious forgeries.[xxviii]  In 1892, Anarchie et Nihilisme was published in Paris under the pseudonym of Jehan-Préval, which certainly involved Rachkovsky.[xxix]   The Anarchie, including earlier forgeries of Rachkovsky, sketched out the outline of the future Protocols and alleged that after the French Revolution the Jews became “the absolute master of the situation in Europe . . . governing by discreet means both monarchies and republics.”[xxx]  Thus, the beginning use of political anti-Semitism was being employed to achieve a political result, which the Nazis raised to an even higher level of evil, and this political anti-Semitism has passed now with greater intensity to the Muslim world.

In 1905, Rachkovsky as Assistant Director of the Department of Police established the anti-Semitic Union of the Russian People whose members disseminated copies of the Protocols and organized armed bands to massacre Jews.[xxxi]  The secret police organized pogroms in Gomel and Kiev during 1905.  Before Rachkovsky’s death in 1911, he enlisted the aid of Sergei Nilus in the St. Petersburg court.[xxxii]  The first Russian edition of the Protocols in 1905 was edited by this apocalyptic Russian Orthodox mystic, Sergei Nilus, who claimed that the Jews were instruments of the Antichrist in a secret conspiracy to overthrow the existing political system in Russia.[xxxiii]

The Czar’s secret police wanted to frighten the Czar into violence by persuading him that the Jews of the world had devised a secret conspiracy to achieve domination over Russia and then the world.[xxxiv]  This plan of the Czar’s secret police was the first attempt at a counter-revolution against the democratic and socialist revolution of the 19th century by fusing the passion of the people with state power.[xxxv]  Through this conspiracy, Russia became the spiritual mother of fascism, which turned into communism.[xxxvi]  Every fascist movement attempts to combine both the “people on the street” and state power to its agenda.[xxxvii]

The Protocols borrowed from a fictional1876 pamphlet in Moscow entitled In the Jewish Cemetery in Czech Prague, the Jews Sovereigns of the World and later published as The Rabbi’s Speech, itself a reworking of the German novel Biarritz (1868) written by Herman Gődsche, which all portray the leaders of world Jewry plotting to overthrow the Christian religion.[xxxviii]  The original text plagiarized by the Protocols had nothing to do with the Jews, but was based upon a brochure called The Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli written in 1864 by a French critic of Napolean III, Maurice Joly, satirizing Napolean’s dream of world conquest, and merged with the novel, Biarritz, written by the German anti-Semitic Gődsche under the pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe, posing as an English diplomat.[xxxix]

Joly’s pamphlet presented the case for liberalism against despotism, which was forbidden criticism against the régime of Napoleon III.[xl]  The French pamphlet printed in Belgium was banned in France and seized by French police at the border.[xli]  After Joly’s arrest and sentencing to 15 months in prison, his unfortunate career ended with suicide in 1879.[xlii]  It is ironic that a pamphlet arguing in the defense of liberalism provided the basis for the plagiarized Protocols supporting 20th century totalitarianism.[xliii]

The novel Biarritz visualized mysterious bearded members from the twelve tribes of Israel, scheming Jewish world domination from an ancient cemetery in Prague.[xliv]  The czarist’s forgers changed Joly’s tract targeting Napoleon’s desire for conquest to world conquest by world Jewry or the “learned Elders of Zion.”[xlv]  The Protocols allegedly contained the secret protocols of the first World Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 under the leadership of Theodor Herzl.[xlvi]  However, the entire proceedings of the Congress were held in public and Basel was overflowing with journalists who would not have overlooked any meetings.[xlvii]

The myth of world-conspiracies can be traced earlier to Abbé Barruel, a French Jesuit, who published in 1797 Mémoire pour server á l’ histoire du Jacobinisme, claiming that the French Revolution occurred because of the conspiracies of secret societies such as the Freemasons, the Bavarian Illuminati and Reading Societies.[xlviii]  In 1806, Barruel received from Florence a letter from an unknown army officer called J.B. Simonini, claiming to have evidence of the Jewish control of the Freemasons and their preparing the way for the Antichrist and Jewish world domination.[xlix]

The Simonini letter was a fabrication by the French political police under Fouché with the intent of influencing Napoleon against the Jews.[l]  Over time the myth of a link between the Freemasons and the Jews grew into the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy that was used later by Hitler, even though the Freemasons and the Illuminati were hostile to the Jews during the 18th century and persons of Jewish descent never played any significant part in these organizations.[li]  Later, in Germany the myth of the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy expanded into the myth of the Judeo-Masonic-Communist conspiracy.

As a Republic in 1789, France with a sizable Jewish population emancipated under the Enlightenment movement the Jews by treating them as French citizens first and Jews only in their private lives.[lii]  The beginning emancipation of the Jews began with Clermont de Tonnerre’s statement in 1789 before the French Revolution’s National Assembly that “everything must be refused to the Jews as a nation; everything must be granted to them as individuals.”[liii]  Jews were recognized only as individuals not as a state within a state.[liv]  However, it was the seed of the eventual demise of Judaism for the Jews were rejected as a people who dwell apart as the witnesses to the Covenant of the Bible and relegated to the sameness as everyone else.[lv]  Napoleon placed Judaism on the same administrative level as the Catholic and Protestant churches, as one of the three recognized “cults” of France.[lvi]

