Exposed: The Church's Hand in the Holocaust, and Anti-Semitic Roots in Christianity

According to two influential Jewish thinkers:

"Christianity did not create the Holocaust; indeed Nazism was anti-Christian, but it made it possible. Without Christian antisemitism, the Holocaust would have been inconceivable…. Hitler and the Nazis found in medieval Catholic anti Jewish legislation a model for their own, and they read and reprinted Martin Luther’s virulently antisemitic writings. It is instructive that the Holocaust was unleashed by the only major country in Europe having approximately equal numbers of Catholics and Protestants. Both traditions were saturated with Jew-hatred."

"For nearly two thousand years…the Christian world relentlessly dehumanized the Jew, enabling the Holocaust, the ultimate consequence of this dehumanization, to take place. While it is true that many Nazis were anti-Christian (and that Nazism itself was anti-Christian), they were all, as the Jewish philosopher Eliezer Berkovitz has pointed out, the children of Christians.

"Christians? The children of Christians? The Christian world? How could this be? Of course, we could say that if these people were true Christians, if they had really been born again, they would never have done such fiendish things. And there is certainly truth to this. But it’s not so simple. Some church leaders who seemed to be so “Christian,” so Christlike in word and deed, also had one great, glaring weakness: They viciously maligned the Jewish people! Sometimes they even approved of violence against them. Those who claimed to be the Lord’s brothers and sisters after the spirit attacked His brothers and sisters after the flesh. And this tragic story isn’t over yet. But first, let’s look back. What you are about to read may be painful…but it is true.

Listen to Raul Hilberg, a foremost scholar of the Holocaust:

"Since the fourth century after Christ there have been three anti-Jewish policies: [forced] conversion, expulsion, annihilation. The second appeared as an alternative to the first, and the third emerged as an alternative to the second…. The missionaries of Christianity had said in effect: You have no right to live among us as Jews. The secular rulers who followed proclaimed: You have no right to live among us. The Nazis at last decreed: You have no right to live."The process began with the attempt to drive the Jews into Christianity. The development was continued in order to force the victims into exile. It was finished when the Jews were driven to their deaths. The German Nazis, then, did not discard the past; they built upon it. They did not begin a development; they completed it."

Of course, Israel has not been perfect and blameless. The Bible itself is filled with words of rebuke for God’s chosen people. The Lord told Moses that Israel was “stiff necked” (Exod. 32:9) and He informed the prophet Ezekiel that if He had sent him to the Gentile nations they would have listened to him. “But the house of Israel is not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for the whole house of Israel is hardened and obstinate” (Ezek. 3:7). The gospels record conflict after conflict between Jesus and the leaders of His people, and the Book of Acts states that the first believers were persecuted by abusive Jewish groups.But—and this is something we must fully grasp—Moses, Ezekiel, all the prophets, all the apostles, and Jesus Himself were all Israelites. In fact, every “charter member” of the New Testament Church was born a Jew and died a Jew! (Jesus took this one step further: Jesus was born a Jew, died a Jew, and was resurrected a Jew.) All the rebukes, all the criticisms, all the reproofs levelled against the Jewish people in the Scriptures were brought by their own kinsmen. All of it stayed within the family. And the reason God took a special interest in disciplining Israel was simple: He was treating him as a son! “This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son” (Exod. 4:22 ); and “what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons” (Heb. 12:7-8).The Jews were—and are—chosen and loved by the Lord. God’s chastisement of His people is a special sign of His love for them. They were called into a unique relationship with Him; therefore, they were and are accountable. Sonship is a great privilege. It carries great responsibility. To paraphrase the popular Jewish saying, “So who asked to be chosen?”

