Posted Nov 11, 2015 by Michael L. Brown

Nov. 9 marked the anniversary of Krystallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, the date on which many historians say the Holocaust really began.

On that night in 1938, Nazi troops destroyed or set on fire Jewish homes and synagogues, smashed the windows of Jewish places of business (looting them too), and killed or wounded scores of Jews.

On the one hand, this was a vicious Nazi response to the Nov. 7 murder of a German diplomat in France by a 17-year-old German Jewish refugee named Herschel Grynszpan.

But Krystallnacht also served as a test run for the Nazis. What would the German people do when the Jews were attacked?

Nothing.

In typical Nazi fashion, a detailed report of the atrocities was submitted by Reinhard Heydrich (second in command of the SS after Heinrich Himmler) stating that “815 shops [were] destroyed, 171 dwelling houses set on fire or destroyed … 119 synagogues were set on fire, and another 76 completely destroyed. … 20,000 Jews were arrested, 36 deaths were reported and those seriously injured were also numbered at 36. …”

To the delight of some German pastors (yes, I said to their delight), the fires were still burning on Nov. 10, the birthday of the famed German Christian leader Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, who was born in 1483.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen noted, “One leading Protestant churchman, Bishop Martin Sasse, published a compendium of Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic 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 Nov. 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 anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.’” (See “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” 111.)

What lessons can we learn from the silence of the German people on Krystallnacht and the subsequent horrors of the Holocaust?

First, when we see evil we must confront it, regardless of cost or consequence.

This doesn’t mean running into the streets to stop a mob of 500.

This doesn’t mean risking your own life in a cavalier way just to make a statement.

But it does mean refusing to sit back in silence while your nation is taken over by hoodlums, especially when you make up the majority of the population.

And when our lives are not even being threatened by evil and injustice, what excuse do we have for not standing up and speaking out?

As the courageous Christian leader Basilea Schlink wrote from Germany in the 1950s, “We are personally to blame. We all have to admit that if we, the entire Christian community, had stood up as one man and if, after the burning of the synagogues [on Krystallnacht], we had gone out on the streets and voiced our disapproval, rung the church bells, and somehow boycotted the actions of the S.S., the Devil’s vassals would probably not have been at such liberty to pursue their evil schemes. But we lacked the ardor of love – love that is never passive, love that cannot bear it when its fellowmen are in misery, particularly when they are subjected to such appalling treatment and tortured to death. Indeed, if we had loved God, we would not have endured seeing those houses of God set ablaze; and holy, divine wrath would have filled our souls.” (See her book “Israel, My Chosen People,” 42-43.)

In retrospect, who can argue with her?

Second, anti-Semitism in Christian theology must be pulled out by the roots. If it is not uprooted, the results could be deadly – literally.

Simply stated, without the long history of European “Christian” anti-Semitism, the Holocaust could never have occurred.

Instead, Jew-hatred was cultivated for centuries in church theology, not just Catholic but Protestant as well. (All this is carefully and painfully documented in my book “Our Hands Are Stained with Blood.”)

The Jewish people were demonized and branded Christ-killers, mistreated, oppressed and even killed. And although Martin Luther initially denounced the terrible way the Catholic Church had treated the Jews over the centuries and writing a small book emphasizing that Jesus Christ was born a Jew (this was in 1523), by 1543, he had come full circle, and worse.

In his infamous 1543 writing, “Concerning the Jews and Their Lies,” Luther gave counsel to the German princes as to how to deal with the Jewish people, instructing the princes to set their synagogues on fire and destroy their houses (just as the Nazis did on Krystallnacht), to take away their holy books and to forbid their rabbis to teach under penalty of death, among other draconian measures, all of which were implemented by the Nazis.

That’s why Martin Luther, the great Reformer, has been called the John the Baptist of Adolf Hitler.

Today, 70 years after the Holocaust, I am deeply grieved when I see “Christians” posting comments to theological debates I’ve had about the nation of Israel and the Jewish people, speaking about the Jews in the ugliest terms, vilifying Israel with violent language and repeating the standard, worn-out anti-Semitic libels – all in the name of their enlightened theology.

This must be uprooted by the truth of Scripture and truth of history. Otherwise, there could be blood on our hands as well – if not the blood of physical violence, the blood of silence in the face of evil and the blood of Jew-hatred in our theology.

May we learn from the lessons of history.

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