The History of the JewishChristian Relationship

1
The History of the Jewish-Christian Relationship

• The Holocaust
• Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders
• Covenant Congregational Church
• Fall 2002
• Pastor Johnny Agurkis

2
Perpetrators
3
Perpetrators

• May I tell you a grim story?
• -SS Lieutenant Kurt Gerstein
• Procurement Officer for Zyklon B to a Swedish
  Diplomat in 1942

4
Perpetrators

• At one time, the Jews of Germany laughed about
  my prophecies. I do not know whether they are
  still laughing or whether they have already lost
  all desire to laugh. But right now I can only
  repeat they will stop laughing everywhere, and I
  shall be right also in that prophecy.
• -Adolph Hitler, 1942

5
Humiliation of Jews
6
Perpetrators

• Because it is necessary, because we no longer
  hear the worlds screaming, and finally because
  no power in the world can stop us, we shall
  therefore take the Jewish question towards its
  total solution. It is total elimination,
  complete separation.
• -Das Schwarze Korps, German newspapers response
  to the question, Jews Whats Next?

7
Perpetrators

• I rarely saw them as individuals. It was always
  a huge mass.
• -Franz Stangl, Treblinka Commandant

8
Perpetrators

• It is our duty to arouse, to whip up, and to
  incite in our people the instinctive repugnance
  of the Jews.
• -Adolph Hitler

9
Hitler at Mass Rally
10
Perpetrators

• I only took part in this crime because there was
  nothing I could do to change anything. The blame
  for this crime lay with National Socialism. I
  myself was never a National Socialist.
  Nevertheless, I still had to join the partyI
  only took part in the murderout of consideration
  for my family.
• -Maximillian Grabner, 2nd in command at Auschwitz

11
Perpetrators

• Arbeit Macht Frei
• Work Makes Freedom
• -words inscribed by Nazis over the Auschwitz
  entrance gate

12
Perpetrators

• Its almost impossible to imagine what nerves of
  steel it took to carry out that dirty work down
  there. It was horriblethat evening we were
  given schnapps again.
• -Kurt Werner, member of Sonderkommando 4a which
  killed over 33,000 Jews in Babi Yar ravine over
  September 29-30, 1941

13
Humiliation of a Jew
14
Perpetrators

• Most of you must know what it means when one
  hundred corpses are lying side by side or five
  hundred or one thousand. To have stuck it out at
  the same time - apart from exceptions caused by
  human weakness - to have remained decent fellows,
  that is what has made us hard. This is a page of
  glory in our history, which has never been
  written and is never to be written.
• -SS leader Heinrich Himmler

15
Perpetrators

• The fire that raged all night drove the Jews
  who, despite all the search operations, were
  still hiding under roofs, in cellars and other
  hiding places. Scores of burning Jews jumped
  from windows or tried to slide down sheets. We
  took pains to ensure that those Jews, as well as
  others, were wiped out immediately.
• -General Stroop, on the destruction of the Warsaw
  Ghetto

16
Perpetrators

• All right,
• give them something nice to chew on.
• -at Birkenau, the phrase used by SS officers to
  signal the drop of canisters containing Zyklon B
  into the gas chambers once all Jews were locked
  inside

17
Exiting the Trains
18
Perpetrators

• Here we see things no one has ever seen
  beforeWe stand and look on.
• -SS Sergeant Felix Landau

19
Perpetrators

• It (Auschwitz) was the greatest extermination
  center of all time. I could dispose of 2,000
  heads in half an hour, but it was the burning
  that took all the time.
• -Rudolph Hoss, Auschwitz commandant

20
Perpetrators

• Of course, I could not eliminate all lice and
  Jews in only a years time. But in the course of
  time, and above all, if you will help me, this
  end will be attained.
• -Hans Frank, 1940

21
Execution of Poles
22
Perpetrators

• Jews of Warsaw, Attention!
• Bodily cleanliness requires that everyone bathe
  before continuing the journey.
• -Sign above the entrance to the gas chamber at
  Treblinka

23
Perpetrators

• The former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer
  in existence.
• -General Stroop, May 16, 1943

24
Perpetrators

• Out of respect for human life, I would remove a
  purulent appendix from a diseased body. The Jew
  is the purulent appendix in the body of Europe.
• -Dr. Fritz Klein
• SS Doctor at Auschwitz

25
Humiliation of a Jew
26
Victims
27
Victims

• My number is 174517 we have been baptized, we
  will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we
  die.
• -Primo Levi

28
Victims

• Never shall I forget that night, the first night
  in the camp, which has turned my life into one
  long night, seven times cursed and seven times
  sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never
  shall I forget the little faces of the children,
  whose bodies I saw turned to wreathes of smoke
  beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget
  those flames which consumed my faith forever.
  Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which
  deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to
  live. Never shall I forget those moments which
  murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams
  to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even
  if I am condemned to live as long as God himself.
  Never.
• -Elie Wiesel

