What happened during the Jewish Holocaust in Europe and what was the role
of Christians during this time in Europe?
What happened during the Jewish Holocaust: Even before the Holocaust, Jewish people -- in particular European Jews -- had to flee their homelands due to discrimination and anti-Semitism. They most often emigrated to Palestine, the United States, and England. A small number also went to other countries such as Argentina and South Africa.
Emigration took a sudden leap when the Nazis, under Hitler’s leadership, began to actively restrict Jews in Germany and then in the German-occupied neighboring countries. More than 60,000 Jews chose to go to Palestine, which already had a population of 300,000 Jewish settlers and was under British rule. Another 180,000 German Jews left Germany; however, Jews in other countries were trapped by the Nazi invasion.
An overcrowded Palestine forced the United States to open its doors to Jewish refugees. President Roosevelt, concerned with the Nazis’ actions against the Jews, permitted approximately 27,300 refugees to come to the U.S. However, the 1924 quota limited the number of people; therefore, many who tried to get out of Europe had no place to go. Another large number of Jews opted to immigrate to neighboring Western European countries, particularly Belgium and Denmark.
Despite its strong isolation from the outside world and its alliance with Germany, Japan played a significant role in helping out Jewish refugees. Japanese diplomats in Europe, China, and Manchurian issued visas to refugees to allow them to settle in Shanghai. 24,000 Jews escaped via China and Japan between 1938-1941 on their way to United States, Canada, Palestine and other countries that would accept them.
The Holocaust claimed the lives of approximately 6 million Jewish men, women, and children. There were about 1.6 million Jewish children, ranging from infants to teens, living in Europe at the start of World War II. Of these, only about 11 percent survived the war. Some left their homes to seek refuge in other countries. Many parents chose to hide their children in order to save them.
Hiding a child was much less difficult than hiding an adult. Unlike adults, children were not required to carry any forms of identification. In addition, they could easily blend in with the groups of non-Jewish children who became orphans of war.
In most cases, arrangements to hide these children were made through personal contacts. Some non-Jews, motivated by moral concern and good will, risked their lives in order to save the lives of Jewish children. They later became known as "righteous Gentiles.”
Hiding places for Jewish children included convents, boarding schools, and orphanages. These places were often located far from the children's homes. Being sent to these hiding places was a terrifying experience for children -- they were made to travel under difficult conditions to unknown destinations. Yet, they were aware that they were in danger, and leaving their families and homes would save their lives.
Those who were most visible had to give up their Jewish identities by changing their names and converting to Christianity, at least temporarily, to avoid being discovered by the Nazis. They had to be extremely cautious in their everyday lives, not speaking of their past or their families for fear they might reveal that they were Jewish.
Children hiding with their families, such as Anne Frank, were cut off from the world, sometimes for years. But most of them spent their childhood with strangers. A few found it necessary to move to a number of different homes as they encountered problems staying in a single location. The families keeping them often worried that the Germans would discover they were hiding Jews or that a doubtful neighbor could suspect the children's true identities and turn the families and the Jewish children over to the Nazis.
A great concern among hidden children was that their true families would not survive the war, and even if they did survive, that they may not be able to find and reunite with their parents. Since many children were taken in by complete strangers, it was very possible that these children would never see their parents or siblings again.
During the Holocaust, a ghetto was an isolated section of a city in which Jews were forced to live. The conditions the Nazis created in the ghettos were horrible and unhealthy - - usually cramped, dirty, and with little food. There were many ghettos throughout Europe during the Holocaust period. Some of these were the Amsterdam Ghetto, the Lodz Ghetto, and the Minsk Ghetto. However, the largest was the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, with about 400,000 people crammed into an area of about 2.5 square miles.
The Warsaw Ghetto was created by the Nazis in October of 1940. They forced the Jews of Warsaw to live in this very confined space and built 19-foot walls around the ghetto to separate it from the rest of the city which was designated only for non-Jews. As the Nazis consolidated their power throughout Poland, they ordered Jews from other nearby areas to transfer into the Warsaw Ghetto, thus making the ghetto unbearably crowded.
To differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, the Nazis forced the Jews to wear Star of David bands on their coat sleeves. A death penalty was enforced on any Jew caught trying to escape the ghetto, or any Pole who tried to help Jews in any way. Although there were Jews who tried to fight against the Nazis, they quickly ran out of supplies, were swiftly caught and punished, killed or taken to prison.