Jewish liberation and assimilation began with the Napoleonic period by Napoleon’s soldiers destroying the ghetto walls and freeing the Jewish inhabitants in Italy, the German principalities and throughout Europe.[lvii]  Napoleon gave Jews freedom of worship, the right to own land and practice trades.[lviii]  However, German intellectuals rejected Napoleon’s Enlightenment altering the historical Christian hostility toward Judaism and the Jews as reflected by the philosophers of German Idealism: Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Hegel and Johann Gottlieb Fichte.[lix]

The Enlightenment in Europe, which questioned the authority of the Church, brought emancipation to the Jews and benefits to a university-educated, upwardly-mobile class.[lx]  However, Alphonse Toussenel in France published in 1845 Les Juifs, rois de l’epoque (The Jews, the Kings of the Age), which alleged that the Jews were becoming a power threatening the Christian world and secretly plotting world control.[lxi]  Other forms of this work appeared in most other European languages.[lxii]

Within a year of Gődsche’s The Rabbi’s Speech, Gougenot des Mousseaux published in 1869 the bible of modern anti-Semitism in Le Juif, le judaïsme et la judaïsation des peoples chrétiens by reviving into the late 19th century from the Middle Ages the image of the Jews as agents of Satan and by claiming that Kabbalah study was a secret demonic religion established by the Devil at the beginning of the world.[lxiii]  Mousseaux’s book fantasized about a future Jewish king, the Antichrist, to rule the world and to destroy Christianity.[lxiv]  The book provided inspiration for the Protocols and revived and modernized the mythical connection between the Jewish world-conspiracy and the apocalyptic prophecy from the Christian interpretations in Revelations of the Antichrist.[lxv]

In 1881, Abbé Chabauty, curé of Saint-André at Mirebeau in Poitou published Les Francs-Macons et les Juifs: Sixième Age de l’ Eglise d’ après l’ Apocalypse, in which he wrote that Satan through the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy was preparing for the Jewish Antichrist and Jewish world domination.[lxvi]  During this time, there was a raging conflict between Freemasonry and the Roman Catholic Church, since the Freemasons were progressive republican and anti-clerical in their attacks on the temporal powers of the Pope.[lxvii]  Freemasons were portrayed as devil-worshippers and agents of Satan by the Catholics supporting the Papal State.[lxviii]  The struggle against the imaginary Judeo-Masonic conspiracy is carried forward into the Protocols as a religious battle between heaven and the Satanic forces as prophesized in the Book of Revelation.[lxix]

Later, the Dreyfus Affair exposed political anti-Semitism in France and influenced Dr. Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, to realize the need for a Jewish homeland to counter anti-Semitism.[lxx]  Anti-Jewish riots occurred in French-ruled Algeria and the accusations of Jewish international conspiracy emerged with the identification of Dreyfus and the Jews as the “descendants of Judas” intent on betraying the French nation like that of Jesus.[lxxi]

In 1894, Dr. Herzl went to Paris as the correspondent of the Viennese Neue Freie Presse and reported on the Dreyfus trial.[lxxii]  With mobs outside the École Militarire in Paris yelling death to the Jews, Herzl wrote:

. . . the Dreyfus case contains more than a miscarriage of justice, it contains the wish of the vast majority in France to damn one Jew and through him all Jews . . . in Republican, modern, civilized France, one hundred years after the Declaration of the Rights of Man . . . [lxxiii]  

Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer on the French general staff, was falsely accused of selling military secrets to Germany.[lxxiv]  Forged evidence and anti-Semitic propaganda resulted in his court-martial and sentence to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island off French Guyana.[lxxv]

The Catholic cleric, Abbé Cros, announced that Dreyfus should be “trampled on morning and night . . . and should have his nose bashed in.”[lxxvi]  The Jesuit monthly La Civiltá Cattolica wrote that the “Jew was created by God to act the traitor everywhere,” and that France must rescind the 1791 Act extending French citizenship to the Jews.[lxxvii] La Civiltá Cattolica published statements that the rise of French anti-Semitism must be blamed on the “detestable provocations of Judaism” and the Dreyfus affair on the treacherous character of the “deicidal people.”[lxxviii]

After the original forgery had been proven and the forger, Major Joseph Henry, had committed suicide in jail, Dreyfus was still retried and reconvicted.[lxxix]  Dreyfus received a presidential pardon in 1899 and in 1906 the high court finally exonerated him and he regained his military commission.[lxxx]

Although Herzl had no knowledge of Jewish culture or tradition and was financially comfortable and fully assimilated into Viennese society, Herzl realized that the grant of formal citizenship to the Jews did not lead to inherent acceptance in general society, but an invisible yet tangible wall of a new ghetto surrounded the Jew, in which external forces would forever block full Jewish emancipation.[lxxxi]  Following the Dreyfus case, Herzl in 1896 published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), creating the framework for political Zionism with Jewish statehood in an independent territory as the only solution to anti-Semitism.[lxxxii]

During the late 19th century, the French Catholic, Édouard Drumont,  described Jewish ritual murder against a mystical and pagan background in which “[i]n the ghetto it is not the God of Moses who is really worshipped, but the horrible Phoenician Moloch, who demands sacrifices of children and virgins.”[lxxxiii]  During this time, there were twelve ritual murder claims in Austria and Hungary, such as in Tisza-Eszlar, Hungary in 1882 and Polná, Bohemia in 1899.[lxxxiv]

France’s most popular Catholic newspaper in the late 19th century, La Croix, wrote continually on blood libel and proclaimed that the Jews were a separate and dangerous race of parasites and were destroying the Christian foundations of France.[lxxxv]  The Christian Democratic Congress in Lyon in the mid-1890’s demanded an economic boycott of Jews and their exclusion from the judiciary, the army and politics.[lxxxvi]