29
Children on Way to Gas Chamber
30
Victims

• Do you know how one says never
• in camp slang?
• morgen fruh - tomorrow morning
• -Primo Levi

31
Victims

• I know of course, its simple luck that Ive
  survived so many friends. But last night in a
  dream I heard those friends say to me
• Survival of the the fittest
• and I hated myself.
• -Bertolt Brecht

32
Victims

• You couldnt cry in Auschwitz. You cried, you
  died. If you showed even more weakness than you
  already had, you didnt survive the day.
• -Michael Vogel

33
Victims

• How does one describe the walking into
  Auschwitz, the smell? And someone pointing out
  to you that those are gas chambers, that your
  parents went up in smoke. When I asked, When
  will I see my mother? several hours after I came
  into the camp, I was shown the smoke. This is
  how I found out where she went.
• -Fritzie Frishall, 15 years old

34
Soldier killing Jew child
35
Victims

• During roll call they would kill many of us.
  Kill us for the simple reason that someone did it
  in their pants. They soiled their pants, soiled
  their uniform. Poor guy couldnt hold it in.
  Dysentery was something very common.
• -Michael Vogel

36
Victims

• As you stretched out your arm, they gave you a
  numberAnd as they gave me my tattoo number,
  B-4990, the SS man came to me, and he says to me,
  Do you know what this numbers all about? I
  said no sir. Okay, let me tell you now. You
  are being dehumanized.
• -Michael Jacobs

37
Victims

• They tattooed me and they told us, from now on,
  this is your name. My name is A-5143. Your name
  is your number. And thediscouragement that I
  feltI felt like I was not a human person
  anymore. They had shaved our heads and I felt so
  ashamed and also when they told us to
  undressthey made us feel like animals.
• -Lilly Malnick, 16 years old

38
Victims

• How old are you my child? he asked.
• What difference does it make. Im older than
  you, I answered.
• Why do you think you are older than me?
• Because you cry and laugh as a child. And I
  stopped laughing and I cant even cry. So I must
  be older than you.
• -8 year old Israel Lau, on meeting US Chaplain
  Herschel Schacter the day Buchenwald was
  liberated by the Allies

39
Children at Barbed Wire Fence
40
Victims

• For the great part of the liberated Jews of
  Bergen-Belsen, there was no ecstacy, no joy at
  our liberation. We had lost our families, our
  homes. We had no place to go, nobody to hug,
  nobody who was waiting for us, anywhere. We had
  been liberated from death and from the fear of
  death, but we were not free from the fear of
  life.
• -Hadassah Bimko

41
Victims

• I remember one set of twins in particular Guido
  and Ina (Gypsy children), aged about four. One
  day Mengele took them away. When they returned
  they were in a terrible state they had been sewn
  together, back to back, like Siamese twins.
  Their wounds were infected and oozing puss. They
  screamed day and night. Then their parents - I
  remember the mothers name was Stella - managed
  to get some morphine and they killed the children
  in order to end their suffering.
• -Vera Alexander, forced to work in Auschwitz
  clinic

42
Victims of medical experiments
43
Victims

• Death lies in every street. The children are no
  longer afraid of death. In one courtyard, the
  children played a game of tickling a corpse.
• -Emanuel Ringelbaum, chronicler of the Warsaw
  Ghetto

44
Child dying on street of Ghetto
45
Victims

• I have told you this story not to weaken you,
  but to strengthen you.
• Now it is up to you.
• -unknown survivor of Sachsenhausen

46
Victims

• The pain is real. The pain is not a fiction. I
  wish it were a fiction. I wish somebody would
  come back and give me back my family and say,
  Hey, it never happened. Here they are.
• But, they arent here.
• -Solomon Wieder

47
Victims

• My father was an extremely smart man. In the
  cattle car, sitting there, I talked to him.
  Daddy, whats going to happen? And he always
  assured me, Dont worry. This is the 20th
  century. Theyre not going to kill us.
• -Fred Bloch

48
Women in cattle cars
49
Victims

• How can I forget Auschwitz, Majdanek,
  Bergen-Belsen, Theresienstadt, Buchenwaldand so
  many others? How can I forget Moshe, Yankel and
  Rivkaand so many names? And I hear the sound of
  so many prayersHear O Israel, the Lord is our
  God. The Lord is One. It is so much pain to
  remember, so much pain, but it is so hard to
  forget.
• -Unknown survivor

50
Survivor after liberation
51
Victims

• When I was about 10 years old, there was a knock
  on my apartment door, and there was my best
  friend, Hans. And he spat in my face, and he
  said, Manfred, you dirtyJew. My best friend,
  overnight.
• -Fred Margulies

