…The Holocaust. The question continues to haunt and the answers elude. We will never be able to justify the Holocaust, to rationalize it, to explain why it occurred. It is simply impossible for any of us even to attempt such a thing. The Holocaust is beyond our comprehension, and we cannot explain matters that exceed our understanding. We who were not in concentration camps cannot possibly conceive what it was like, and those who were interned in Dachau or Buchenwald before the outbreak of World War II cannot picture Treblinka.
But while we cannot understand the Holocaust, we dare not fail to learn from it what we can. If it is beyond our power to discern the workings of Providence in the crematoria, we may still learn something of the nature and workings of man, and perhaps draw some warranted conclusions, some of which may be quite troubling. One thing is for sure, and that is the romantic dreams of human perfectibility were a total illusion as was this unfounded idea that man possessed some innate quality as part of his DNA, a deep seated humanism that would ensure the preservation of universal ideals. a core human morality embedded in the concrete of the civilized world.
—“Jeremiah” by Fritz Eichenberg (born 1901) was a Jewish wood engraver from Cologne, Germany. An outspoken opponent of the Nazis, he fled with his family in 1933 to the United States, settling in New York. In “Jeremiah,” he perhaps can be seen as capturing the tragedy of the Holocaust that followed in Europe. Jeremiah, the Old Testament Prophet, warned the Jews in ancient Israel to leave worshiping idols and return to God, or their kingdom would be destroyed. His warning (like Eichenberg’s in Germany) went unheeded. Eichenberg, dedicated to the marginalized in society, went on to become a figure in the Catholic Worker’s Movement, a left-leaning organization founded by Dorothy Day in America, that worked to provide basic needs and justice for the American poor and destitute.—Leo Baeck Institute
Martin Luther (1483-1546): “The Jews deserve to hang on gallows, seven times higher than ordinary thieves.” And: “We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them.”
(see link at end)…Unfortunately few popular books or television documentaries on Luther go into detail about Luther’s anti-Jewishness, or even mention that he had a hatred for Jews at all. This has resulted in a biased outlook towards Martin Luther and Christianity. This unawareness of Luther’s sinister side, while honoring his “righteousness” leads to a ratcheting promotion of Luther which supports a “good” public image while also transporting his Jewish beliefs to those who carry the seeds of anti-Semitism. This will present an unwanted dilemma for many Christians because Luther represents the birth of Protestant Christianity as well as the genesis of the special brand of Jewish hatred that flourished only in Germany….
—Zwick openly admits that one of his purposes in making the film was to enhance the image of the Jews. Earlier cinematic efforts to champion them by casting them as victims helped entrench the idea, he says, that they somehow acquiesced in their fate. Zwick wanted to change that. “Passivity suggests people did something willingly,” he told an interviewer. “Powerlessness means they had no access to weapons.”
The case for violent Jewish assertiveness in the face of the enemy is starkly put. Hawk-brother tells dove-brother: “You don’t have the stomach to do what must be done,”—click image for source…
Although Luther did not invent anti-Jewishness, he promoted it to a level never before seen in Europe. Luther bore the influence of his upbringing and from anti-Jewish theologians such as Lyra, Burgensis, (and John Chrysostom, before them). But Luther’s 1543 book, “On the Jews and their lies” took Jewish hatred to a new level when he proposed to set fire to their synagogues and schools, to take away their homes, forbade them to pray or teach, or even to utter God’s name. Luther wanted to “be rid of them” and requested that the government and ministers deal with the problem. He requested pastors and preachers to follow his example of issuing warnings against the Jews. He goes so far as to claim that “We are at fault in not slaying them” for avenging the death of Jesus Christ. Hitler’s Nazi government in the 1930s and 40s fit Luther’s desires to a tee.
—The film’s action, especially the dialogs and discussions between the main characters, portrays the conflict between two positions. First position:
The Israelis are criminal occupiers who oppress the Palestinians. They must be combated with assassination and force.