In September 1913, Mendel Beiliss, an employee in a Kiev brick factory, was brought to trial on the charge of murdering a Christian boy for his blood to be used for Jewish ritual purposes, a Blood Accusation in the face of 20th century enlightenment.[lxxxvii]  The Beiliss case was created by Russian governmental authorities with the purpose of inflaming the populace against the Jews and with the goal of strengthening the autocracy and crushing the liberalism being revived after the 1905 revolution by the creation of Russia’s first national parliament, the Duma.[lxxxviii]

Various anti-Semitic organizations, such as the Union of the Russian People, the Association of the Archangel Michael and the Double-Headed Eagle, and right-wing periodicals tried to create a Jewish ritual murder of a 13 year old boy.[lxxxix]  In the Beiliss trial, the conspiracy with the judge and the prosecution team presented a case on the Jewish practice of ritual murder and the generally noxious character of the Jewish people, hoping to create another pogrom with the accusation of Blood Libel.  Nevertheless, the jury found Beiliss not guilty.   The evidence pointed to the murder being committed by a gang of criminals with the motive to provoke a pogrom and its usual mass looting and to the murder being committed in the apartment of the mother of the child’s friend, who was involved in the trafficking of stolen goods.[xc]  Nonetheless, the Russian reactionaries, who had made possible the Beiliss case, were successful in launching the Protocols.[xci]

During the Russian civil war (1918-1920), over 60,000 Jews were massacred in the Ukraine by White “counterrevolutionaries” who used the Protocols to incite massive pogroms.[xcii] The White Russians claimed that Bolshevism was a Jewish conspiracy to seize power by destroying landownership, the Romanov dynasty, Christianity and Russian national traditions.[xciii]  From 1919 to 1921, over 100,000 Jewish civilians were murdered by the Soviet and Ukrainian armies during the Polish-Russian War.[xciv]

Later, the Russian-created fantasies of Judeo-Bolshevism were embraced by the conservatives, monarchists and nationalists in the German Weimar Republic and incorporated throughout Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1924).[xcv]  White Russian émigrés from Russia, the Ukraine and the Baltic region who brought the Protocols with them to Germany greatly influenced Hitler to incorporate the nationalistic Russian religiously inspired apocalyptic struggle into a German völkisch struggle against the demonic Jewish world conspiracy.[xcvi]  In 1919, the Russian anti-Semitics Pyotr Nikolaevich Shabelsky-Bork and Fyodor Vinberg settled in Berlin, promoting the Protocols.[xcvii]  Sabelsky-Bork wrote the anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic book called The Satanists of the Twentieth Century.[xcviii]  Upon Vinberg’s arrival in Germany, he established contact with Ludwig Müller, who later published the first German translation of the Protocols.[xcix]  In Germany, Müller published the Protocols with many editions.[c]

The Baltic German architect Alfred Rosenberg and later the chief ideologue of the Nazi Party studied in Moscow and in 1918 left Russia with the message of the Russian Antichrist, the Protocols.[ci]  Rosenberg joined Rudolf Hess and Dietrich Eckart at the Thule Society in Bavaria, named after the legendary kingdom of Nordic mythology and of the mythical homeland of the German race.[cii]  Rosenberg became an important contributor to future Nazi ideology, producing many articles and pamphlets on the world-conspiracy of the Jews, and was greatly influenced by Vinberg.[ciii]

Rosenberg provided the link between Vinberg’s views of Bolshevism as a Jewish conspiracy and reinterpreting it as a völkisch-racist ideology.[civ]  Large sections of Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century published in 1930 were taken from Vinberg’s writings.[cv]  The three books that represented the sacred scriptures of Nazism, selling in the millions, were Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century and the Protocols.[cvi]

Ernst Rohm founded the Germany Workers’ Party, which later became the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (“NSDAP”, the Nazi Party) that Hitler joined in 1919.[cvii]  Dietrich Eckart, the recognized spiritual leader of the party, introduced Alfred Rosenberg to the party in 1920 and by 1921 Hitler believed that he would become the “king” and “ruler” of the world prophesied in the Protocols.[cviii]

Since the first German editors of the Protocols claimed that the Jews instigated World War I, Hitler prophetically blamed world Jewry for any future outbreak of world war.[cix]  Similar to the Russian apocalyptic struggle, Hitler in destroying the Jews was “acting according to the purposes of the almighty Creator . . . fighting the Lord’s battle!”[cx]

The Protocols achieved worldwide distribution through Henry Ford’s popularization of The International Jew.[cxi]  Ford, serializing the forgery for seven years in his weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, helped to spread this “warrant for genocide,”[cxii] which had a circulation of over 300,000.  Ford, embracing the Protocols, fantasized that the Jews controlled high finance, promoted world revolution and had seized power in Germany, France, England, and the Soviet Union and threatened the United States.[cxiii]

Hitler was so impressed by Ford’s newspaper that he had it widely distributed in German translation and had a portrait of Ford in his private office.[cxiv]  In the first edition of Mein Kampf, Hitler in a tribute to Ford declared that “only a single great man, Ford,” was able to stand up to Jewish economic power.[cxv]  When Hitler heard in 1923 that Ford might run for President of the United States, he remarked “I wish that I could send some of my shock troops to Chicago and other big American cities to help in the elections  . . . We look to Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing Fascist movement in America . . . We have just had his anti-Jewish articles translated and published.  The Book [The International Jew] is being circulated in millions throughout Germany.”[cxvi]

