01-22-2006, 06:09 AM
Bharatvarsha:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Christian solution to the Jewish problem [was] (conversion)</b>, [whereas] to Hitler and the Nazis the Jews were a race and conversion would change nothing.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->This isn't true. Although the Confessing Church (as the only church) accepted Jewish converts, they didn't really care what happened to the inconvertible Jewish population. Thus for their Church, 'conversion' wasn't a complete "solution" to the "Jewish question". The other churches were entirely in line with Hitler's hideously evil design. See below.
More important than the pictures, is the little-known but revelatory information contained on the page http://www.nobeliefs.com/ChurchesWWII.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Catholic Church</b>
On April 25, thousands of <b>Catholic priests across Germany became part of an anti-Semitic attestation bureaucracy, supplying details of blood purity through marriage and baptism registries in accordance with the Nazi Nuremberg laws which distinguished Jews from non-Jews. Catholic clerical compliance in the process would continue throughout the period of the Nazi regime.</b> [Cornwell, pp.154] Any claimed saving of all-too-few Jewish lives by a few brave Catholics must stand against the millions who died in the death camps as an indirect result of the official workings of the Catholic body.
...
<b>Throughout the war, not only did Catholic priests pay homage to Hitler and contribute to the anti-Semitic feelings, several priests also protected Nazis from criminal charges.</b>For example, Nazi sympathizers such as Bishop Alois Hudal helped Nazi criminals escape to South America by assisting them with false papers and hiding places in Rome. Father Dragonovic worked with the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) to organize the escape of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie to South America. Barbie had also lived under Dragonovic's protection in San Girolamo for about a year.
......
<b>Protestant Church</b>
After the Nazi party took over, they began to exclude Jews from jobs and schools and later to exclude baptized racial Jews from the Land churches and to force them to live completely by themselves. Notably, <b>the churches deeply involved themselves in furnishing data about racial origins from the very beginning of the Nazi era. Even Bishop Wurm saw no harm in this, and in 1934 informed his clergy: "The use of the 'hereditary passports' (Ahnenpasse) can also be recommended from the standpoint of the church." </b>[Helmreich, p. 328]
On September 1, 1941, a <b>national law made it compulsory for all Jews to display the Star of David when they appeared in public. The ordinance presented a problem to the churches because they did not know that many of the Christians in their congregations had Jewish origins.</b>
<b>How did the Protestant churches respond to this oppression of their fellow Christians?</b> On December 17, 1941, <b>Protestant Evangelical Church leaders of Mecklenburg</b>, Thuringia, Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Anhalt, and Lubeck collectively <b>issued an official proclamation</b>:<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->From the crucifixion of Christ to the present day, the Jews have fought Christianity or misused and falsified it in order to reach their own selfish goals. <b>By Christian baptism nothing is altered in regard to a Jew's racial separateness</b>, his national being, and his biological nature. <b>A German Evangelical church has to care for and further the religious life of German fellow countrymen; racial Jewish Christians have no place or rights in it.</b> [Helmreich, p. 329]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Confessing Church</b>
Hitler wanted to combine all the regional Protestant churches into a single and united Reich Church. Of course this meant government control of the Church and a minority of Lutheran Pastors foresaw the dangers. In 1933, a few Protestant Pastors, namely Martin Niemöller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth and others formed the "Pastors Emergency League" which later became known as "The Confessing Church" to oppose the state controlled Nazi Church.