But the early Church quickly lost sight of Israel’s special role and of the Father’s covenantal love for His firstborn son, cursing its spiritual ancestors rather than blessing them. And soon an anti-Jewish cancer had infected her ranks. The disease is still spreading today. Consider just how much venom has poisoned Messiah’s Body. After reading these quotes you will have a better idea why so much of the Church has been—and still is—so sick.For these early Church leaders, the equation was simple: The Jewish people had been forever disinherited from their standing as God’s chosen people because of their rejection of the Messiah, replaced by a new Israel, a new chosen people, the Church. And so, even though some of these important Christian leaders in the second and third centuries had relationships with the Jewish community, emphasized that Jesus was a Jew, and revered the Old Testament Scriptures, their theology was going in a dangerous direction.5 As noted by Prof. David Patterson, “Hippolytus (ca. 170-236) maintained that the Jews will forever receive God’s just punishment for having murdered Jesus, and Origen of Alexandria agreed. If the Covenant of Abraham has been superseded, as Cyprian (200-258) insisted, it is because the children of Abraham ‘would fasten Christ to the cross.’”

6As Charles Tarrell explains:"About 150 AD, Justin Martyr, in explaining the Christian faith, said, 'The true spiritual Israel, and descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham…are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ.' He argued that 'We who are…of Christ are the true Israelitic race.' Less than 50 years after the completion of the New Testament, Gentile Christians had already embraced the notion that the Christian church had replaced ethnic Israel as the recipients of the promises God had given to Israel. Not long after the era of the book of Acts, Church leaders began to refer to the church as 'the new Israel' or 'the true Israel' or 'the Israel of God.' A less than Christian attitude toward the Jewish people was developing within the church."

Yes, the Jewish people have been rejected by God, replaced by the new people of God, the Christians. Consequently, the Church’s celebration of holy days must be separated from the Jewish calendar. Easter cannot be connected to the Jewish Passover! As the (Christian) Emperor Constantine decreed (he ruled from 306-337):

It was declared to be particularly unworthy for this, the holiest of all festivals, to follow the custom [the calculation] of the Jews, who had soiled their hands with the most fearful of crimes, and whose minds were blinded. In rejecting their custom, we may transmit to our descendants the legitimate mode of celebrating Easter, which we have observed from the time of the Saviour’s Passion to the present day [according to the day of the week rather than according to the biblical, Jewish calendar]. We ought not, therefore, to have anything in common with the Jews, for the Saviour has shown us another way;…and consequently, in unanimously adopting this mode, we desire, dearest brethren, to separate ourselves from the detestable company of the Jews, for it is truly shameful for us to hear them boast that without their direction we could not keep the feast…it would be still be your duty not to tarnish your soul by communications with such wicked people [the Jews].

And it was not just the emperor espousing such ugly views. There were key church leaders echoing similar sentiments—and worse. Far worse.Let’s focus here on Saint John Chrysostom (344-407), a man described by Cardinal Newman as, “A bright cheerful gentle soul, a sensitive heart, a temperament open to emotion and impulse; and all this elevated, refined, transformed by the touch of heaven—such a man was St. John Chrysostom.”

He was known as one of the most eloquent preachers of truth and love; his very name, Chrysostom, conferred on him after his death, means “golden-mouthed.” This man was esteemed as one of the greatest of the Church Fathers. But somehow all his compassion, all his sensitivity and gentleness were lost in dealing with the Jewish people, specifically, when members of his congregation began to take an interest in the synagogue and Jewish tradition.Chrysostom responded with his infamous “Seven Sermons Against the Jews,” in which he spoke of a “serious illness,” a “disease,” an “ailment” which had to be rooted out from the Church. And what was this dangerous and serious malady? He explained: “The festivals of the pitiful and miserable Jews are soon to march upon us one after the other and in quick succession: the feast of Trumpets, the feast of Tabernacles, the fasts.”10 In other words, the God-ordained feasts and holy days, the celebration of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement and Tabernacles. The Jewish observance of the Torah was a deadly disease! It must not infect the Church.This, however, was only the tip of the iceberg. In the words of this golden-tongued preacher:

"The synagogue is worse than a brothel…it is the den of scoundrels and the repair of wild beasts…the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults…the refuge of brigands and debauchees, and the cavern of devils. [It is] a criminal assembly of Jews…a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ…a house worse than a drinking shop…a den of thieves; a house of ill fame, a dwelling of iniquity, the refuge of devils, a gulf and abyss of perdition."As for the Jewish people themselves Chrysostom commented, 'I would say the same things about their souls.' And so, 'As for me, I hate the synagogue….I hate the Jews for the same reason.'