Dr. Edward A. Rumely, who was a member of the German propaganda ring in the United States during the First World War, was a close friend to Henry Ford and had the German Dr. August Müller placed on the staff of The Dearborn Independent.[cxvii]  Müller wrote most of The International Jew along with the Russian Boris Braso, a fanatical anti-Semitic Nazi.[cxviii]

The Protocols first appeared in German in 1920 and by the end of 1920s over 120,000 copies had been sold.[cxix] The later German editions linked Zionism to the “Elders of Zion,” as the major political arm of world Jewry and a visible part of the hidden Jewish “world-government.”[cxx]  In 1923, the Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Jewish World Policy.[cxxi]

During the Russian civil war in 1920, White Russian officers exposed Japan to the Protocols, which influenced Japanese leaders until the end of the Pacific war in 1945.[cxxii]  The leading Protocols proponent in postwar Japan, Uno Masami was a Christian Protestant fundamentalist and mixed anti-Jewish conspiracy theory with Japanese racial intolerance and ethnic nationalism.[cxxiii]

The first Polish edition of the Protocols appeared in early 1920, which was received with considerable impact in the new state with a well-establish tradition of anti-Semitism.[cxxiv]  The Roman Catholic clergy, fearing invasion by the Red Army, propagated the myth of the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy even though the overwhelming Jewish population opposed Bolshevism.[cxxv]

The German composer Richard Wagner greatly influenced educated Germans and his pamphlet Jewry in Music, which was published in 1850 and in 1869, was an attack on the Jewish influence in art and music and its damage to German culture.[cxxvi]  Wagner claimed that the Jews represented the “evil conscience of our modern civilization” and “the plastic demon of the decline of mankind,” which was repeated by the Nazis.[cxxvii]

Wagner provided the linkage between the Christian Judeophobic fantasies and the “redemptive” anti-Semitism of Nazism through the salvation of Germany with the destruction of the Jews.[cxxviii]  Hitler claimed that “whoever wants to understand National Socialism must know Wagner.”[cxxix]  Under the influence of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, Wagner wanted an Aryan Christianity released from the clutches of Judaism and wrote in 1881 to his benefactor, King Ludwig II of Bavaria that

I hold the Jewish race to be the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble in it. It is certain that it is ruining us Germans and I am perhaps the last German who knows how to hold himself upright in the face of Judaism, which already rules everything.[cxxx]

A wave of anti-Semitism erupted with the economic depression that followed the Franco-Prussian War for which the Jews were blamed.[cxxxi]  In 1879, the Berlin historian Heinrich von Treitschke invented the vicious phase Die Juden sind Unser Unglück (The Jews are our misfortune), which became a popular slogan repeated during the Nazi period.[cxxxii]  Treitschke helped develop the beginnings of political anti-Semitism.[cxxxiii]  Treitschke complained that “year after year there pours a host of ambitious pants-selling youngsters, whose children will someday control . . . the stock exchanges and the newspapers.”[cxxxiv]

In the late 19th century, industrialized Germany experienced mass unemployment, which triggered large emigration out of Germany with 3.5 percent of the population, 1,678,202 people, migrating to the United States between 1871 and 1885.[cxxxv]  During the 19th and early 20th century, it is estimated that over 6 million people emigrated from Germany and 5.2 million from Austria-Hungary.[cxxxvi]  German sentiment from the general population feared that the Jews of Eastern Europe, representing a large population group, might immigrant to Germany and Austria and would replace the emigrating population.[cxxxvii]

In Mein Kampf, Hitler’s solution was Lebensraum in the east to absorb Germany’s population surplus, since emigration to the United States cuts off future human resources for Germany.[cxxxviii]  An important motive for the annihilation of the Eastern European Jewry by the National Socialists was to provide Lebensraum in the East and to prevent Jewish immigration to Germany, which would compete with the local German population.[cxxxix]

The 19th century German anti-Semitic movements idealized the simple agrarian life of the Teutonic Volk, denouncing finance capitalism as unproductive, parasitical and Jewish, and these ideas were embodied in the Nazi ideology of “blood and soil.”[cxl]  After the 1873 Berlin stock exchange crash, the racial anti-Semitic pamphlet, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum von nicht confessionellen Standpunkt (The Victory of Jewry over Germandom, Considered from a Nonreligious Point of View) by the German journalist, Wilhelm Marr, linked race to the “Jewish question” and unless the Jews were stopped, they would destroy Germany.[cxli]  Marr’s pamphlet charged that Jewish assimilation was the cause of Germany’s problems.[cxlii]  Marr’s book invented the euphemism “anti-Semitism,” which provided an academic-sounding term to disguise bigotry and hatred.[cxliii]

Although Otto von Bismarck declared the Jews “enemies of the Reich” in the 1870s, Bismarck’s German Reich brought some political and cultural equality for the Jews, but Jews were prohibited from government service, senior academic positions and military commissions.[cxliv]  Jews could participate in the economy in finance and manufacturing and in the professions of law and medicine.[cxlv]  The Weimar Republic did open up areas of government service and professorships in the universities to the Jews, who occupied still a de facto second-class status.[cxlvi]

In the late 19th century, a large volume of anti-Semitic literature emerged, which projected the Jews as a race that threatened German cultural, biological and national purity and that was incapable of becoming German.[cxlvii]  When elections commenced in the 1870s, the Evangelical clergy supported the German Conservative party, which embraced a platform of anti-Semitism and the unity of throne and altar against all democratic institutions.[cxlviii]