The Nazis, by design, made the living conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto as horrific as possible. There were curfews and guards on duty at all times along the walls to make sure no Jews crossed over to the non-Jewish side. Many Jews suffered from disease, which spread rapidly in such close quarters. For example, a typhus epidemic broke out about a year after the ghetto was created, killing many. Due to low food rationing, Jews inevitably starved to death. Some chose to kill themselves rather than stand the physical and emotional pain any longer.
Despite all these brutal conditions and the Nazis' attempt to control and degrade them through oppression, the Jews tried to maintain their dignity and some sense of normalcy in a world gone awry. They secretly studied, prayed and conducted religious services, set up schools for their children, put on theatrical plays, wrote diaries and histories in the ghettos. They continued the struggle to self-govern themselves even from within the ghettos.
Similar to the other ghettos in Europe, the Warsaw Ghetto was made smaller and smaller after much of the population died, or was deported to concentration or death camps. The 2.5 square miles of the Warsaw Ghetto were eventually split into two parts -- the Large Ghetto and the Small Ghetto. A pedestrian crossing bridge was built over the street separating the two sections preventing Jews from stepping outside the ghetto.
In 1943, an uprising occurred in the ghetto. Although the Jews in Warsaw fought courageously against the Nazis, after one month of fighting, the Nazis burned the entire ghetto until nothing was left. Those who remained were deported to concentration camps.
Hitler’s anti-Semitism grew out of resentment for the German loss of World War I. He blamed the Jews of Europe for Germany’s defeat in the war. Hitler also used the Jews as scapegoats for all the problems that Germany was facing in the 1920s and 1930s, such as unemployment, poverty, and starvation caused by massive inflation, and later, the Great Depression.
In order to deport the Jews, the Nazis often led them to believe that they were merely being moved to a different place where life would be better for them. The reality of the situation was that Jews were put on trains that sent them to either concentration camps or death camps. The trains were filthy freight and cattle cars and were horribly crowded. Many people died in the trains before they even reached the camps.
The Nazis built two types of camps: concentration/labor camps and death camps. In concentration camps, prisoners were forced to become hard laborers and were given very little to eat. They were forced to wear striped uniforms and armbands or labels to identify the type of prisoners that they were. The different colors of the bands represented different groups of people. Due to disease, starvation, and harsh treatment by the Nazis, most people died in the concentration camps or were deported to death camps where they met with the same fate.
Death camps, on the other hand, were set up specifically for mass murder. Jews deported to death camps were either shot, or killed in gas vans. The gas vans were tightly sealed, and when prisoners were loaded into the van, the driver would press the accelerator releasing carbon monoxide gas that suffocated and killed them. Later, when more structured methods of murder were set up at death camps, the prisoners were told they had to take a shower. The Nazis ordered them to take off their clothes and follow signs that said "To the Shower Room." However, in the so-called "Shower Room," Zyclon B, a poisonous gas, was released until everybody suffocated to death. Prisoners who exhibited useful strength were made part of the sonderkommando, inmates forced to collect the dead bodies and put them in crematoriums to be burned.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau complex was an exception, having both work facilities and gas chambers for murdering inmates. Enlarged in 1941, Auschwitz prisoners worked in factories helping to supply for the German war movement. Additionally, more prisoners were killed in Birkenau than in any other death camp, a number totalling as many as 1.1 million, most of whom were Jews.
Emigration took a sudden leap when the Nazis, under Hitler’s leadership, began to actively restrict Jews in Germany and then in the German-occupied neighboring countries. More than 60,000 Jews chose to go to Palestine, which already had a population of 300,000 Jewish settlers and was under British rule. Another 180,000 German Jews left Germany; however, Jews in other countries were trapped by the Nazi invasion.
An overcrowded Palestine forced the United States to open its doors to Jewish refugees. President Roosevelt, concerned with the Nazis’ actions against the Jews, permitted approximately 27,300 refugees to come to the U.S. However, the 1924 quota limited the number of people; therefore, many who tried to get out of Europe had no place to go. Another large number of Jews opted to immigrate to neighboring Western European countries, particularly Belgium and Denmark.
Despite its strong isolation from the outside world and its alliance with Germany, Japan played a significant role in helping out Jewish refugees. Japanese diplomats in Europe, China, and Manchurian issued visas to refugees to allow them to settle in Shanghai. 24,000 Jews escaped via China and Japan between 1938-1941 on their way to United States, Canada, Palestine and other countries that would accept them.
