Notes By EMA | Book Summary Of ‘Journey To The Holocaust’

The last truly significant change in the world, one might argue, is the invention of monotheism by the “Chosen People” thousands of years ago. The God of Adam and Eve — “Adama” means “earth”, “dam” means “blood”. There is no eternity without the shedding of blood. Man is created with all his weaknesses but also liberated through the shedding of blood.

Doubt and the fall into sin are the two things that characterized man’s relationship to God and His Word.

That tree was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The first sin was not the act of eating the forbidden fruit, but instead Eve’s inaccurate reply to the serpent. She claimed that God had forbidden them to touch the fruit and not not to eat from the fruit of the tree. Evil came into the world because of insufficient respect for God’s word.

The Bible does not use the word “sin” but rather “chet” referring to being lost. At this moment, man’s tendency to choose evil over good was born. Now God is aware of man’s weaknesses and treats him with mercy and justice.

The subsequent fall and the first murder was after God tried to stop Cain from sinning. The word “sin” is used for the first time.

Where is your brother? Am I my brother’s keeper? How many murderers have spoken these words in a court of law? In the 1930s, German Churches replied as such when asked regarding increasing persecution and murder of their Jewish brethren.

Centuries of Christian tradition had not taught anything of the real meaning of being “my brother’s keeper” in a moment of crisis. All of society was clueless when faced with evil; some chose to serve evil.

Churches argued back to God: Am I my brother’s keeper?

The oldest hatred, anti-Semitism, has survived the Holocaust. It is global and is present in the very nations that once fought the Nazis. It has changed its clothes but not its content, and it is never far away.

The Holocaust, like all Jewish persecution, is not an assault on the Jews. It is an assault on the God of the Jews. The intent was to destroy the Name of God since the Jews are evidence of God’s Existence.

The Bible is about two themes — choices and covenants.

“Israel” means “the one who struggled with God”.

Joseph to his brothers: “God sent me before you to preserve life.”

“Joseph” means “addition”.

The Jewish Pesach or Passover is celebrated in remembrance of the exile from Egypt. God fulfilled His promises: to take His people out of Egypt’s suffering, to save them from slavery, to deliver them, and to be their God.

“Yehoshua” means “God is salvation”.

Yerushalayim does not only mean “the city of peace”, it also means “perfect and whole”, and even “heritage” or “legacy” since Jerusalem is God’s perfect heritage and the legacy left by David.

We all feel a deep connection with what you hear above.

Rome is an eternal city, but it can never be Jerusalem.

66 AD, the Jews conquer Jerusalem back from Rome.

70 AD the Romans regain control. The Romans could not allow the Jews to win, so they conquered Masada. They reach the top of the mountain to be greeted by silence. The people chose the freedom of death rather than surrendering to the Romans.

Fed up with these stubborn people, the Romans named the area after the Jews’ historical enemy, the Philistines, and the Jewish diaspora began.

That powerful belief in one God, in being His chosen people, and in the Messiah were ingrained in every single unit of DNA of these unique people who invented the concept of one God. Today, there are Roman Jews still in Rome, but the Romans have perished. We know of similar dispersions and assimilations where peoples no longer exist. This has never happened to the Jews despite continuous attempts to obliterate them.

The word “Talmud” comes from Hebrew and means “learning”.

As Christianity developed, it became the leading actor in the drama.

If we were to isolate one historical development that had the most profound effect on the hatred and the persecution of the Jews, above all else, one would have to choose Christianity. This protagonist hated the Jews, while at the same time professing to believe in the Jewish God.

The early Christians were martyrs at the Colosseum. Christianity grew during its persecution, and it spread in different directions throughout the world. That mighty testimony about a proclamation about sin, repentance and forgiveness turned into a doctrine about religion. Soon, however, the persecuted turned into persecutors. Christians were not persecuted because of whom they believed in but because they did not agree to worship. This monotheistic religion shunned compromise and did not fit in with the tradition of emperor worship and a polytheistic society.

It is human nature to dislike people not because of how they think, but because they do not think like you. What controls man more? The prospect of heaven or the fear of hell? Greed or envy?

Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire because of persecutions. The modesty of Christianity gave way to titles and positions when legalized by Constantine in 306 or so. The formerly persecuted were now a mighty presence. The early fathers began to alter Biblical principles into a system that despised Judaism and denied its roots. We, too, are prisoners of their thinking. The emperor was entangled in the Greek way of thinking that was opposed to the Jewish way and opposite to the Jesus Way. Constantine was the first emperor who started to limit the rights of the Jews. Easter would be celebrated on the First Sunday following the full moon and no longer during the Jewish time of the Passover when Jesus himself celebrated the feast. The Theology of Contempt, making the Bible Greek, was part of belittling the Bible’s authenticity and its Jewish roots — erase Judaism from the Scriptures. The Jews were responsible for Jesus’s death. Because of the murder of God, Israel lost its place in God’s plans. Anti-Semitic reading of the Gospels was found in all denominations. The Jews had lost their right to the Scriptures and the prophets, which now belonged to the Church. The church fathers perhaps did not understand the far-reaching consequences of their views; they misread the Bible, spiritualizing the promises meant to be taken concretely. The refined theology became law in Medieval Society.

One can understand the situation then. Ignorance prevailed. Today? Medieval people had a dual identity. They were the property of the king on the one hand and the Church on the other. Anti-semitism in church art and liturgy was transferred into social structures and subsequently into the social laws. As Christianity expanded, the Church gathered vast amounts of property and buildings. Judaism was the shamed woman and Christianity the flowing, triumphant heroine. Church Law sought to isolate the Jews from the rest of society. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 ordained the marking of Jews with a yellow piece of cloth. In 1941, they were marked with a yellow star. Is there a difference between Heydrich and those who ordained the Church law? Saint Augustin — the Jews were not to be murdered, but it was to be ensured that they lived their lives in agony. Luther became an enemy of the Jews. He confirmed that God had rejected the Jews and encouraged the burning of synagogues. Hitler attended Oberammergau in 1942 — “this presentation portrays the menace of Jewry.” The Medieval Church drifted further and further away from the Bible. It became a political institution that ruthlessly gave immense power to rulers and royalty, distancing the Church from the Word of God with serious repercussions: violence, murder, and all kinds of corruption.

The more the church fathers claimed that God had cursed the Jews, the more the Church received real and concrete curses upon it. The Church and its constituents are blind to see the actual state of the matter.

The Catholic Church today is corrupt intellectually, morally, and financially. It is probably among the most corrupt institutions in the world today. What Christ started has developed into a brilliant orchestrated myth and hoax. Its leaders practice homosexuality as they preach against it. Monies are taken from faithful everywhere and then spent outside of intent for which they were given. Yet it creates more value than it takes as it continues to thrive.

The Nazis did not invent the Yellow Star. Jews were already secluded in the Middle Ages. They were deemed responsible for natural disasters. The Dark Middle Ages became the Golden Age of Judaism as the Jewish community turned inward, became more creative and introspective. As a result, the more it was persecuted. The Crusades as a phenomenon is intricately linked to the persecution of the Jews. Jewish communities were destroyed en route to Jerusalem. The Black Death added a reason for hatred towards the Jews. The Spanish Jews were expelled — Sfaradim. As the Majestic Church taught anti-Semetism, allowed violence, was the instigator of violence, the hatred of the Jews became a particular part of European heritage.

The Encyclopédie was first printed in 1751. It emphasised tolerance and rationalism. Religion was one way of thinking, among others. Issues we take for granted — freedom of assembly and religion, the right to an impartial trial, the end of torture, the abolition of slavery, and the abolition of censorship — were promoted by François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778). We know him as Voltaire. Anti-Semitism changed its shape in opposition to Jewish emancipation. The Jews now had too much power in society and they cannot be loyal citizens.

The first Aliyah began in 1882 and again in 1904 as the Second Aliyah.