Theodor Fritsch (1852-1933) founded the Hammer Publishing House for anti-Semitic literature in 1883 and whose Handbook on the Jewish Question went through more than 40 editions and was highly praised by the Nazis.[cxlix]  Fritsch’s Handbook proclaimed the myth of the Jewish secret societies and the Jewish world-conspiracy.[cl]  In 1893, Fritsch wrote the popular Ten Commandments for an Antisemite, which warned Germans against having social, sexual, business, and professional relations with Jews or reading Jewish writings.[cli]  In the late 1880s, Fritsch helped form anti-Semitic political parties that would later solidify into the Nazi Party and Fritsch became the spiritual leader of the Nazis.[clii]

During the beginning of the 1900s in Germany, the writings of Stahelin, Wilcken and Willrich contended that anti-Semitism was something, which inevitably accompanied the Jew wherever he wandered because of his own racial and unalterable characteristics.[cliii]  Prior to 1914, Paul de Lagarde [his real name was Paul Bötticher] wrote about the need for a Germanic and de-Judaized Christianity while denouncing the evils of Western liberalism, capitalism and parliamentarism.[cliv]  Lagarde in his essay in 1873 “On the Relationship of the German State to Theology, Church and Religion” argued that Catholicism and Protestantism is a distortion of the true gospel by the Jew Paul with his Jewish view of history, Jewish theology and the Old Testament.[clv]

Eugen Dühring demanded that Jews should be returned to the ghettos and the German race only could fulfill its destiny by throwing off the yoke of Semitic Judeo-Christianity.[clvi]  In 1881, Dühring, a lecturer in economics and philosophy at Berlin University, published Die Judenfrage als Rassen-, Sitten- und Kulturfrage (The Jewish Question as a Question of Race, Morals and Civilization), which stated that the Jews were “irremediably evil” and the source of the evil was not just in their religion but in their very blood.[clvii]

In 1874, Adolf Stoecker, a Lutheran pastor, became Kaiser Wilhelm I’s court chaplain in Berlin and promoted the danger of Jewish control of Germany, recommending a quota system to limit the number of Jews in many professions and universities.[clviii]  After leaving the Kaiser’s court, Stoecker organized the Christian Socialists, an anti-Semitic party, and served in the Reichstag while attempting to link the German Lutheran church to an anti-Semitic agenda.[clix]  Stoecker and others were behind the Union of German Students, an anti-Semitic society organized in 1881, which was represented at the major universities and, with many theological student members, disseminated anti-Semitic church dogma into the 20th century.[clx]

In Austria, Kurt Lueger, a Catholic politician, was the mayor of Vienna between 1897 and 1910 and organized the Christian Social Party in Austria, an anti-Semitic party.[clxi]  Lueger and his party influenced Hitler when he lived in Vienna between 1908 and 1913.[clxii]

In 1918, Artur Dinter with his successful contemporary novel The Sin against the Blood and the Munich author Dietrich Eckart with his periodical Plain Speaking promoted the anti-Semitic ideology of the völkisch movement, the German Volk, which helped pave the way for the National Socialists, a völkisch movement that became a political party.[clxiii]  The völkisch movement preached a Jewish world conspiracy which was trying to annihilate Aryan humanity and Germany’s mission was the struggle against the Jewish world-enemy.[clxiv]

The National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazi Party) was founded in Munich in 1919.[clxv]  After 1919, the Nazi Party and other right-wing groups in Germany propagated the myth of a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy to destroy Germany and Western Christian civilization, which became a “justification” lurking behind the Holocaust.[clxvi]  In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote in 1924:

[i]f, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity . . . Hence 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.[clxvii]

President von Hindenburg invited Adolf Hitler to assume the Reich chancellorship of a coalition government on January 30, 1933.[clxviii]  The political elites believed that they could control Hitler and, like the average coalition government since 1918, Hitler and his government would be gone in less than nine months.[clxix]

On March 27, 1933 in reaction to Hitler’s anti-Semitic attacks on German Jews, Rabbi Stephen Wise lead an anti-Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden with 20,000 people inside, 35,000 people outside, over 2 million Jews and non-Jews participating nationwide and hundreds of thousands throughout Europe.[clxx]  Rabbi Wise was expecting some diplomatic action from President Roosevelt and the State Department, but he received only silence and diplomatic stalling in hopes of the anger would disappear.[clxxi]  After the Madison Square Garden rally, Hitler and Goebbels held Germany’s Jews responsible for the foreign agitation and the anti-German boycott and responded by announcing a April 1st anti-Jewish boycott (April First pogrom), unless the Jewish leaders call off the worldwide anti-German boycott.[clxxii]

After the April First pogrom throughout Germany, the world woke up to Jewish refugees, who were purged from every commercial and professional field and became victims of directed and random street violence.[clxxiii]  As the Third Reich was drafting the Nuremberg Laws to legitimize Jewish destruction, the first concentration camp was being constructed in Dachau.[clxxiv]  Within two weeks of April First, more than 10,000 German-Jewish refugees streamed across the borders, straining the charitable organizations in other countries.[clxxv]

In the United States, there were evangelical fundamentalist pastors such as Gerald L.K. Smith and Gerald Winrod who preached anti-Semitism in the 1930’s.[clxxvi]  Smith, an ordained minister of the Disciples of Christ denomination, served as a minister in Shreveport with a radio broadcast spreading anti-Semitism and racism.  Later, he was a leader of the Share Our Wealth movement and a member of William Dudley Pelley’s pro-Nazi Silver Shirts patterned after Hitler’s Brown Shirts.  In 1942, he published and wrote the monthly The Cross and the Flag, a rabidly anti-Semitic publication with over 25,000 subscribers, which helped raise money for his 1942 US Senate campaign in Michigan.

