GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

1 PROBLEMS OF EVALUATION

Commentators on the attitude of the Churches in certain lands frequently contradict one another. Some Christians, such as Rev. Niemoeller [51]
and Rev. Buskes [52] for instance, pass a severe verdict on the Churches and include themselves also. It seems to me that at least one Jewish
commentator gives too positive a picture about the attitude of the population in his country, Greece.[53] He may, consciously or unconsciously,
have tried not to embarrass the people amongst whom he still lived when he wrote his book. But also the opinion of a Christian that "the
hundreds of thousands of Jews that escaped the doom decreed for them owed their survival more to the rescue activities of individuals and
private groups, above all the Churches, than to governmental resistance policy" [54], seems to me too favourable.

It must be difficult for Jews who know of anti-Semitic actions perpetrated by Church leaders throughout the centuries, and who personally
suffered and lost their relatives in the holocaust, to believe that not merely a few "righteous of all Nations" but also Churches publicly and
unequivocally spoke out against Hitler's murderous anti-Semitism. On the other hand, Christians are in danger of trying to whitewash the Church
and ignoring the many instances when the Church failed. We all tend to forget our failures and to remember our victories.

Some commentators tend to forget how the actual situation was in those days. Indeed, it is difficult even for people who themselves lived
through it, to project themselves back into the time when Hitler seemed all-powerful. Moreover, we now have the benefit of living after the
events, and thus we know many facts, which were not generally known in those days. <9>

It seems unbelievable now, but in the summer of 1940, when some people somewhere in the Netherlands formed a resistance group, their
leader stated that the British would not liberate us before Christmas 1940, and everybody present felt sorely disappointed. This kind of
unwarranted optimism was fostered by many people throughout the war, and thus they underestimated the danger to the Jews and believed
that, if German action against them could be delayed by some kind of compromise, much, and perhaps all, would be won. Many people in
occupied Europe, in Great Britain and in the United States thought, that the information about the gas-chambers was "atrocity propaganda". The
President of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. stated, on May 1, 1943: "What is happening to the Jews on the Continent of
Europe is so horrible that we are in danger of assuming that it is exaggerated" [55]. We quote the following from "Unity in Dispersion":
"The undertaking was so staggering that, until the revelation about the Maidanek camp, a majority of the people in the United States as well as
in England dismissed the facts of extermination as 'atrocity mongering'… It should be conceded, as extenuating circumstances, that never
before in history had states descended to such depths of bad faith, deceit, and treachery as did Germany and some of her satellites in their
resolve to murder. In 1942, tens of thousands of Polish Jews volunteered for cunningly disguised 'resettlement' and agricultural work in the
territories recently conquered by the Germans in the East, and thus entered of their own accord on a road at the end of which destruction
awaited them." [56]

The Germans tried to deceive the victims about their aims as well as the people amongst whom these victims lived, and they succeeded in this
to a considerable extent. [57] <10> They had, in occupied Europe, all the instruments of mass communication, such as press and radio, at their
disposal. All these and other factors are mentioned in "Unity in Dispersion" [58] in order to explain to some extent "the failure of organized Jewry
to halt or even to slow down the most terrible catastrophe in Jewish history". Much of it is, mutatis mutandis, also applicable to "organized
Christianity".

On the other hand, when the true facts became known, there was danger mentioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury: "It is one of the most
terrible consequences of war that the sensitiveness of people tends to become hardened… There is a great moral danger in the paralysis of
feeling that is liable to be brought about." [59]

We now are in danger of forgetting that so many other problems burdened people in those days. The British people were fighting their life-and-
death struggle against the Third Reich, but were free. In the occupied countries, many young people were sent to Germany for compulsory
labour; food was rationed and became more and more scarce. People went out in the night to cut wood illegally as there was hardly any fuel.

One cannot understand what happened in occupied Europe without remembering these things; neither can one understand, without realising
the power of human egoism and the will to survive. No one who has never really been hungry, nor has been deprived of his liberty, can
understand what it meant in practice to "love one's neighbour" during the Second World War. The persecution of the Jews was not the only
challenge confronting the Churches in those days, though we only now can perceive better that it was the most important one. The list of steps
taken by the Churches in the Netherlands shows the type of problems which faced the Churches: intercession in church services for the Queen;
arrest of pastors; suppression of the Church press; compulsory labour for youth; requisition of church bells; deportation of labourers to
Germany; closing down of the Bible Society; ban on Church conferences; death sentences: plea for mercy; deportation of students, and
national-socialist education in Christian schools. [60] <11>
We tend now to underestimate the power of the Hitlerite terror. It has been said that all the Dutch should have blocked the railways with their
own bodies, thus preventing the deportation of the Jews, because Hitler could not have murdered the entire Dutch population. I do not doubt
that he could have and he would have done precisely that. [61]

It is not surprising then that many lay members of the Church and Church leaders were afraid, and therefore failed to fulfil their duties. Gerstein
said, in Rolf Hochhuth's play: "A Christian in these days cannot survive if he is truly Christian". [62] Dr. Banning said: "If the Church had fully
exercised the obedience of faith, no pastor or priest would have come out alive. [63]

But the greatness of the risks matched the appalling need to help: the Germans committed genocide. Whenever the Church remained silent in
view of the holocaust, it was guilty. "Nevertheless a crime of such magnitude falls in no small measure to the responsibility of those witnesses
who never cried out against it - whatever the reason for their silence." [64] Therefore, all the considerations mentioned above cannot exempt
Churches, Christians or non-Christians, though they can help us to be fairer in our judgment.

One is sometimes in danger of becoming irritated by people who did not stand the test themselves, and yet claim to know exactly what should
have been said and done. There recently appeared a book [65] in which the author sharply criticizes much what was done, or was not done,
during the German occupation of the Netherlands. <12> He himself took a very active part in the struggle. Perhaps that is the reason why his
criticism is not without compassion, and that it is to a large extent self-criticism. In order to understand how difficult it was to risk one's life or
even freedom on behalf of others, one had to have been in it oneself.

I, who am now living in Israel, have sometimes, when lecturing on the subject, invited my audience to imagine for a moment that (God forbid!)
some foreign power should occupy the land of Israel, say in the year 1980; and that this foreign power should deport many Jews for
compulsory labour abroad, and also ration all food supplies, but that the Jewish part of the population should not risk their lives when
complying with the demands of the enemy; that, however, the Christian minority in Israel should be deported and exterminated; that they should
be deprived of their ration cards, that their identity cards should be stamped with a C, and that they must wear a yellow badge in the form of a
cross, in order to distinguish them as Christians.

I then asked the question: "would you be willing, in such a situation, to hide my wife, one of my children or me, who all look very "Aryan", though
you knew that, as in every community, you were in danger of being betrayed and in even greater danger of being given away by careless talk of
other people? Or would you, if you were the Chief Rabbi, be prepared to denounce the anti-Christian measures publicly and unequivocally?"