Aliyah means ascent, ascent to Jerusalem. 1870s, Darwin came out with the theory that all species came from the same origin. Species that adapt best to a specific environment will be the most likely to survive. When natural sciences became an essential part of European society, anti-Semitism evolved into a racial discipline. The Tzars served the Jews as the scapegoats for the problems of the nation. 1791, Eastern European Jews were forced to live in a particular area known as the Pale of Settlement established by Catherine the Great. The Dreyfus Affair was another example.

The line between anti-Semitism and murder is like a line drawn in water: it can be crossed easily, and the line is not seen on the surface.

The Weimar Republic 1919 meant a new beginning for the Jewish community. The constitution guaranteed every citizen right to participate fully in public life as well as elected to public office. The Jews rose, and their enemies began to reconnect them with the policies of the Weimar Republic. The Jews were a noticeable big part of the creative and cultural stage. Germany lost WW1 because it was stabbed in the back by the Jews. Inflation went out of control. Poor Eastern European Jews, Ostjuden, poured into Germany. They stood out because of their strange religious clothing. Reality — they were .9% of the German population.

Untermensch, lower than humans, was a main Nazi theme. The events proceeded fiercely as people turned their eyes away from the reality of the horrific scene. The Germans were not ready to rise in revolt when their children were murdered. They would surely not do so for the German Jews. The more the government terrorized the people, the closer they advanced to the mass murder of Jews.

Wannsee Villa — a Nazi administration gathered January 1942 to decide which genocide could be executed painlessly and within reasonable timetables. German railroads were to play their especially important role. They were average men suddenly given power by the historical situation. In 1944 when Germany had all but lost the war all available trains were needed to transport military supplies, given a choice the transport of Jews to Auschwitz, where they often lived for hours upon arrival, was given priority.

The triangle of hatred — citizens, communities, and societies — could have stopped the atrocities. Evil comes to a climax because of the first compromise. People’s attitudes: anti-Semitic newspaper writings were joked about among friends. Anti-Semitic acts are then targeted at the property. The triangle cannot stand on its own.

The Germans were systematically taught to despise old age and to believe that the elderly were of no use to society.

Auschwitz-Birkenau – the soul of genocide.

No moral education is complete without a visit to Krakow. Evil hovers in the air — torture chambers, prisoner’s gallows, watchtowers, barbed-wire fences, mountains of hair and children’s little clothes. It was not a camp; it was a complex where gas was tested in the fall of 1941. Slave labour was to exhaust them to death. Auschwitz is the Holocaust in symbol and venue. On September 3, 2003, the Israeli Air Force made historic F-15 flights over this death camp.

“Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’” (Matthew 25:45, New King James Version)

The Holocaust is a story about people. The perpetrators, the silent bystanders and the rescuers. The Architect of the Holocaust was Adolf Eichmann. The Americans captured him. He escaped early in 1946. He hid under false names in Germany moving around. He lived in Italy by hiding in monasteries. A famous escape route, the ratline, operated in the Vatican. In Eichmann’s case, he was helped by Bishop Alois Hudal with the help of a vast network that arranged visas, hideouts, and all that was needed to aid well-known Nazis. The Mossad hijacked him on May 11, 1960, and brought from Buenos Aires to trial in Israel. His assumed name was Ricardo Klement. This trial opened the reality of the Holocaust to the general public as the world press freely followed the trial. He was executed by hanging in 1962 and his ashes scattered over the Israeli Mediterranean. In reality, he was common. His commonness was shocking to observers — a common man incentivised to perpetrate crimes. The challenge is that the criminals belong to our same human race. They often had families, and they were conscientious parents. Authoritarian personalities are conscientious criminals.

Perpetrators did not see the victim’s humanity. They looked different. They were hungry. The perpetrators were trained and educated to obey without question. It is possible for a man to “create several worlds” for himself that do not coincide with each other, as with a separation between home and work; to act most brutally and then return home as loving husbands and fathers.

The Silent Bystanders did not do anything but stand by and watch the daily victory of evil. If they disapproved, they did so in silence and protected the perpetrator — scared into silence. Priests, pastors, and church hierarchy were all silent bystanders. The churches, both Catholic and Protestant, sinned in and because of its silence. Thousands of Catholic clergy and parishioners helped the Jews while their spiritual leader was either silent or unclear in its rhetoric.