What happened to Christian love? Paul had wished that he could be cursed in place of his Jewish people. Chrysostom instead cursed them! How much destruction was subsequently ignited by these tragic sermons of malice? The Catholic historian Malcolm Hay is surely right when he says, “For many centuries the Jews listened to the echo of those three words of St. John Chrysostom, the Golden Mouthed: ‘God hates you.’” And thus, “the popular Christian doctrine has always been that anyone, whether pagan or Christian, who has at any time persecuted, tortured or massacred Jews has acted as an instrument of Divine wrath.”These words of Chrysostom surely helped flame the fires:

"When animals have been fattened by having all they want to eat, they get stubborn and hard to manage…. When animals are unfit for work, they are marked for slaughter, and this is the very thing which the Jews have experienced. By making themselves unfit for work, they have become ready for slaughter. This is why Christ said, 'As for my enemies, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me.'”The Jews, indeed, had committed—and continued to commit—the ultimate spiritual outrage. He said:"Since there are some who think of the synagogue as a holy place, I must say a few words to them. Why do you reverence that place? Must you not despise it, hold it in abomination, run away from it? They answer that the Law and the books of the prophets are kept there. What is this? Will any place where these books are be a holy place? By no means! This is the reason above all others why I hate the synagogue and abhor it. They have the prophets but not believe them; they read the sacred writings but reject their witness—and this is a mark of men guilty of the greatest outrage."

Indeed, thundered this powerful preacher,"…it is the time for me to show that demons dwell in the synagogue, not only in the place itself but also in the souls of the Jews. As Christ said: 'When an unclean spirit is gone out, he walks through dry places seeking rest. If he does not find it he says: I shall return to my house. And coming he finds it empty, swept, and garnished. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself and they enter into him and the last state of that man is made worse than the first. So shall it be also to this generations.'"Do you see that demons dwell in their souls and that these demons are more dangerous than the ones of old? And this is very reasonable…"

So said the highly revered Saint John Chrysostom.But there’s something just as shocking as Chrysostom’s words, which can be multiplied. It’s the fact that most Christians have no idea he ever said them, including pastors who have studied in seminary. In fact, on more than one occasion while teaching at a leading seminary I asked one of the Church historians, “So, when do you teach on Chrysostom’s sermons against the Jews?” The answer was always the same (spoken with some shame as well): “We don’t.”

It was Chrysostom who first coined the term “deicide” (theoktonian in Greek), which means “killing God.” This is because when the Jews killed Jesus, they were literally killing God. In sum, to quote Prof. Patterson again, “the Jews are ‘inveterate murderers, destroyers, men possessed of the devil’ (1:4); hence, for the Jews there is ‘no expiation possible, no indulgence, no pardon’ (6:2). Which means: if the Jews are essentially murderers, then the Jews are necessarily damned.”

During the long, dark years of the Middle Ages, Jews were frequently given the option of baptism or expulsion, baptism or torture, baptism or death. Every type of degrading law was passed against them: They were forbidden to work good jobs; after all, they were an accursed people, assassins of Christ, so how could they be allowed to prosper? They were forced to listen to humiliating public sermons aimed at their conversion—wasn’t this the holy obligation of the Church? Their children were kidnapped and baptized as “Christians,” thus saving them from the fires of hell. They were rounded up and beaten as a highlight of Easter celebrations, since they deserved it as murderers of the Lord. And in the fervor and fanaticism of the Crusades, as the riffraff of Europe gathered to “liberate” the Holy Land from the Muslim infidels, a great new discovery was made: There were infidels that could be killed in their own back yard! Why wait for the Holy Land? And so the hideous slogan was born: “Kill a Jew and save your soul!” (This sounds awfully similar to the Russian words that became popular last century: “Byay Zhidov Sgassai Rossiyu,” “Beat the Jews [Zhids] and save Russia!”)

And what were the Church leaders saying about all this? It is true that the Jews had some friends among the Catholic clergy, and the names Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Innocent III stand out. These men sought to stop the mass murders of innocent Jewish men, women, and children. In Bernard’s words, “The Jews must not be persecuted, slaughtered, nor even driven out.” But how did they personally feel about the Jews?