The Holocaust claimed the lives of approximately 6 million Jewish men, women, and children. There were about 1.6 million Jewish children, ranging from infants to teens, living in Europe at the start of World War II. Of these, only about 11 percent survived the war. Some left their homes to seek refuge in other countries. Many parents chose to hide their children in order to save them.
Hiding a child was much less difficult than hiding an adult. Unlike adults, children were not required to carry any forms of identification. In addition, they could easily blend in with the groups of non-Jewish children who became orphans of war.
In most cases, arrangements to hide these children were made through personal contacts. Some non-Jews, motivated by moral concern and good will, risked their lives in order to save the lives of Jewish children. They later became known as "righteous Gentiles.”
Hiding places for Jewish children included convents, boarding schools, and orphanages. These places were often located far from the children's homes. Being sent to these hiding places was a terrifying experience for children -- they were made to travel under difficult conditions to unknown destinations. Yet, they were aware that they were in danger, and leaving their families and homes would save their lives.
Those who were most visible had to give up their Jewish identities by changing their names and converting to Christianity, at least temporarily, to avoid being discovered by the Nazis. They had to be extremely cautious in their everyday lives, not speaking of their past or their families for fear they might reveal that they were Jewish.
Children hiding with their families, such as Anne Frank, were cut off from the world, sometimes for years. But most of them spent their childhood with strangers. A few found it necessary to move to a number of different homes as they encountered problems staying in a single location. The families keeping them often worried that the Germans would discover they were hiding Jews or that a doubtful neighbor could suspect the children's true identities and turn the families and the Jewish children over to the Nazis.
A great concern among hidden children was that their true families would not survive the war, and even if they did survive, that they may not be able to find and reunite with their parents. Since many children were taken in by complete strangers, it was very possible that these children would never see their parents or siblings again.
During the Holocaust, a ghetto was an isolated section of a city in which Jews were forced to live. The conditions the Nazis created in the ghettos were horrible and unhealthy - - usually cramped, dirty, and with little food. There were many ghettos throughout Europe during the Holocaust period. Some of these were the Amsterdam Ghetto, the Lodz Ghetto, and the Minsk Ghetto. However, the largest was the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, with about 400,000 people crammed into an area of about 2.5 square miles.
The Warsaw Ghetto was created by the Nazis in October of 1940. They forced the Jews of Warsaw to live in this very confined space and built 19-foot walls around the ghetto to separate it from the rest of the city which was designated only for non-Jews. As the Nazis consolidated their power throughout Poland, they ordered Jews from other nearby areas to transfer into the Warsaw Ghetto, thus making the ghetto unbearably crowded.
To differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, the Nazis forced the Jews to wear Star of David bands on their coat sleeves. A death penalty was enforced on any Jew caught trying to escape the ghetto, or any Pole who tried to help Jews in any way. Although there were Jews who tried to fight against the Nazis, they quickly ran out of supplies, were swiftly caught and punished, killed or taken to prison.
The Nazis, by design, made the living conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto as horrific as possible. There were curfews and guards on duty at all times along the walls to make sure no Jews crossed over to the non-Jewish side. Many Jews suffered from disease, which spread rapidly in such close quarters. For example, a typhus epidemic broke out about a year after the ghetto was created, killing many. Due to low food rationing, Jews inevitably starved to death. Some chose to kill themselves rather than stand the physical and emotional pain any longer.
Despite all these brutal conditions and the Nazis' attempt to control and degrade them through oppression, the Jews tried to maintain their dignity and some sense of normalcy in a world gone awry. They secretly studied, prayed and conducted religious services, set up schools for their children, put on theatrical plays, wrote diaries and histories in the ghettos. They continued the struggle to self-govern themselves even from within the ghettos.
Similar to the other ghettos in Europe, the Warsaw Ghetto was made smaller and smaller after much of the population died, or was deported to concentration or death camps. The 2.5 square miles of the Warsaw Ghetto were eventually split into two parts -- the Large Ghetto and the Small Ghetto. A pedestrian crossing bridge was built over the street separating the two sections preventing Jews from stepping outside the ghetto.
In 1943, an uprising occurred in the ghetto. Although the Jews in Warsaw fought courageously against the Nazis, after one month of fighting, the Nazis burned the entire ghetto until nothing was left. Those who remained were deported to concentration camps.
Hitler’s anti-Semitism grew out of resentment for the German loss of World War I. He blamed the Jews of Europe for Germany’s defeat in the war. Hitler also used the Jews as scapegoats for all the problems that Germany was facing in the 1920s and 1930s, such as unemployment, poverty, and starvation caused by massive inflation, and later, the Great Depression.
