I would like to talk to you for the next several weeks about what it means to be a human. Certainly humans and lesser beings are both capable of suffering. God has given man dominion over the creatures that are not human (Genesis 9). As stewards of all that God has given us, we are to treat those things entrusted to us with respect. Humans, however, are due the highest regard. God gives life to man, and in that same chapter he states, "And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image" (vv. 4-6). This comes far before the law seen in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. The concept here is that man and man's life is special to God, and we are accountable to God for the preservation of man's life.
There are few alive today that can recall the Holocaust. I would imagine that if you stopped a young person on the street they would not recognize that time in the world's history. I have been blessed to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. as well as the one in Israel, and to have met and heard a Holocaust survivor speak while in Israel. I have just finished reading many writings on the Holocaust, and foremost among these is a book called Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. The more you study it and delve into it, the more horrific it becomes. There is no point in the study of the Holocaust where you think to yourself, "Well, it wasn't as bad as I thought." Whatever you think you know about the Holocaust, the realities were much, much worse. Many of the things I wish to discuss with you about suffering on such a scale will be very unpleasant to read. As you read these things and feel uncomfortable, you must imagine them being done to you or your loved ones. They really happened. They are not fiction.
The development of a system to slaughter six to eight million human beings does not occur in short order. This week, I would like to show you how Germany got to the point where as a country these things could be carried out. And yes, I said "Germany", not "Hitler" or "the SS" or "the Nazis". In some way or another, nearly the entire population of a country condoned or participated in the extermination of millions of Jews.
After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A. D. by the Romans under the emperor Titus, Jews fled the Holy Land and dispersed throughout the world. Jews fled to other countries in the Middle East, to North Africa and Spain, and to Eastern Europe. This dispersion, or "diaspora", resulted in a large population of Jews in Poland, Russia, and other Eastern European countries, although many settled in Western Europe as well. Because of their unique religious beliefs, often living in Christian lands, they were never really fully assimilated into these countries and cultures, and in many lands they were not considered citizens. After the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215, the Catholic Church
required Jews to wear special clothing, or often yellow badges, to identify themselves as Jews. There were many restrictions placed on them. Many in the Church held the Jews responsible for the death of Christ, and anti-Semitism was widespread. For centuries, then, the Jews were identified, ostracized, and kept from fully realizing their identity as citizens of the countries wherein they lived.
In the late 1700's and up until the 1900's there were many movements to grant equality to the Jews. This was known as "Jewish Emancipation," and it occurred unevenly across Europe, one country or province at a time. The United States was actually the first country to give Jews equal rights, in 1789; the first country to do so in Europe was France in 1791. Individual German states gave Jews equal rights in the decades to follow, but the country as a whole did not do so until around 1870.
In the early 20th century, the tide turned against the Jews in Germany. Public opinion and the news media began to cast suspicion upon them. Much of this originated with the notions of race, genetics, and had its origins in Darwinian theory and eugenics. The Jews were felt to be a separate race, and an inferior one at that. After the disastrous defeat of Germany in World War I, the economy collapsed. Germany was in horrendous debt as the Treaty of Versailles called for enormous reparations. Unemployment and inflation were rampant. Somebody had to be responsible for all of this misery, and the Jews were identified as being the most responsible. There came to be a feeling that Jews were malicious, wicked, and full of evil impulses to control the economy. It was an unusual combination of sentiments; the Jews in Germany were felt to be a "subhuman" race, an "inferior" race compared to the German blue-eyed and blond-haired Aryan ideal, yet capable of extreme intelligence and cunning. So an inferior Jew could be quite intellectually capable.
Jews proved to be extremely adaptable to harsh conditions. Hardworking and intelligent, bound by religious codes of conduct, they became successful in many foreign lands. They did not typically invest in capital, land, and buildings that could be taken from them. Jews usually did not own factories and large farms. They learned skills that could be taken with them, such as medicine and law, so that when persecution came they could relocate more easily. They became experts at managing money and finance, and many became jewelers and diamond merchants, because you could pick up your precious stones and move quickly if need be.
That the Jews could do well in times of economic distress led many in Germany to despise them and hold them responsible for the poor conditions. The nature of fallen man is often to hate another's success, and to feel that the success of one somehow must mean that he has robbed the less fortunate. There is a linkage in the minds of many that simply cannot be broken, not that one fails and one succeeds, but that the failure of one is due to the success of another. The finger of one that fails is rarely pointed at himself.
These, then, are the roots of anti-Semitism. The notion of Jews as a despicable people, not fully human but "sub-human", capable of great evil and cunning, and responsible for the misery of the German people, was taught and preached and printed and broadcast at every opportunity. Words were not always necessary. The cartoons, drawings, and caricatures spoke volumes. Lies repeated endlessly become the truth. It takes only a generation for a new truth to be accepted. Only one generation of schoolchildren must be raised with a false teaching for that to become the new dogma.
Next week we will look at how a decades of characterizing the Jew led to demonizing the Jew, and how people began to treat the Jews. How we treat others is determined by how we think we should treat others. We treat humans differently than we do other creatures. When the Jew was determined to be something other than human, they were treated differently. As described in Goldhagen's book, a murderer of many Jews explained, "The Jew was not acknowledged by us to be a human being."
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