Churches And The Holocaust: Unholy Teaching, Good Samaritans And Reconciliation

Over the centuries, the traditional Christian teaching of contempt held that the Jews deserved to be punished because of their rejection of Jesus and the new religion he founded. This unfortunate doctrine was expounded by virtually all Christian churches Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant. The teaching of contempt led to universal discrimination against Jews, to persecutions and outbreaks of violence, and was a major element in the ideological and emotional background against which the World War II Holocaust took place. At the same time, Christians have always been exhorted to help those in distress and to be merciful to the needy and helpless.

For some members of the Christian clergy, the conflict between compassion for helpless victims and the traditional view of the Jews posed a major moral and theological conflict. Many of them, like most other Europeans, said and did nothing. But some forthrightly stood up for the Jews as fellow human beings and helped them despite the extraordinary danger, often resulting in their own imprisonment and execution by the Nazis.