In order to deport the Jews, the Nazis often led them to believe that they were merely being moved to a different place where life would be better for them. The reality of the situation was that Jews were put on trains that sent them to either concentration camps or death camps. The trains were filthy freight and cattle cars and were horribly crowded. Many people died in the trains before they even reached the camps.
The Nazis built two types of camps: concentration/labor camps and death camps. In concentration camps, prisoners were forced to become hard laborers and were given very little to eat. They were forced to wear striped uniforms and armbands or labels to identify the type of prisoners that they were. The different colors of the bands represented different groups of people. Due to disease, starvation, and harsh treatment by the Nazis, most people died in the concentration camps or were deported to death camps where they met with the same fate.
Death camps, on the other hand, were set up specifically for mass murder. Jews deported to death camps were either shot, or killed in gas vans. The gas vans were tightly sealed, and when prisoners were loaded into the van, the driver would press the accelerator releasing carbon monoxide gas that suffocated and killed them. Later, when more structured methods of murder were set up at death camps, the prisoners were told they had to take a shower. The Nazis ordered them to take off their clothes and follow signs that said "To the Shower Room." However, in the so-called "Shower Room," Zyclon B, a poisonous gas, was released until everybody suffocated to death. Prisoners who exhibited useful strength were made part of the sonderkommando, inmates forced to collect the dead bodies and put them in crematoriums to be burned.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau complex was an exception, having both work facilities and gas chambers for murdering inmates. Enlarged in 1941, Auschwitz prisoners worked in factories helping to supply for the German war movement. Additionally, more prisoners were killed in Birkenau than in any other death camp, a number totalling as many as 1.1 million, most of whom were Jews.
What were the roles of Christians during the Jewish Holocaust in Europe?
The Nazi rise to power in Germany was greeted by most Christians in Germany with optimism. They welcomed the new regime and particularly embraced its nationalism, and both the Catholic and Protestant churches there pursued a course of compromise and accommodation with the regime, particularly when conflicts arose over Nazi state interference with church programs. Among European ecumenical leaders, there were worries about the possible anti-Christian repercussions of a fascist ideology and fears of renewed German militarism under Nazism. In 1933 most European and US Christian leaders, however, took a "wait and see" attitude.
Throughout the Christian world, there was little condemnation of the most striking and ominous element of Nazi ideology: its virulent antisemitism and its threat to remove Jews from all aspects of German society. Indeed, many Christian leaders before and throughout the Nazi era cited Christian teachings as a justification for anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies.
Some church leaders, however, did protest against the Nazi treatment of the Jews and attempted to help refugees fleeing Nazism. In the United States, many of these leaders had been involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue and interfaith work before 1933.
This interreligious cooperation arose from the common ground of religious concern on social justice issues, particularly labor issues and civil rights. This engagement, which often began locally, sparked national institutional commitments to interreligious understanding. In 1923 the Federal Council of Churches (the FCC, precursor of today’s National Council of Churches) established a sub-committee, the Commission on International Justice and Goodwill, to reduce anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, and racial prejudice. This Commission worked throughout the 1920s to promote increased local contacts among the three major faiths. This led to the founding of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ) in 1928. The NCCJ promoted a number of initiatives to foster interreligious understanding, ranging from pulpit exchanges to discussion groups where Catholics, Protestants, and Jews explained points of doctrine to one another. Early Christian and Jewish leaders who were involved included FCC president Rev. Samuel Cavert, NCCJ president Rev. Everett Clinchy, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Jonah Wise, and Felix Warburg.
In Europe, those who spoke out included ecumenical Protestant leaders, who helped create a network of small resistance and rescue movements throughout Europe.
Bishop William T. Manning and Rabbi Stephen Wise attend a mass rally.
Bishop William T. Manning (lower left) and Rabbi Stephen Wise (center) attend a mass rally at Madison Square Garden. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
By the beginning of April 1933, when 3,000 Jewish refugees had arrived in Switzerland, Swiss Protestant church president Henry Henriod sent a message to the German churches asking for a clear position of protest against Nazi measures. That same month, French Protestant leader Wilfred Monod published an open letter welcoming the Jews coming from Germany to France. In May 1933, British Bishop George Bell wrote Hermann Kapler, president of the German Church Federation, of his concern about actions against the Jews. At the ecumenical World Alliance conference in Sofia, Bularia, in September 1933, the delegates passed a resolution condemning the Nazi actions against the Jews: “We especially deplore the fact that the state measures against the Jews in Germany have had such an effect on public opinion that in some circles the Jewish race is considered a race of inferior status.” These Christian leaders eventually became part of a network, coordinated primarily from the Protestant ecumenical offices in Geneva, that aided Jews throughout Europe.