The Church opposed the Nazi party at the start. In 1933 the Vatican signed the Reichskonkordat (“Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich”). They no longer resisted. The Protestant churches did not offer any clearer moral choice. The Church adapted itself to Nazism. Their survival consumed them. The anti-Jewish writings of Luther were once again relevant, his dejudaization of the Church to remove Judaism from Christianity. The Jews now a despised class. Jesus was turned into an Aryan Jesus. The Hymnal and Catechism changed to get rid of the Church’s Jewish background. Today, webpages of various churches and theologians attempt to separate Jesus from Judaism.

Christianity and Germany were not prepared for Germany. Centuries of anti-Semitism had been part of Church doctrines.

1941 – German Evangelical Reich Church – “Racially Jewish Christians have no place nor rights within the Church.”

Niemoller – “I was an anti-Semite during the war…Christianity in Germany is more responsible before God than Nazism, SS, or the Gestapo. We are the ones who should have recognised our brother who was suffering…even though he was a Jew.”

Where was Christian courage when it was needed?

What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.

Gestapo – Geheime Staatspolizei – State Secret Police

Eva Fogelman helps us understand human nature by dividing the rescuers into groups according to their motivations: moral rescuers whose sense of right and wrong motivated them to act.

Philo-Semites – those who felt a connection to the Jews. Concerned Professionals, whose profession gave them an opportunity both to meet Jews and to help them with visas, passports, and hideouts.

Network of Rescuers – who were often part of the resistance movement.

Child Rescuers – who were used as decoys when transferring people. Children avoided suspicion.

Holocaust, the second Original Sin committed by humanity.

Holocaust of WW2 resembled most closely the genocide of the Armenians during WW1. The common factors were the ff:

1. An entire nation was chosen.
2. The murder took place during a war.
3. It was hidden as effectively as possible.
4. The victims were transported to faraway places.
5. When all this was happening, the rest of the world hardly protested.

“We do not study what happened to them, but what happened to us.”

Christian values did not function in that critical moment when they should have been put into practice.

The children of Nazi criminals were never told the truth.

They had to face it in excruciating ways.

Forgetfulness – an illness of an entire generation. We can not just tear the unfit part of our history books.

Christianity comes from Judaism, so it can never be anti-Jewish.

The correct response to evil is anger. If God was was silent during the Holocaust, does this happen at other times, too? One of the most important and most difficult questions concerning the Holocaust is “Where was God?”

The State of Israel is the theological answer to the Holocaust. The existence of the State of Israel has saved post-Holocaust Judaism.

The Nazis murdered humankind. They also murdered us, because we can never again be humans in the same way as before the Holocaust.

Anti-Semitism was still extraordinarily strong after the war.

Ezekiel – skeletal people, literally the dry bones, rose from their graves and were brought to their homeland – the new State of Israel born in a moment.

God created the world in six days — after the Six-Day War, Israel was in possession of Judea and Samaria, Gaza, and the Golan Heights — the heartland of the Bible. To Christian churches, the birth of the State of Israel and the return of the Jews to their homeland has been a tough pill to swallow, as it completely silenced the talk, which implied that Christians had replaced Israel in God’s plans. The Holocaust was such an immense and extreme crisis for humankind that it has challenged us to reexamine human nature, to reexamine the roles of society and individual responsibility.

Holocaust Denials.

Hypocritical Deniers – they claim we do not know enough about what happened and that it was time to forget or to move on.

Scientific deniers believe the matter needs to be researched more.

Politicians prefer not to speak of it.

Changers of the past forget certain facts because the present requires it.

Trivia focusers focus on trivial matters to make it possible not to speak about the actual questions.

They deny that the Nazis had an anti-Jew ideology, that millions were murdered, that extermination camps were established for this purpose, and that Jews were treated differently. They claim the Holocaust is a lie spread by Jews.

The denial itself is a form of anti-Semitism.