Gerald Winrod, a Baptist preacher nicknamed “The Jayhawk Nazi” from Kansas, published a monthly called The Defender, which by 1937 had a circulation of 100,000 and reproduced Nazi anti-Semitic materials.  Winrod proclaimed the veracity of the Protocols and that Hitler will save the world from international Jewish communism.  He advocated that communism is Jewish based upon the research of Henry Ford, revealing the connection between communism and Judaism.  During the 1920’s and 1930’s, the Protocols were used as “evidence” of a Jewish conspiracy in many articles published in the Chicago Tribune, alleging that communism was linked to the Jewish conspiracy for world domination.[clxxvii]

During the 1930’s, Father Charles C. Coughlin’s anti-Semitic broadcasts on CBS radio, the Catholic radio priest from Michigan, had millions of nationwide followers across America and his journal, Social Justice, was a source of anti-Semitic propaganda direct from Joseph Goebbels.[clxxviii]  The foundation of Coughlin’s Catholic Americanism was a combination of historic anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, which considered Judaism as an illegitimate religion superseded by Catholicism, was suspicious of a wealthy Jewish economic conspiracy against non-Jews and was certain of Jewish control of global communism.[clxxix]  The core of his broadcast was that Nazism arose as a reaction to Jewish-dominated communism and the Nazis were justified in their persecution against the communist “atheistic” Jews, who appropriated Christian property, and wealthy Jewish bankers, who financed the Russian Revolution and Communism.[clxxx]

In the summer of 1938 when Hitler was planning to take the Sudetenland and then overrun Czechoslovakia, the Social Justice printed a series of articles by the leading propagandist for Nazi Germany, George S. Viereck and followed up by the printing of the Protocols.[clxxxi]  By November 1938, Coughlin was preaching from the Protocols in his Sunday broadcasts to an audience of around 3.5 million and convincing many Roman Catholics that he was the voice of the Church with over 2,000 churches selling copies of the Social Justice.[clxxxii]  When Social Justice accused the Jews of starting the war in March 1942, the Archbishop of Detroit finally suppressed the journal and imposed silence on Coughlin.[clxxxiii]

Three weeks after the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany, Coughlin preached to his estimated 30 million radio listeners that:

If Jews persist in supporting communism directly or indirectly, that will be regrettable.  By their failure to use the press, the radio and the banking house, where they stand so prominently, to fight communism as vigorously as they fight Nazism, the Jews invite the charge of being supporters of communism.[clxxxiv]

Speaking at a rally during 1938 in the Bronx, New York, Coughlin gave the Nazi salute and yelled “When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.”

In 1941, Democratic congressman John E. Rankin of Mississippi blamed “Wall Street and a little group of our international Jewish brethren” of trying to precipitate a war and complained that “white Gentiles” were being persecuted in the United States.[clxxxv]  Senator Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi wrote to Leonard E. Golditch of New York, secretary of the National Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism:

If Jews of your type don’t quit sponsoring and fraternizing with the negro [sic] race you are going to arouse so much opposition to all of you that they will get a very strong invitation to pack up and resettle in Palestine . . . There are just a few of you New York Jew “kikes” . . . socializing with the negroes [sic] for selfish and political reasons . . . You had better stop and think.[clxxxvi]

The aviator Charles Lindbergh saw Jews as a political threat to America and in his diary wrote:

 We must limit to a reasonable amount the Jewish influence . . . Whenever the Jewish percentage of total population becomes too high, a reaction seems to invariably occur.  It is too bad because a few Jews of the right type are, I believe, an asset to any country.[clxxxvii]

Lindbergh expressed his admiration for Hitler’s Germany and opposed American entry into the European war, while Goebbels considered him “a splendid fellow” and “of great use to us, above all because we take no notice at all of his activities in our press.  That way he is much more independent and does not have to confront the objection that he is a member of a fifth column.”[clxxxviii]

Dr. James Parkes in the concluding paragraph of The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism wrote:

 But the Christian public as a whole, the great and overwhelming majority of the hundreds of millions of nominal Christians in the world, still believe that ‘the Jews’ killed Jesus, that they are a people rejected by their God, that all the beauty of their Bible belongs to the Christian Church and not to those by whom it was written; and if on this ground, so carefully prepared, modern antisemites have reared a structure of racial and economic propaganda, the final responsibility still rests with those who prepared the soil, created the deformation of the people, and so made these ineptitudes credible.[clxxxix]

In explaining the predominance of anti-Semitism in the world, the Reverend Edward H. Flannery, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated that “[i]t was Judaism that brought the concept of a God-given universal moral law into the world;” willingly or not, “the Jew carries the burden of God in history [and] for this has never been forgiven.”[cxc]  The world to which the Jews have introduced God and His Moral commandments has resulted in the hatred of the Jew as the “greatest hatred in human history.”[cxci]  Father Flannery has called anti-Semitism the world’s “oldest social pathology.”[cxcii]

