Editing Antisemitism in Christianity (section)

===Nazi anti-Semitism===
{{further|Pope Pius XI and Judaism|Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust|The Holocaust}}

During a meeting with Roman Catholic Bishop [[Wilhelm Berning]] of Osnabrück On April 26, 1933, Hitler declared:
<blockquote>
I have been attacked because of my handling of the Jewish question. The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc., because it recognized the Jews for what they were. In the epoch of liberalism, the danger was no longer recognized. I am moving back toward the time in which a fifteen-hundred-year-long tradition was implemented. I do not set race over religion, but I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the Church, and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.
</blockquote>

The transcript of the discussion does not contain any response by Bishop Berning. [[Martin Rhonheimer]] does not consider this unusual because in his opinion, for a Catholic Bishop in 1933, there was nothing particularly objectionable "in this historically correct reminder".<ref name="firstthings.com">{{cite web |title=The Holocaust: What Was Not Said|first=Martin |last=Rhonheimer |publisher=First Things Magazine |date=November 2003 |access-date=1 July 2009 |url=http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/the-holocaust-what-was-not-said-10 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091016114240/http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/the-holocaust-what-was-not-said-10 |archive-date=16 October 2009 }}</ref>

The Nazis used [[Martin Luther]]'s book, ''[[On the Jews and Their Lies]]'' (1543), to [[Luther and antisemitism#Use by the Nazis|justify their claim]] that their ideology was morally righteous. Luther seems to advocate the murder of Jews who refused to convert to Christianity by writing that "we are at fault in not slaying them."<ref>Luther, Martin. ''On the Jews and Their'' ''Lies'', cited in Robert.Michael. "Luther, Luther Scholars, and the Jews," ''Encounter'' 46 (Autumn 1985) No.4.343–344</ref>

Archbishop [[Robert Runcie]] asserted that: "Without centuries of Christian anti-Semitism, Hitler's passionate hatred would never have been so fervently echoed... because for centuries Christians have held Jews collectively responsible for the death of [[Jesus]]. On Good Friday in times past, Jews have cowered behind locked doors with fear of a Christian mob seeking 'revenge' for deicide. Without the poisoning of Christian minds through the centuries, the Holocaust is unthinkable."<ref name=HarriesAfter>Richard Harries.  After the evil: Christianity and Judaism in the shadow of the Holocaust. Oxford University Press, 2003.  {{ISBN|978-0199263134}}</ref>{{rp|21}} The dissident Catholic priest [[Hans Küng]] has written that "Nazi anti-Judaism was the work of godless, anti-Christian criminals. But it would not have been possible without the almost two thousand years' pre-history of 'Christian' anti-Judaism..."<ref name=Kung>Hans Küng. ''On Being a Christian''. Doubleday, Garden City NY, 1976 {{ISBN|978-0385027120}}</ref>{{rp|169}} The consensus among historians is that [[Nazism]] as a whole was either unrelated or actively opposed to [[Christianity]],<ref name="SG"/> and [[Religious views of Adolf Hitler|Hitler was strongly critical of it]],<ref>Speer, Albert (1971). ''Inside the Third Reich''.  Trans. [[Richard and Clara Winston|Richard Winston, Clara Winston]], Eugene Davidson. New York: Macmillan, p. 143; Reprinted in 1997. ''Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs''. New York: Simon and Schuster. {{ISBN|978-0-684-82949-4}}</ref> although Germany remained mostly Christian during the Nazi era.

The document [[Dabru Emet]] was issued by over 220 [[rabbi]]s and [[intellectual]]s from all branches of [[Judaism]] in 2000 as a statement about [[Christianity and Judaism|Jewish-Christian relations]]. This document states,<blockquote>
Nazism was not a Christian phenomenon. Without the long history of Christian anti-Judaism and Christian violence against Jews, Nazi ideology could not have taken hold nor could it have been carried out. Too many Christians participated in, or were sympathetic to, Nazi atrocities against Jews. Other Christians did not protest sufficiently against these atrocities. But Nazism itself was not an inevitable outcome of Christianity.</blockquote>
According to American [[historian]] [[Lucy Dawidowicz]], anti-Semitism has a long history within Christianity. The line of "anti-Semitic descent" from Luther, the author of ''[[On the Jews and Their Lies]]'', to Hitler is "easy to draw." In her ''[[The War Against the Jews]], 1933–1945'', she contends that Luther and Hitler were obsessed by the "demonologized universe" inhabited by Jews. Dawidowicz writes that the similarities between Luther's anti-Jewish writings and modern anti-Semitism are no coincidence because they derived from a common history of ''Judenhass'', which can be traced to [[Haman (Bible)|Haman]]'s advice to [[Ahasuerus]]. Although modern German anti-Semitism also has its roots in German [[nationalism]] and the [[liberalism|liberal]] revolution of 1848, [[Christianity|Christian]] anti-Semitism she writes is a foundation that was laid by the [[Roman Catholic]] Church and "upon which Luther built."<ref name=Dawidowicz>Lucy Dawidowicz ''The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945''. First published 1975; this Bantam edition 1986, p. 23. {{ISBN|0-553-34532-X}}</ref>

====Collaborating Christians====
[[Image:German Christians symbol.png|thumb|150px|A symbol used by the German Christians.]]
* [[German Christians (movement)]]
* ''[[Gleichschaltung]]''
* [[Hanns Kerrl]], Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs
* [[Positive Christianity]] (the approved Nazi version of Christianity)
* [[Protestant Reich Church]]

====Opposition to the Holocaust====
The [[Confessing Church]] was, in 1934, the first Christian opposition group. The Catholic Church officially condemned the Nazi theory of racism in Germany in 1937 with the [[encyclical]] "''[[Mit brennender Sorge]]''", signed by [[Pope Pius XI]], and Cardinal [[Michael von Faulhaber]] led the Catholic opposition, preaching against racism.