It bears some importance to understand that <b>Germany did not recognize the Confessing Church as an official Church. Not only the Nazis, but all other Protestant Churches condemned the Confessing Church.</b> They thought of it as a minority opposition that held little power. The vast <b>majority of German churches supported Hitler and his policies against the Jews. Moreover, they advocated composing an "Aryan Paragraph" in church synods that would prevent non-aryans from joining the Church, which of course included Jews.</b>
In spite of the <b>myth</b> that <b>has developed that the Confessing Church opposed Hitler for anti-Semitic reasons</b>, the main reason for the opposition actually aimed to protect the power of Pastors to determine who should preach and who they can preach to. The Barmen Declaration of Faith (by Karl Barth, et al) became the principle statement of The Confessing Church. Not a single sentence in it opposes anti-Semitism. According to Professor John S. Conway:<b> "The Confessing Church did not seek to espouse the cause of the Jews as a whole, nor to criticize the secular legislation directed against the German Jews and the Nazi racial philosophy."</b>
<b>Basically, the Confessing Church </b>wanted to save themselves from state control by forming what they considered themselves as the "True Church" (don't all Christians think of themselves as belonging to the True Church?). They <b>did not want government interference with Church self-regulation</b>. This of course deserves plaudits as history has shown that state controlled religions have always ended in oppressing its people. The formation of the United States with its secular government aimed at just this kind of freedom of religion from the state. On this account, the Confessing Church deserves honorable mention. <b>However, just what did they oppose about the Jewish question?</b>
It turns out that the Pastors of the <b>Confessing Church held concerns only for Jews who converted to Christianity</b>. Of course they viewed Jews who convert to Christianity as Christian, not Jewish. <b>This Christian centered view gave them the reason for their objection to the "Aryan Paragraph." For Jews who did not convert, they held strong anti-Semitic feelings. </b>Remember that these pastors lived as well read Lutherans; any reading of Martin Luther will reveal strong anti-Semetic feelings towrad Jews who did not convert... [proceeds to provide quotes to this effect from famous religious leaders of the Confessing Church] <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So, apart from the Confessing Church (which wasn't accepted by the other Churches), all the others Protestant Churches as well as the Catholic ones didn't accept Christians who had Jewish ancestry or Jewish people who'd converted to Christianity. In fact, they gave them up to the nazi-government to be killed. The Confessing Church accepted its Jewish Christian members, but didn't care what happened to non-converted Jews.
So that's what the Churches did to Jewish Christians. Israelis/Jewish people look European, but were nevertheless brutally murdered in a mass genocide. Now, how much will Native American, African, Indian and Chinese Christians be accepted? Hint: many Romany were also Christians, but they were nevertheless murdered in huge numbers as well.
Some more, on the same page:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Remaining secrets</b>
Much remains unknown; the uncovering of the terrible history of Catholic and Protestant Germany during WWII continues. The silence of Catholic and Protestants, church members, priests, and nuns continues to this day. ... Romus ... continues to research and write about the <b>priests who suppressed their anti-Semitic role in Germany</b>... In her latest book, "Wintergreen: suppressed Murders," she documents the atrocities in her hometown [Passau] at the end of the war including the slaying of 2,000 Soviet prisoners, the murder of slave laborers' infants and the efforts to change memorials to victims so that Nazi horrors would remain forgotten. Rosmus has endured verbal abuse, death threats and lawsuits in response to her dedication to the memories of those who faced Nazi persecution.
<b>Recent evidence has surfaced that shows that both Germany's Roman Catholic Church and Germany's Protestant Church used forced laborers during the Third Reich. </b>Religious affairs organizations have attempted to get the Churches to pay into a compensation fund for Nazi victims. ... "The correct thing to do is for the Church to pay into the fund. It's not about when, where and how many forced laborers were used, but whether the two main churches were involved in the system." [Reuters news, 20 July 2000]
...