Judaism and its moral values account for the quality of life existing for Jews, which have made Jews, seem as if they really were chosen (on a material basis versus a spiritual basis) and have provoked envy as a cause of resentment.[cxciii]  The moral values in the Bible were set out by God, not for God’s purposes but for man’s benefit, so man could receive the goodness flowing from a meaningful quality of life.  By acceptance of the Word of God, the Jews who “dwell alone” bear witness as they walk through history towards the final Messianic redemption.[cxciv]  The French Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain, linking the messianic Jewish role in history to the prolonged existence of anti-Semitism wrote in 1939 that:

 Israel . . . is to be found at the very heart of the world’s structure, stimulating it, exasperating it, moving it.  Like an alien body, like an activating ferment injected into the mass, it gives the world no peace, it bars slumber, it teaches the world to be discontented and restless, as long as the world has not God, it stimulates the movement of history . . . It is the vocation of Israel which the world hates.[cxcv]   

 

[i] Yaakov Astor, The Hidden Hand, Uncovering Divine Providence in Major Events of the 20th Century, (1st ed. 2007), pp. 53-54.

[ii] Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (1st ed. 1967), p. 15.

[iii] Ibid., p. 17.

[iv] Franklin H. Littell, The Crucifixion of the Jews: the Failure of Christians to Understand the Jewish Experience, (1st ed. 1975), p. 82.

[v] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, (1st ed. 2010), p. 94.

[vi] John Weiss, Ideology of Death, Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany, (1st ed. 1996), p. 24.

[vii] Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, (2nd ed. 2003), p. 91. See Franklin Sherman, trans., Luther’s Works. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971.

[viii] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 94.

[ix] Weiss, p. 34.

[x] Jocelyn Hellig, The Holocaust and Antisemitism, A Short History, (1st ed. 2003), p. 216

[xi] Ibid., p. 23.

[xii] Kevin P. Spicer, ed., Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2007), p. 307.

[xiii] Ibid., p. 10.

[xiv] Allan Levine, Fugitives of the Forest: The Heroic Story of Jewish Resistance and Survival During the Second World War, (1st Lyons Press ed. 2009), p. xxii.

[xv] Ibid., p. xxiv-xxv.

[xvi] Ibid., p. xxii-xxiii.

[xvii] Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island, (1st ed. 2009), p. 66.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Ibid., p. 67.                                                           

[xx] Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, (Bantam trade ed. 1986), p. xxxvi.

[xxi] Marcia Sachs Littell, Holocaust Education: A Resource Book for Teachers and Professional Leaders, (1st ed. 1985), p. 61.

[xxii] Norman Cohn, p. 52.

[xxiii] Marcia Sachs Littell, p. 62.

[xxiv] Dawidowicz, p. 16.

[xxv] Hellig, p. 283.

[xxvi] The Okhrana was established under the Minister of the Interior in 1881 after the assassination of Alexander II and the secret police had branches throughout the major Russian towns and a foreign service located in Paris. Norman Cohn, pp. 77-78.

[xxvii] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 28.

[xxviii] Norman Cohn, p. 78.

[xxix] Ibid., p. 81.

[xxx] Ibid.

[xxxi] Ibid., p. 82.

[xxxii] Ibid., p. 83.

[xxxiii] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 28.

[xxxiv] Konrad Heiden, Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, (1st ed. 1944), pp. 7-8.

[xxxv] Ibid., p. 10.

[xxxvi] Ibid.

[xxxvii] Ibid.

[xxxviii] Jeremy Cohen, Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion From the Bible to the Big Screen, (1st ed. 2007), p. 140; Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England, (1st ed. 2010), p. 55.

[xxxix] Hellig, p. 283; Julius, p. 55.

[xl] Norman Cohn, p. 73.

[xli] Ibid.

[xlii] Ibid.

[xliii] Ibid., p. 74.

[xliv] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 155.

[xlv] Ibid., p. 154.

[xlvi] Ibid.

[xlvii] Norman Cohn, p. 69.

[xlviii] Ibid. p. 25.

[xlix] Ibid., p. 27.

[l] Ibid.

[li] Ibid., pp. 28-29.

[lii] David Bellos, The Journal of Hélène Berr, (1st ed. 2008), p. 277.

[liii] David Patterson, Emil L. Fackenheim: A Jewish Philosopher’s Response to the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2008), p. 10.

[liv] Bellos, p. 278

[lv] Patterson, Emil L. Fackenheim: A Jewish Philosopher’s Response to the Holocaust, p. 52.

[lvi] Bellos, p. 278.

[lvii] Weiss, p. 59.

[lviii] Ibid., p. 64.

[lix] Ibid., pp. 64-65.

[lx] Philippe Burrin, Nazi Anti-Semtisim: From Prejudice to the Holocaust, (1st English ed. 2005), pp. 19-21.

[lxi] Ibid., pp. 21-22.

[lxii] Ibid.

[lxiii] Norman Cohn, p. 41.

[lxiv] Ibid., p. 43.

[lxv] Ibid.

[lxvi] Ibid., p. 45.

[lxvii] Ibid., p. 44.

[lxviii] Ibid.

[lxix] Ibid., p. 49.

[lxx] Cohen, p. 137.

[lxxi] Ibid., p. 138.

[lxxii] James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the origins of antisemitism, (1st ed. 1934), p. 270.

[lxxiii] Yaacov Herzog, A People That Dwells Alone, (1st American ed. 1975), p. 177.

[lxxiv] Cohen, p. 137.

[lxxv] Ibid.

[lxxvi] John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, the Secret History of Pius XII, (Penguin ed. 2008), p. 45.

[lxxvii] Ibid.

[lxxviii] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, pp. 96-97.