Bernard, one of the most influential monks who ever lived, almost legendary for his great love for God and for man, charged the whole Jewish people with “a stupidity bestial and more than bestial,” an “intelligence coarse, dense, and as it were bovine,” because they did not follow the Lord. They were an “evil seed”; there was nothing in them that was “not crude and coarse, whether we consider their occupations, their inclinations, their understanding, or even their rites [with] which they worship God.” They were “a race who had not God for their father, but were of the devil, and were murderers as he was a murderer from the beginning.” This was from a “friend” of the Jews!

Peter the Venerable, a contemporary of Bernard known as “the meekest of men, a model of Christian charity,” considered “the most peace-loving man of his time. A man of boundless charity,” breathed an ugly spirit of Jew hatred:

"You, you Jews. I say, do I address you; you, who till this very day, deny the Son of God. How long, poor wretches, will ye not believe the truth? Truly I doubt whether a Jew can be really human…. I lead out from its den a monstrous animal, and show it as a laughing stock in the amphitheatre of the world, in the sight of all the people. I bring thee forward, thou Jew, thou brute beast, in the sight of all men."

It is only a small step from this description of the Jew as a “monstrous animal” to the medieval representation of the Jew as a little devil, complete with horns and tails. Not surprisingly, these images were utilized by the Nazis.

And let us not forget the unique contribution made by Innocent III, the Pope who was the protector of the Jewish people. According to him, the Jews were condemned to perpetual slavery “because they crucified the Lord. The Jews, against whom the blood of Jesus Christ calls out, although they ought not to be killed, lest the Christian people forget the Divine Law, yet as wanderers ought they to remain upon the earth, until their countenance be filled with shame.” For the Pope, the continued misery of these crucifiers of the Lord was a testimony to the truth of the Christian faith; therefore, by all means they must be degraded.According to Malcolm Hay, “Trade boycott, social ostracism, expulsion from all offices of authority and trust, were the chief economic weapons [Pope Innocent] was able to use effectively against them.” But all this was nothing new. What was new was the addition of the badge of shame: a distinctive badge “that they must wear on their clothing…like lepers or prostitutes. Thus the Jews were consigned ‘to wander over the face of the earth, without rights, except by gracious concession, without a home, and without security; treated at all times, in years of peace and in years of persecution, as if they were beings of an inferior species.’”

As explained by Rabbi Byron Sherwin:"…the Jew was viewed by the Christians as demonic, anti-Christ, criminal, blasphemous, heretical and either blind or stubbornly recalcitrant to Christian truth. The Jew was neither considered to believe in or to worship the true God. Rather, the Jew was considered to be an agent, an ally and a worshipper of Satan."In light of all this, it comes as no surprise that Martin Luther, in his breaking away from the Catholic Church, reached out kindly to the Jews. He emphasized that Jesus was born a Jew and hoped that:

"Perhaps I will attract some of the Jews to the Christian faith. For our fools—the popes, bishops, sophists, and monks the coarse blockheads!—have until this time so treated the Jews that…if I had been a Jew and had seen such idiots and blockheads ruling and teaching the Christian religion, I would rather have been a sow than a Christian. For they have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs and not human beings."

This was written in 1523. Twenty years later, when the Jews did not convert en masse, when Luther was old and sick, and after seeing some blasphemous anti-Christian literature written by Jewish pens, he had a change of heart: “What shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews?”

Luther’s answer was decisive:"First, their synagogues should be set on fire…. Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed…. Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer-books and Talmuds…. Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more…. Fifthly, passport and traveling privileges should be absolutely for bidden to the Jews…. Sixthly, they ought to be stopped from usury [charging interest on loans]…. Seventhly, let the young and strong Jews and Jewesses be given the flail, the ax, the hoe, the spade, the distaff, and spindle, and let them earn their bread by the sweat of their noses…. We ought to drive the rascally lazy bones out of our system…. Therefore away with them…."To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden—the Jews."