Second position:
The Israelis are criminal occupiers who oppress the Palestinians. They must be combated with peace activists’ non-violent demonstrations.
The film leaves open which of the two positions is the right one. The only thing certain in the film is the guilt and malice of the Israelis, the “occupiers”. It’s not worth going into detail about the film’s striking polemics against the Israelis. No attempt is undertaken anywhere in the film to explain the Israelis’ position. Almost all of the Israelis appear in the film as soldiers – intimidating, menacing, anonymous, occasionally with sadistic impulses.
While the Palestinians, without exception in the German version, speak at length in flawless German, there’s only one place in the whole film where an Israeli speaks a sentence – German, but with an unpleasant accent.
Of all things, this one Israeli with at least a minimal script presence had to inveigh against his fellow citizens’ wealth – a character quirk from the Nazis’ anti-Semitic films with which older Germans will be quite familiar.—Paradise Now film….click image for source…
So vehemently did Luther speak against the Jews, and the fact that Luther represented an honorable and admired Christian to Protestants, that his written words carried the “memetic” seeds of anti-Jewishness up until the 20th century and into the Third Reich. Luther’s Jewish eliminationist rhetoric virtually matches the beliefs held by Hitler and much of the German populace in the 1930s.
Luther unconsciously set the stage for the future of German nationalistic fanaticism. William L. Shirer in his “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” puts it succinctly:
“Through his sermons and his magnificent translations of the Bible, Luther created the modern German language, aroused in the people not only a new Protestant vision of Christianity by a fervent German nationalism and taught them, at least in religion, the supremacy of the individual conscience. But tragically for them, Luther’s siding with the princes in the peasant rising, which he had largely inspired, and his passion for political autocracy ensured a mindless and provincial political absolutism which reduced the vast majority of the German people to poverty, to a horrible torpor and a demeaning subservience. Even worse perhaps, it helped to perpetuate and indeed to sharpen the hopeless divisions not only between classes but also between the various dynastic and political groupings of the
an people. It doomed for centuries the possibility of the unification of Germany.”In Mein Kampf, Hitler listed Martin Luther as one of the greatest reformers. And similar to Luther in the 1500s, Hitler spoke against the Jews. The Nazi plan to create a German Reich Church laid its bases on the “Spirit of Dr. Martin Luther.” The first physical violence against the Jews came on November 9-10 on Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) where the Nazis killed Jews, shattered glass windows, and destroyed hundreds of synagogues, just as Luther had proposed. In Daniel Johah Goldhagen’s book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, he writes:
“One leading Protestant churchman, Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther’s antisemitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht’s orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the foreword to the volume, he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: ‘On November 10, 1938, on Luther’s birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.’ The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words ‘of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.'”
No apologist can claim that Martin Luther bore his anti-Jewishness out of youthful naivete’, uneducation, or out of unfounded Christianity. On the contrary, Luther in his youth expressed a great optimism about Jewish conversion to Christianity. But in his later years, Luther began to realize that the Jews would not convert to his wishes. His anti-Jewishness grew slowly over time. His logic came not from science or reason, but rather from Scripture and his Faith. His “On the Jews and Their Lies” shows remarkable study into the Bible and fanatical biblical reasoning. Luther, at age 60 wrote this dangerous “little” book at the prime of his maturity, and in full knowledge in support of his beliefs and Christianity.
Few people today realize that Luther wrote ‘On the Jews and Their Lies.’ (He also wrote such works like “Against the Sabbatarians.”) Freethinkers should become aware of the anti-Semitic influence that Luther has brought on the world. His vehement attack on Jews and his powerful influence on the German faithful has brought a new hypothesis to mind: that the Jewish holocaust, and indeed, the eliminationist form of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany may not have occurred without the influence from Luther’s book “On the Jews and Their Lies.”
Walter Buch, the head of the Nazi Party court, admitted Luther’s influence on Nazi Germany…:Read More:http://www.nobeliefs.com/luther.htm
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