[lxxix] Cohen, pp. 137-138.

[lxxx] Ibid., p. 137.

[lxxxi] Herzog, p. 177.

[lxxxii] Ibid.

[lxxxiii] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 95.

[lxxxiv] Ibid.

[lxxxv] Ibid., p. 96.

[lxxxvi] Ibid.

[lxxxvii] Maurice Samuel, Blood Accusation: The Strange History of the Beiliss Case. (1st ed. 1966), pp. 1-2.

[lxxxviii] Ibid., p. 7.

[lxxxix] Ibid., pp. 19, 31.

[xc] Ibid., p. 25.

[xci] Ibid., p. 259.

[xcii] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 156.

[xciii] Ibid.

[xciv] Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine, (2nd ed. 1999), p.72.

[xcv] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, pp. 156-157.

[xcvi] Ibid.

[xcvii] Norman Cohn, p. 127.

[xcviii] Ibid.

[xcix] Ibid., p. 128.

[c] Heiden, p. 19.

[ci] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 156; Konrad Heiden, Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, (1st ed. 1944), p. 18.

[cii] Heiden, p. 19.

[ciii] Norman Cohn, p. 195.

[civ] Ibid., pp. 194-195.

[cv] Ibid., p. 195.

[cvi] Ibid., p. 217.

[cvii] Heiden, pp. 30, 89.

[cviii] Ibid., pp. 99-100.

[cix] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 157.

[cx] Ibid.

[cxi] Hellig, p. 25.

[cxii] Ibid. See Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, (1st ed. 1993), p. 37.

[cxiii] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 159.

[cxiv] Hellig, p. 25.

[cxv] Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 29.

[cxvi] Norman Cohn, p. 162

[cxvii] Ibid., p. 160.

[cxviii] Ibid., p. 161.

[cxix] Dawidowicz, pp. 16, 47.

[cxx] Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2001), p. 28.

[cxxi] Julius, p. 57.

[cxxii] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 158.

[cxxiii] Ibid.

[cxxiv] Norman Cohn, p. 164.

[cxxv] Ibid.

[cxxvi] Hellig, p. 277.

[cxxvii] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 37.

[cxxviii] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 103.

[cxxix] Ibid., p. 104.

[cxxx] Ibid., p. 103.

[cxxxi] Hellig, pp. 278-279.

[cxxxii] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 236.

[cxxxiii] James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism, p. xxi.

[cxxxiv] Marcia Sachs Littell, p. 63.

[cxxxv] Ibid., p. 62.

[cxxxvi] Ibid.

[cxxxvii] Ibid., p. 63.

[cxxxviii] Ibid.

[cxxxix] Ibid.

[cxl] Weiss, p. 27.

[cxli] Hellig, p. 277; James Rudin, Christians & Jews Faith to Faith: Tragic History, Promising Present, Fragile Future, (1st ed. 2011), p. 83.

[cxlii] Hellig, p. 278.

[cxliii] Rudin. pp. 83-84.

[cxliv] Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Flight From the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933-1946, (1st ed. 2009), p. 4; Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, p. 239.

[cxlv] Dwork and van Pelt, p. 4.

[cxlvi] Ibid., p. 5.

[cxlvii] Hellig, p. 278.

[cxlviii] Weiss, p. 34.

[cxlix] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 17.

[cl] Norman Cohn, p. 40.

[cli] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 17.

[clii] Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 171.

[cliii] Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism, pp. 1-2.

[cliv] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 17.

[clv] Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, Volume One: Preliminary History and the Time of Illusions 1918-1934, (1st ed. 1988), pp. 81-82.

[clvi] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, pp. 17-18.

[clvii] Norman Cohn, p. 171.

[clviii] Rudin, pp. 84-85.

[clix] Ibid., p. 85.

[clx] Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 171.

[clxi] Rudin, p. 85.

[clxii] Ibid.

[clxiii] Scholder, vol. I, pp. 74, 76.

[clxiv] Ibid., pp. 76-77.

[clxv] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 34.

[clxvi] Ibid., p. 19.

[clxvii] Ibid., p. 39.

[clxviii] Dwork and van Pelt, p. 7.

[clxix] Ibid.

[clxx] Black, The Transfer Agreement, pp. 41-42.

[clxxi] Ibid., p. 46.

[clxxii] Ibid., p. 48.

[clxxiii] Ibid., p. 71.

[clxxiv] Ibid.

[clxxv] Ibid.

[clxxvi] Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 188.

[clxxvii]Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, (1st ed. 1993), p. 37.

[clxxviii] Ibid., p. 36.

[clxxix] Maria Mazzenga, American Religious Responses to Kristallnacht, (1st ed. 2009), pp. 88-89.

[clxxx] Ibid., pp. 90-91.

[clxxxi] Norman Cohn, p. 234.

[clxxxii] Ibid., pp. 234-235.

[clxxxiii] Ibid., p. 236.

[clxxxiv] Rudin, p. 87.

[clxxxv] Lipstadt, p. 36.

[clxxxvi] Rudin, pp. 88-89.

[clxxxvii] Ibid., p. 89.

[clxxxviii] Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, (1st ed. 2006), p. 117.

[clxxxix] Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue, p. 376.

[cxc] Prager and Telushkin, p. 14; Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession, p. 17.

[cxci] Prager and Telushkin, p. 14.

[cxcii] Rudin, p. 111.

[cxciii] Prager and Telushkin, pp. 40-41.

[cxciv] Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays, (2nd ed. 1998), p. 19.

[cxcv] Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession, p. 17.

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