Later Lutherans repudiated these despicable remarks, just as the Catholic Church repudiated much of her anti-Jewish bias. But something that was so widespread, so deep, so infecting and polluting, such venomous hatred and prejudice, does not die quickly. To this day, you can visit a Lutheran church in Wittenberg with a monstrous carving on the front of the building. It goes back to Luther’s day, and he describes it vividly here:"Well, now, I don’t know in detail where they got it from, but I can guess approximately. Here at Wittenberg, in our parish church, there is a sow carved into the stone under which lie young pigs and Jews who are sucking; behind the sow stands a rabbi who is lifting up the right leg of the sow, raises the behind of the sow, bows down and looks with great effort into the Talmud under the sow, as if he wanted to read and see something most difficult and exceptional…. For among the Germans it is said of someone who pretends to great wisdom without good cause: 'Where did he read that? On the behind of the sow [crudely expressed].'”

Luther scholar Eric W. Gritsch also noted that:"There is even a hint of racism in Luther when he commented on the unsubstantiated rumor that Jews killed Christian children. This crime 'still shines forth from their eyes and their skin. We are at fault in not slaying them [the Jews].' Such a declaration cannot be limited to a specific historical context. It is timeless and means 'death to the Jews,' whether it is uttered by Luther or Adolf Hitler. Moreover, Luther himself was willing to kill 'a blaspheming Jew': 'I would slap his face and, if I could, fling him to the ground and, in my anger, pierce him with my sword.'"

In 1933, the German Lutheran Gerhard Kittel, one of the great New Testament scholars of the day—his multi-volume Theological Dictionary of the New Testament is on the shelves of every good seminary library—published a book outlining how his country must handle the “Jewish question.” Extermination would be impractical. (Later he added that it would also be unchristian.) Zionism was out of the question. (There were too many Jews to fit in Palestine, and the Arabs would not be happy with the situation anyway.) Assimilation would be the worst solution of all. That would corrupt the German race!Rather, the Jews should accept discrimination and defamation as their lot. Let them be treated as “guests” in a foreign land—second class, beleaguered guests, of course. After all, they were Jews, weren’t they? In fact, according to Kittel, the only authentic Jews were those “who in obedience…take on themselves the suffering of dispersal…authentic Judaism abides by the symbol of the stranger wandering restless and homeless on the face of the earth.”This was the carefully considered answer of a great Christian theologian!In the words of Holocaust historian Robert P. Ericksen, Kittel:"…resurrected Christian antisemitism from the Middle Ages, refurbished it with a touch of contemporary racial mysticism, and raised it as a German, Christian bulwark against the Jewish menace…. [He] proposed harsh measures to deal with [this menace], and he directed his research to reveal Jewish degeneracy. In short, he swam in the Nazi stream, though he may have preferred a different stroke."That stream ended in the murder of two-thirds of Europe’s Jews. The Nazis had indeed found a better way to be “free of this insufferable devilish burden—the Jews.”36 No wonder the Nazis published their own translation of the New Testament, omitting all pro-Jewish verses—such as John 4:22, where Jesus said that, “Salvation is from the Jews”—and trying to make Jesus into a non-Jewish Aryan.Sadly, and to our shame, we could go on and on with sickening quotation after quotation, with example after example of bitter Jew-hatred among the leaders of the “Church.” But we have already heard enough. Now it is time to stop and reflect: Could it be that the words of one so powerfully used as Martin Luther—a man whose writings sparked the Protestant Reformation, whose great genius deeply impacted the German intellect, whose commentaries on Romans and Galatians helped bring about the conversions of John and Charles Wesley, whose sensitive pen produced the precious hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”—could it be that his words helped stoke the fires of the Nazi extermination ovens?

Luther had asked the question, “What shall we Christians do now with this rejected, cursed people, the Jews?” Adolph Hitler, in Mein Kampf, gave the answer: “…it is the inexorable Jew who struggles for his domination over the nations. No nation can remove this hand from its throat except by the sword.”Shockingly, in the year 2014, a fundamentalist Christian radio host, himself the author of more than fifty books, reprinted Luther’s infamous book, On the Jews and Their Lies, applauding it with these words: “Here is Martin Luther’s classic book, banned and censored by the Jews and the Vatican for almost 500 years!”

Let the saints and popes and Luther himself arise from their graves and weep.The Church has blood on her hands.

Article by Dr. Michael Brown