Christians and Jews Today,
Two Thousand Years Later - 2
Armando Gargiulo s.j.
Translated by Caterina Esempio
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Christians and Jews Today, Armando Gargiulo s.j. |
3. Nazi Anti-Semitism and the Christians. The “Shoà”
It is undoubted that nazi anti-Semitism has been a heathen ideology aimed at destroying the Christian religion, starting with even physical elimination of Jewish race, which is the “fundamental root” of the Christian tree, in order to establish the Aryan “race” religion.
However, the Jewish theologian Pinchas Lapide made us notice that Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna, chief of the christian-social party and also chief of anti-Semitism in the Hapsburg empire, had translated and published several of the above-mentioned essays included in Civiltà Cattolica in 1907. Moreover, he highlighted that in 1909 young Hitler, who admired the mayor, came to him to learn about the “Jewish problem”!
The nazi ideologists knew how to exploit the masses’ anti-Jewish mentality, inciting people with a terrible and incessant propaganda. For example, in 1936, the review Der Sturmer published a special number concerning the Jewish ritual murder, showing some Jews, while they were sucking Christian children’s blood, providing several quotations from the Jesuit review… and in 1938, the same German review published an illustrated edition for children with the title: Jews’ father is the Devil, where the fathers of the Church and Luther were cited 11 times.
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Addressing Bishops in 1933, Hitler sounded like being pride of his plan, according to whom he would have freed Germany from Jews: “For 1,500 years, Catholic church has considered Jews as harmful beings and has banished them in the ghetto, since Jews’ value is generally acknowledged… I have just begun again the action carried on for 1,500 years… and maybe in this way I’m paying Christianity the greatest service ever offered.”
In fact, Hitler’s diabolic project consisted in Jewish “race” extermination, that is a real genocide. And it was done through systematically studied steps, boycotting progressively every kind of activity (trade, professions, school, teaching, medical practice, military service, etc.), and limiting every possibility of living: prohibition of mixed marriages, exclusion from the state community, abolition of synagogues and cemeteries, forced emigration, physical aggressions, robberies, abuses, murders. And finally it came mass deportations, which included old people, women, and children, from all over the occupied territories to the extermination camps: a number of about 6,000,000 millions of innocent victims!
Within this wicked plan, the following moments were crucial: Nuremberg Laws (1935); the “Crystal Night” - so called because of the assault to Jews’ shops - between 9th and 10th 1938; and the Wannsee Protocol of 20th January 1942, in order to “make clear” the “final solution concerning the Jewish problem”.
We remind, at least incidentally, that, in 1938, also in Italy the Fascist regime had issued racial laws. Through them Jews were damaged concretely, since mixed marriages and the possibility of being admitted to professions and school were forbidden, whereas the property right was highly limited. On the other side, deportation started only after the armistice signed on 8th September 1943 with 7,000 convicts.
Even in Italy, the official newspaper Il Regime Fascista, citing those essays published in Civiltà Cattolica in 1936 and 1938, wrote: “Italy and Germany still have much to learn from the Society of Jesus… the fascism is still far from Civiltà Cattolica people’s strictness.” (6).
4. Christian’s behaviours during the years of Shoah
About this topic, it has already been written much and still much will be written (7). I am reporting some ideas taken from the just cited book “Ebrei e cristiani” by Jochanan Elichaj: “Unfortunately, it is impossible to forget that the principal specialists in extermination, Himmler, Goebbels and Hess, came from good catholic families.” (8)
“When Modern anti-Semitism appeared, it found sleeping or perverted consciences, ready to accept or tolerate it. Nazi anti-Semitism did not seem different, because…Christians got too much used to Jews’ abnormal existence to be surprised by certain measures. Unfortunately, only the horror of extermination camps has been able to open them the eyes totally and help them make the necessary revision of their glance, of their thought and action towards Jewish people”. This text is part of the document Réflexions sur la Shoah, written by the historian Father Dujardin, and published in French Bishops Conference newsletter in March 1989 (9).
“There have surely been many brave deeds, even heroic, by Christians who have saved some Jews. Catholic Schindlers’ story is still far from being finished. Catholic institutions have distinguished themselves by this work of protection and assistance. These, encouraged by ecclesiastic authorities, have been able to save from deportation hundreds of thousands of Jews.
However, as a group of catholic and protestant theologians observed in 1950, ‘most German Catholics have meanly failed’. In 1979, the Secretary of German Episcopal Conference, after having quoted Pio XI’s encyclical against racism, declared: ‘today, it is as much difficult to understand that… either in occasion of racial laws of Nuremberg in September 1935, or following the excesses committed after the “Crystal Night” on 9th-10th November 1938, the Church was not able to take up a sufficiently clear position… our Jewish fellow-citizens found abandoned. Most Churches and Christian communities kept silent faced with that public denial of justice’.
The Polish Bishops’ letter of 30th October 1990 sounds much more serious: ‘Notwithstanding the several heroic examples of help by Polish Christians, there have also been people who have kept unmoved faced with this incomprehensible tragedy. We feel particularly grieved for those Catholics who contributed to Jews’ death. This will forever be a pang of conscience, at a social level, too…For this reason, we must beg our Jewish sister and brother’s forgiveness” (10).
It is important to acknowledge that the several Declarations by European Episcopacy, which have followed since the seventies, are often clearer and stronger that the official documents drawn up by the Church. The last document thereof, whose title is We remember - A Meditation about Shoah, was drawn up by the Commission for religious relationships with Judaism on 16th March 1998.
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with representatives of Jewish communities |
It will be necessary to speak about this document for a longer time, as well as about the one drawn up by the Italian Church and given to the Chief Rabbi of Rome and to Mrs Zevi, president of the Jewish Communities in Italy, on 16th March 1998. In the same way, it will also be necessary to mention Pope Pio XII and his behaviour towards nazism.
5. “Purification of the memory”
I have considered to be right to think back over the story of the relationships between Christians and Jews, just to put into practice the first and repeated call expressed by Pope John Paul II and by the Document drawn up by Papal Commission: Duty of the memory and purification of the memory. This represent the fundamental requirement to achieve a real change in the spirit (teshuva) and to be able to trust to the future of the relationship with Jewish “brothers”.
On Vatican Radio, on 3rd April 1985, it was read the following text (taken from an article published in The Times): “the Christian religion itself has to keep standing at Auschwitz doors in order to examine its own guiltiness… the Christianity has coined the shameful word ‘deicide’. Extermination of Jews in XX century has been the final result of a tradition made of denigration and rejection towards Jews and Judaism, which dates much back” (11).
I have often referred to La Civiltà Cattolica, my Jesuit brothers’ review, because it is universally considered as an (almost official) expression of the catholic way of feeling. Notwithstanding this common sorrow, I have found solace reminding that, all II Vatican Council long, a Jesuit, the Cardinal Bea, fought bravely to make the Document Nostra Aetate be approved. This document has discredited the most ingrained prejudice against Jews, such as being “deicide people”, giving so a new course to the story of the Church.
Notes
- 6. Ib., p.50.
- 7. I would like to remind the interest
recently caused in Italy by two publications, such as Gli ebrei e la Chiesa, 1933-1945 (Ed.Mursia, 1997, Vitaliano Mattioli, author) and Per discutere di Auschwitz (Ed.Giuntina, 1998, Francesco M.Feltri, author).
- 8. Quot. da J.Elichai, o.c., p.52.
- 9. Ib., p.63.
- 10. Ib., p.55.
- 11. Ib., p.65.
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