Thus, there were significant but isolated voices of protest. Many of these statements drew on church teachings about compassion and social justice, as well as church commitments to civil liberties. Yet, they appear to have found little resonance within the broader community of lay Christians at the time. And, although they did lay a foundation for Christians after 1945 to wrestle theologically with the reality of what had happened during the Holocaust, most of them did not yet confront the theological reality revealed in the Holocaust: that centuries of anti-Jewish teachings by the Christian churches had helped to create a culture in which the genocide of millions of Jewish men, women, and children was possible. Only after 1945 would the Christian churches throughout the world begin to confront the deeper theological challenges of the Holocaust for Christian faith and teaching.
The Nazi rise to power in Germany was greeted by most Christians in Germany with optimism. They welcomed the new regime and particularly embraced its nationalism, and both the Catholic and Protestant churches there pursued a course of compromise and accommodation with the regime, particularly when conflicts arose over Nazi state interference with church programs. Among European ecumenical leaders, there were worries about the possible anti-Christian repercussions of a fascist ideology and fears of renewed German militarism under Nazism. In 1933 most European and US Christian leaders, however, took a "wait and see" attitude.
Throughout the Christian world, there was little condemnation of the most striking and ominous element of Nazi ideology: its virulent antisemitism and its threat to remove Jews from all aspects of German society. Indeed, many Christian leaders before and throughout the Nazi era cited Christian teachings as a justification for anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies.
Some church leaders, however, did protest against the Nazi treatment of the Jews and attempted to help refugees fleeing Nazism. In the United States, many of these leaders had been involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue and interfaith work before 1933.
This interreligious cooperation arose from the common ground of religious concern on social justice issues, particularly labor issues and civil rights. This engagement, which often began locally, sparked national institutional commitments to interreligious understanding. In 1923 the Federal Council of Churches (the FCC, precursor of today’s National Council of Churches) established a sub-committee, the Commission on International Justice and Goodwill, to reduce anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, and racial prejudice. This Commission worked throughout the 1920s to promote increased local contacts among the three major faiths. This led to the founding of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ) in 1928. The NCCJ promoted a number of initiatives to foster interreligious understanding, ranging from pulpit exchanges to discussion groups where Catholics, Protestants, and Jews explained points of doctrine to one another. Early Christian and Jewish leaders who were involved included FCC president Rev. Samuel Cavert, NCCJ president Rev. Everett Clinchy, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Jonah Wise, and Felix Warburg.
In Europe, those who spoke out included ecumenical Protestant leaders, who helped create a network of small resistance and rescue movements throughout Europe.
Bishop William T. Manning and Rabbi Stephen Wise attend a mass rally.
Bishop William T. Manning (lower left) and Rabbi Stephen Wise (center) attend a mass rally at Madison Square Garden. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
By the beginning of April 1933, when 3,000 Jewish refugees had arrived in Switzerland, Swiss Protestant church president Henry Henriod sent a message to the German churches asking for a clear position of protest against Nazi measures. That same month, French Protestant leader Wilfred Monod published an open letter welcoming the Jews coming from Germany to France. In May 1933, British Bishop George Bell wrote Hermann Kapler, president of the German Church Federation, of his concern about actions against the Jews. At the ecumenical World Alliance conference in Sofia, Bularia, in September 1933, the delegates passed a resolution condemning the Nazi actions against the Jews: “We especially deplore the fact that the state measures against the Jews in Germany have had such an effect on public opinion that in some circles the Jewish race is considered a race of inferior status.” These Christian leaders eventually became part of a network, coordinated primarily from the Protestant ecumenical offices in Geneva, that aided Jews throughout Europe.
Thus, there were significant but isolated voices of protest. Many of these statements drew on church teachings about compassion and social justice, as well as church commitments to civil liberties. Yet, they appear to have found little resonance within the broader community of lay Christians at the time. And, although they did lay a foundation for Christians after 1945 to wrestle theologically with the reality of what had happened during the Holocaust, most of them did not yet confront the theological reality revealed in the Holocaust: that centuries of anti-Jewish teachings by the Christian churches had helped to create a culture in which the genocide of millions of Jewish men, women, and children was possible. Only after 1945 would the Christian churches throughout the world begin to confront the deeper theological challenges of the Holocaust for Christian faith and teaching.