1998: ADL: On the inaction of German Christian churches to persecution of Jews; how the church began to address its failings post-war (jan 1, 1933 – jan 1, 1945)

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Published: 01.01.1998
Antisemitism Globally
Compliance and Confrontation

by: Victoria J. Barnett | January 01, 1998

Dimensions, Vol 12, No 2

Churches throughout Europe were mostly silent while Jews were persecuted, deported and murdered by the Nazis. Churches, especially those in Nazi Germany, sought to act, as institutions tend to do, in their own best interests -- narrowly defined, short-sighted interests.

The list of "bystanders" -- those who declined to challenge the Third Reich in any way -- that emerges from any study of the Holocaust is long and depressing. Few organizations, in or outside Nazi Germany, did much to resist Nazism or aid its victims.

German Churches Actions Based on Institutional Interests

Throughout the Nazi era, ardent debates took place within the German Churches about where to stand firm against Hitler's regime and where to compromise, when to speak out and when to remain silent. Ecumenical documents show that from 1933 to 1945 there were Christian leaders inside and outside Germany who agonized about what they could do to stop Nazism and help its victims. The historical complexities suggested by these factors should never lead us to condone the Churches' failures during the Thirties and Forties; they can, however, help us to understand the specific nature of those failures so that we may learn from them.

Perhaps at the heart of those failures was the fact that the Churches, especially in Nazi Germany, sought to act, as institutions tend to do, in their own best interests -- narrowly defined, short-sighted interests. There was little desire on the part of the Churches for self-sacrifice or heroism, and much emphasis on "pragmatic" and "strategic" measures that would supposedly protect these institutions' autonomy in the Third Reich. Public institutional circumspection carried to the point of near numbness; an acute lack of insight: these are the aspects of the Churches' behavior during the Nazi era that are so damning in retrospect. The minutes of German Protestant synodal meetings in 1942 reveal how oblivious the participants were to what was happening in the world around them. While innocent victims throughout Europe were being brutally murdered, Christian leaders were debating what points of doctrine and policy were tenable. This is especially haunting, of course, because the Christian clergy and laity never thought of their respective Churches as a mere institution, but as a religious body witnessing in the world to certain values, including love of neighbors, the sanctity of life and the power of moral conscience.

To a great extent, this inertia defined the organized Christian community as well. Churches throughout Europe were mostly silent while Jews were persecuted, deported and murdered. In Nazi Germany in September 1935, there were a few Christians in the Protestant Confessing Church who demanded that their Church take a public stand in defense of the Jews. Their efforts, however, were overruled by Church leaders who wanted to avoid any conflict with the Nazi regime. Internationally, some Church leaders in Europe and North America did condemn the Nazis' measures against the Jews, and there were many debates about how Christians outside Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied territory should best respond to Hitler's brutal policies. These discussions, however, tended to become focused more on secondary strategic considerations -- like maintaining good relations with colleagues in the German Churches -- than on the central humanitarian issues that were really at stake.

Churches throughout the world began to address their failures after 1945. Confessions of guilt have been issued by Catholic Churches in France and Germany, and most major Protestant denominations, beginning with the German Evangelical Church's Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt in August 1945 (three months after the war in Europe ended). The early statements were vague, often referring only to the Churches' general lack of decisiveness in opposing Nazism. More recently, however, the Christian Churches have been far more specific -- recognizing that they not only failed to resist Nazism, but actually helped prepare the way for the mass destruction of Europe's Jews through centuries of proselytization, attacks on Judaism, and tacit or overt support for pogroms and other anti-Jewish violence.

These admissions of guilt are part of a difficult process, which still continues, in which Christians try to grasp exactly what happened to their Churches during the Holocaust. The examinations raise a number of questions: Were the Churches, by and large, passive while millions of innocent people were murdered? To what extent can we say they resisted? To what extent were they guilty of active complicity? Most importantly: Why did the Churches respond as they did? These are, obviously, complex questions, historically and theologically.

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