Today the <b>Catholic Church has undertaken a campaign of suppression and propaganda to belittle Cornwell, Goldhagen, Romus or any researcher that dares to uncover the reality of the atrocities committed by Roman Catholic Christians</b>. Today, <b>Protestant leaders rarely mention the influence by Martin Luther and his anti-Jewish sentiments taught throughout Germany</b>. Indeed, most Protestants live completely unaware of the hatred and intolerances spread by their congressional ancestors. Instead of releasing documents and admitting to the crimes of their fellow Christians, <b>they have opted to protect their religious power structures by silence, concealment, suppression, and projecting the story of persecutions committed against their own religion by other ideological systems, a ploy that disguises their own complicity of persecutions heaped upon others</b>.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
More important than the pictures, is the little-known but revelatory information contained on the page http://www.nobeliefs.com/ChurchesWWII.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Catholic Church</b>
On April 25, thousands of <b>Catholic priests across Germany became part of an anti-Semitic attestation bureaucracy, supplying details of blood purity through marriage and baptism registries in accordance with the Nazi Nuremberg laws which distinguished Jews from non-Jews. Catholic clerical compliance in the process would continue throughout the period of the Nazi regime.</b> [Cornwell, pp.154] Any claimed saving of all-too-few Jewish lives by a few brave Catholics must stand against the millions who died in the death camps as an indirect result of the official workings of the Catholic body.
...
<b>Throughout the war, not only did Catholic priests pay homage to Hitler and contribute to the anti-Semitic feelings, several priests also protected Nazis from criminal charges.</b>For example, Nazi sympathizers such as Bishop Alois Hudal helped Nazi criminals escape to South America by assisting them with false papers and hiding places in Rome. Father Dragonovic worked with the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) to organize the escape of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie to South America. Barbie had also lived under Dragonovic's protection in San Girolamo for about a year.
......
<b>Protestant Church</b>
After the Nazi party took over, they began to exclude Jews from jobs and schools and later to exclude baptized racial Jews from the Land churches and to force them to live completely by themselves. Notably, <b>the churches deeply involved themselves in furnishing data about racial origins from the very beginning of the Nazi era. Even Bishop Wurm saw no harm in this, and in 1934 informed his clergy: "The use of the 'hereditary passports' (Ahnenpasse) can also be recommended from the standpoint of the church." </b>[Helmreich, p. 328]
On September 1, 1941, a <b>national law made it compulsory for all Jews to display the Star of David when they appeared in public. The ordinance presented a problem to the churches because they did not know that many of the Christians in their congregations had Jewish origins.</b>
<b>How did the Protestant churches respond to this oppression of their fellow Christians?</b> On December 17, 1941, <b>Protestant Evangelical Church leaders of Mecklenburg</b>, Thuringia, Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Anhalt, and Lubeck collectively <b>issued an official proclamation</b>:<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->From the crucifixion of Christ to the present day, the Jews have fought Christianity or misused and falsified it in order to reach their own selfish goals. <b>By Christian baptism nothing is altered in regard to a Jew's racial separateness</b>, his national being, and his biological nature. <b>A German Evangelical church has to care for and further the religious life of German fellow countrymen; racial Jewish Christians have no place or rights in it.</b> [Helmreich, p. 329]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Confessing Church</b>
Hitler wanted to combine all the regional Protestant churches into a single and united Reich Church. Of course this meant government control of the Church and a minority of Lutheran Pastors foresaw the dangers. In 1933, a few Protestant Pastors, namely Martin Niemöller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth and others formed the "Pastors Emergency League" which later became known as "The Confessing Church" to oppose the state controlled Nazi Church.