52
Bystanders
53
Bystanders

• Those of us who received the first Jews did what
  we thought had to be done - nothing more
  complicatedHow could we refuse them?The issue
  was Do you think we are all brothers or not? Do
  you think it is unjust to turn in the Jews or
  not? Then let us try to help!
• -Magda Trocme, wife of the minister of Le
  Chambon, a community in France that acted to save
  Jews

54
Bystanders

• There is no innocent blood of Jewish children in
  the world. All Jewish blood is guilty. You have
  to die. This is the punishment that has been
  awaiting you, because of the crucifixion.
• -Papal ambassadors response when asked to
  intervene in the sending of Slovakian Jewish
  children to Auschwitz

55
Women Unloading Bodies at Mass Grave
56
Bystanders

• No more are we ready to keep silent at mans
  behest when God commands us to speakWe must obey
  God rather than man.
• -from Rev. Martin Niemollers last sermon before
  being sent to Dachau by Nazis

57
Bishop gives Nazi Salute
58
Bystanders

• You can do what you like to the Jewsnobody
  wants them.
• -from a Nazi informants report to Hitler on the
  Evian Conference in 1938 (only 1 nation agreed to
  allow Jews to immigrate)

59
Bystanders

• I pray you to believe what I have said about
  Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and
  heard, but only part of it for most of it I have
  no words. If I have offended you by this mild
  account of Buchenwald, I am not in the least bit
  sorry.
• -Edward R. Murrow, CBS broadcast with liberating
  Allies

60
Bystanders

• I became a liar and a cheat - for a good cause,
  mind you, but nevertheless a sinner, although I
  am sure that I have long since made my peace with
  God and that He has forgiven my trespasses.
• -Father Rufino Niccacci, priest who saved 300
  Jews in Assisi, Italy

61
Pile of Glasses Outside Gas Chamber
62
Bystanders

• I have never seen a more abominable sight than
  Majdanak near Lublin, Hitlers notorious
  concentration camp, where more than half a
  million European men, women and children were
  massacredThis is not a concentration camp it is
  a gigantic murder plant.
• -Roman Karman, Soviet correspondent

63
Bystanders

• Something happened when I walked through the
  gates. My blinders came off, my tunnel vision
  dissipated. And I realized that human suffering
  is not delegated to just me and mine. Human
  suffering touches everybody.
• -Leon Bass, on entering Buchenwald with the
  liberating Allies

64
Bystanders

• May we ask if Hitlers attitude may be somewhat
  governed by the fact that too many Jews, at least
  in Germany, are radical, too many are communists?
  May that have any bearing on the situation?
  There must be some reason other than race or
  creed - just what is that reason? It is well to
  try to understand.
• -The Christian Century, 1933, responding to A
  Reason for Anti-Semitism?

65
Survivor
66
Bystanders

• Jews teach communism.
• Jews teach atheism.
• Jews destroy Christianity.
• Jews control the press.
• Jews produce filthy movies.
• Jews control money.
• -sign placed by Henry Ford at employee gate at
  Ford Motor Co. 1939

67
Bystanders

• We, as Americans, do not have the moral right to
  judge what is happening. After all, we are not
  perfect ourselves.
• -Anne Morrow Lindbergh

68
Bystanders

• A rather wild story.
• -British Foreign Office on reports that Nazis
  were exterminating Jews - 1942

69
Dying child in ghetto
70
Bystanders

• 2 Million Jews in Europe have been killed off
  already and another 5 million are awaiting the
  same fate unless they are saved immediately.
  Every day, every hour, every minute that passes,
  thousands of them are being exterminatedUnless
  we act we face the moral responsibility of being
  passive bystanders.
• -William Langer, US Senate - 1943

71
Pile of shoes at Auschwitz
72
Bystanders

• Notwithstanding our separate religious beliefs,
  we will fight to preserve for our Jewish brothers
  and sisters the same freedom we ourselves value
  more than life.
• -Danish Bishops Proclamation
• October 1943

73
Bystanders

• The State Department is guilty not only of gross
  procrastination and willful failure to act, but
  even of willful attempts to prevent action from
  being taken to rescue Jews from Hitler.
• -US Treasury Department Memo - 1944

74
Bystanders

• Finland is a decent nation. We would rather
  perish together with the Jews. We will not
  surrender them!
• -Finlands Foreign Minister Witting to Nazi
  leader Heinrich Himmler
• (Finland fought as an ally of Germany against the
  Soviets in WWII)

75
Woman Awaiting Execution
76
And to them will I give in my house and within
my walls a memorial (yad vashem - literally a
name and a place)that shall not be cut
off.-Isaiah 565