Many individual Christian clergy and laypeople of all denominations had to pay for their opposition with their lives, including:
* the Catholic priest [[Maximilian Kolbe]].
* the Lutheran pastor [[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]]
* the Catholic parson of the Berlin Cathedral, [[Bernhard Lichtenberg]].
* the mostly Catholic members of the [[Munich]]-based resistance group the [[White Rose]] which was led by [[Hans Scholl|Hans]] and [[Sophie Scholl]].

By the 1940s, few Christians were willing to publicly oppose Nazi policy, but many Christians secretly helped save the lives of Jews. There are many sections of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Museum, [[Yad Vashem]], which are dedicated to honoring these "[[Righteous Among the Nations]]".

====Pope Pius XII====
{{further|Pope Pius XII and Judaism|Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust}}

Before he became Pope, Cardinal Pacelli addressed the [[International Eucharistic Congress]] in [[Budapest]] on 25–30 May 1938 during which he referred to the Jews "whose lips curse [Christ] and whose hearts reject him even today"; at this time anti-Semitic laws were in the process of being formulated in Hungary.<ref>Donald J. Dietrich.  ''Christian responses to the Holocaust: moral and ethical issues Religion, theology, and the Holocaust''. p. 92, Syracuse University Press, 2003, {{ISBN|0-8156-3029-8}}</ref>

The 1937 encyclical ''[[Mit brennender Sorge]]'' was issued by [[Pope Pius XI]],<ref>Coppa, Frank J. (1999). ''Controversial Concordats.'' Catholic University of America Press. p. 132</ref> but it was drafted by the future [[Pope Pius XII]]<ref name="Pham45">Pham, p. 45, quote: "When Pius XI was complimented on the publication, in 1937, of his encyclical denouncing Nazism, ''Mit brennender Sorge'', his response was to point to his Secretary of State and say bluntly, 'The credit is his.'"</ref> and it was also read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches, it condemned [[Nazism|Nazi ideology]] and scholars have characterized it as the "first great official public document to dare to confront and criticize [[Nazism]]" and "one of the greatest such condemnations ever issued by the Vatican."<ref>Bokenkotter, pp. 389–392, quote "And when Hitler showed increasing [[Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany|belligerence toward the Church]], Pius met the challenge with a decisiveness that astonished the world. His encyclical ''Mit brennender Sorge'' was the 'first great official public document to dare to confront and criticize Nazism' and 'one of the greatest such condemnations ever issued by the Vatican.' Smuggled into Germany, it was read from all the Catholic pulpits on Palm Sunday in March 1937. It denounced the Nazi "myth of blood and soil" and decried its neopaganism. The Nazis retaliated by closing and sealing all the presses that had printed it and took numerous vindictive measures against the Church, including staging a long series of immorality trials of Catholic clergy."</ref>

In the summer of 1942, in the presence of his college of Cardinals, Pius explained the reasons for the great gulf that existed between Jews and Christians at the theological level: "Jerusalem has responded to His call and to His grace with the same rigid blindness and stubborn ingratitude that has led it along the path of guilt to the murder of God." Historian Guido Knopp describes these comments of Pius as being "incomprehensible" at a time when "Jerusalem was being murdered by the million".<ref>Knopp, Guido. ''Hitler's Holocaust'', Sutton,2000, p. 250, {{ISBN|0-7509-2700-3}}</ref> This traditional adversarial relationship with Judaism would be reversed in ''[[Nostra aetate]]'', which was issued during the [[Second Vatican Council]] starting from 1962, during the papacy of [[John XXIII]].<ref>Kessler, Edward, Neil Wenborn.'' A dictionary of Jewish-Christian relations''", p. 86, Cambridge University Press, 2005, {{ISBN|0-521-82692-6}}</ref>

Prominent members of the Jewish community have contradicted the criticisms of Pius and they have also spoken highly about his efforts to protect Jews.<ref>Bokenkotter, Thomas (2004). A Concise History of the Catholic Church. Doubleday. pp. 480–481, quote: "A recent article by an American rabbi, David G. Dalin, challenges this judgment. He calls making Pius XII a target of moral outrage a failure of historical understanding, and he thinks Jews should reject any 'attempt to usurp the Holocaust' for the partisan purposes at work in this debate. Dalin surmises that well-known Jews such as Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Moshe Sharett, and Rabbi Isaac Herzog would likely have been shocked at these attacks on Pope Pius. ... Dalin points out that Rabbi Herzog, the chief rabbi of Israel, sent a message in February 1944 in which he declared 'the people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness ... (is) doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history.'" Dalin cites these tributes as recognition of the work of the Holy See in saving hundreds of thousands of Jews."</ref> The Israeli historian [[Pinchas Lapide]] interviewed war survivors and concluded that Pius XII "was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000&nbsp;Jews from certain death at Nazi hands". Some historians dispute this estimate.<ref>Deák, István (2001). ''Essays on Hitler's Europe''. University of Nebraska Press. p. 182.</ref>