It bears some importance to understand that <b>Germany did not recognize the Confessing Church as an official Church. Not only the Nazis, but all other Protestant Churches condemned the Confessing Church.</b> They thought of it as a minority opposition that held little power. The vast <b>majority of German churches supported Hitler and his policies against the Jews. Moreover, they advocated composing an "Aryan Paragraph" in church synods that would prevent non-aryans from joining the Church, which of course included Jews.</b>
In spite of the <b>myth</b> that <b>has developed that the Confessing Church opposed Hitler for anti-Semitic reasons</b>, the main reason for the opposition actually aimed to protect the power of Pastors to determine who should preach and who they can preach to. The Barmen Declaration of Faith (by Karl Barth, et al) became the principle statement of The Confessing Church. Not a single sentence in it opposes anti-Semitism. According to Professor John S. Conway:<b> "The Confessing Church did not seek to espouse the cause of the Jews as a whole, nor to criticize the secular legislation directed against the German Jews and the Nazi racial philosophy."</b>
<b>Basically, the Confessing Church </b>wanted to save themselves from state control by forming what they considered themselves as the "True Church" (don't all Christians think of themselves as belonging to the True Church?). They <b>did not want government interference with Church self-regulation</b>. This of course deserves plaudits as history has shown that state controlled religions have always ended in oppressing its people. The formation of the United States with its secular government aimed at just this kind of freedom of religion from the state. On this account, the Confessing Church deserves honorable mention. <b>However, just what did they oppose about the Jewish question?</b>
It turns out that the Pastors of the <b>Confessing Church held concerns only for Jews who converted to Christianity</b>. Of course they viewed Jews who convert to Christianity as Christian, not Jewish. <b>This Christian centered view gave them the reason for their objection to the "Aryan Paragraph." For Jews who did not convert, they held strong anti-Semitic feelings. </b>Remember that these pastors lived as well read Lutherans; any reading of Martin Luther will reveal strong anti-Semetic feelings towrad Jews who did not convert... [proceeds to provide quotes to this effect from famous religious leaders of the Confessing Church] <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So, apart from the Confessing Church (which wasn't accepted by the other Churches), all the others Protestant Churches as well as the Catholic ones didn't accept Christians who had Jewish ancestry or Jewish people who'd converted to Christianity. In fact, they gave them up to the nazi-government to be killed. The Confessing Church accepted its Jewish Christian members, but didn't care what happened to non-converted Jews.
So that's what the Churches did to Jewish Christians. Israelis/Jewish people look European, but were nevertheless brutally murdered in a mass genocide. Now, how much will Native American, African, Indian and Chinese Christians be accepted? Hint: many Romany were also Christians, but they were nevertheless murdered in huge numbers as well.
Some more, on the same page:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Remaining secrets</b>
Much remains unknown; the uncovering of the terrible history of Catholic and Protestant Germany during WWII continues. The silence of Catholic and Protestants, church members, priests, and nuns continues to this day. ... Romus ... continues to research and write about the <b>priests who suppressed their anti-Semitic role in Germany</b>... In her latest book, "Wintergreen: suppressed Murders," she documents the atrocities in her hometown [Passau] at the end of the war including the slaying of 2,000 Soviet prisoners, the murder of slave laborers' infants and the efforts to change memorials to victims so that Nazi horrors would remain forgotten. Rosmus has endured verbal abuse, death threats and lawsuits in response to her dedication to the memories of those who faced Nazi persecution.
<b>Recent evidence has surfaced that shows that both Germany's Roman Catholic Church and Germany's Protestant Church used forced laborers during the Third Reich. </b>Religious affairs organizations have attempted to get the Churches to pay into a compensation fund for Nazi victims. ... "The correct thing to do is for the Church to pay into the fund. It's not about when, where and how many forced laborers were used, but whether the two main churches were involved in the system." [Reuters news, 20 July 2000]
...
Today the <b>Catholic Church has undertaken a campaign of suppression and propaganda to belittle Cornwell, Goldhagen, Romus or any researcher that dares to uncover the reality of the atrocities committed by Roman Catholic Christians</b>. Today, <b>Protestant leaders rarely mention the influence by Martin Luther and his anti-Jewish sentiments taught throughout Germany</b>. Indeed, most Protestants live completely unaware of the hatred and intolerances spread by their congressional ancestors. Instead of releasing documents and admitting to the crimes of their fellow Christians, <b>they have opted to protect their religious power structures by silence, concealment, suppression, and projecting the story of persecutions committed against their own religion by other ideological systems, a ploy that disguises their own complicity of persecutions heaped upon others</b>.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->