First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians.
– Martin Luther
“On the Jews and Their Lies” (1543)
Seventy years ago, on November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi stormtroopers, along with mobs of civilian thugs, went on a rampage against Jews throughout Germany.
Nominally sparked by the assassination of German diplomat Ernest vom Rath by a 17 year-old Jew in Paris, Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”) marked what seemed at the time the culmination of a five year campaign by the Nazis to villify and persecute German Jews.
92 Jews were murdered. At least 200 synagogues were burned. Countless Jewish homes and businesses were ransacked. And, perhaps most ominously, something in the neighborhood of 30,000 Jews were rounded up and deported to concentration camps.
Jews who had prayed that Kristallnacht would mark the high tide of violent anti-Semitism in the Third Reich, though, were soon to be tragically disappointed. Kristallnacht was not an end to the violence, but merely a prelude to the full horror of the Holocaust. Kristallnacht was a turning point, but not an end point.
Historians are somewhat divided on the reactions of the German public to Kristallnacht. While it is true that thousands of Germans stood by and did nothing (including police officers and firefighters), Kristallnacht clearly sickened many German gentiles. Some bravely took steps to protect or hide Jews, but most seem to have turned a blind eye to the carnage.
And then there was the church.
The Nazis had already been hard at work co-opting German Christianity long before Kristallnacht. Thousands of pastors and priests were jailed for their stubborn refusal to give theological credibility to the ideology of the Third Reich. Some were drafted into military service and put into front-line combat units.
It ultimately came as no surprise when the Deutsche Christen movement ascended to leadership of the German Evangelical Church. Prominent Deutsche Christens such as the infamous Bishop Martin Sasse of Thuringia were more than happy to give God’s blessing to National Socialism. Sasse once wrote: “The present-day task of theological science is to provide a religious foundation for the new State ethics.”
By the time of Kristallnacht, precious few remained within the church hierarchy to provide a voice against the unspeakable brutality of Hitler’s regime.
Even so, there were those who stubbornly fought on. The Confessing Church Movement bravely stood against the nationalization of Christianity.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a founder of the Confessing Church Movement, became one of the great Christian martyrs of the twentieth century when he was hanged on April 9, 1945, a mere three weeks before the fall of Berlin. Bonhoeffer had been implicated in the abortive July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Kristallnacht would not have happened without the active support of the Nazi puppets who led the church in Germany. And it would not have happened without the tacit support of many thousands of German Christians who kept silent.
Nonetheless, the Christian experience in Nazi Germany demonstrates that potential heroes are always present. Dietrich Bonhoeffer voluntarily returned to Germany to fight Nazism, knowing the enormous risk he was taking. Many other German Christian leaders risked life and livelihood to speak out.
Unfortunately, Nazi Germany is not the sole example of the power of the Lucifer Effect to enlist the aid of religious institutions in pursuing agendas of evil. It happened before and it has happened since and it will happen again.
There will be more Martin Sasses in Christianity’s future.
But there will also be more Dietrich Bonhoeffers. Upon heroes such as Bonhoeffer must rest our faith that evil shall never have the final word.
Comments:
Rev. Webster,
Thank you for this important reminder of evil that can reside within religious garments, when Traditional Religions get co-opted by state politics and economic expediencies. Religion to me is this great paradox, it sets moral standards and morality tales that can guide us toward the good life, yet probably more people have died in the name of one religion or other than any other systemic cause.
It is difficult for the average religious person to know how to best behave when priests, pastors, rabbis, religious elders act against others who are not true believers in hostile ways, or sanction such abuses.
Today is the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre in which more than 900 U.S. citizens were ordered to commit "revolutionary suicide" by their Protestant pastor, Rev. Jim Jones, including more than 300 children who were poisoned first by their mothers, again following the orders of this charismatic man who had turned from man of god to angel of death.
But your conclusion is what I resonate to most, even in the most horrendous circumstances, some people rise up to accept the mantle of heroism to risk life and limb for their brothers and sisters.
Such Heroes are humanity's salvation. My Everyday Hero project wants to honor ordinary heroes, and promote the notion that we each should be "heroes in waiting," ready and willing to act on behalf of others when the time comes.
I invite readers of this blog to sign on the Hero Volunteer form on the home page of this web site.
Thanks for this stimulating theology blog.
Phil Zimbardo
By Phil Zimbardo | Posted on November 18, 2008, 10:33 pm
i believe uneducated people can be herded like sheep to do or believe anything their sheppard suggests to them for their course of acceptance.the heroes you talk about are merely average people standing up for what is right.unfortunately,most men playing the sheppard,on their power trip rarely lead the flock in the right direction
By pocketchange | Posted on December 19, 2008, 12:43 pm
It seems to me that human propensity for good and evil can be measured on a Bell Curve. At the left end of the curve, there are people like Hilter and Stalin and on the right end of the curve, there are people like Mother Theresa and Bonhoeffer. Most people are somewhere in the middle of this curve.
Your project attempts to move people to the right side of the Bell Curve by educating people about good and evil and encouraging people to stand up and say no to injustice, greed, corruption, and intolerance even if there is personal cost involved. I believe this education must be included in every school's curriculum.
By Nora Westcott | Posted on December 20, 2008, 7:23 am
I'm on chapter 15 of The Lucifer Effect,Putting the System on Trial, and haunted by what I'm learning about what is going on on American soil. People don't think that what Hitler engineered could happen again, but they are wrong; this book has convinced me of that.
As I read what went on in American prison camps in the middle east, and how those at the top of the chain of command are getting away with war crimes, it makes the revelation of Fema death camps on American soil to do away with resistors to The New World Order even more frightening. It looks even more efficient than Hitlers 'Final Solution.' The objective is to do away with 90% of the world population.
If this makes me sound like a nut case check it out for yourself before YouTube is censored to death. You can start with Fema and NWO, the related videos uncover it all. It's the unfolding of the prophecy that everything kept secret will be revealed. If people don't wake up and join in the battle to reveal the works of the devil, the new world order will make Hitler's war crimes look like a walk in the park.
Pocket Change wrote: <i>i believe uneducated people can be herded like sheep</i>
History and countless examples in our modern day demonstrate that the human propensity to be herded like sheep is not limited to only the uneducated at all. We are human, and every aspect of our humanity can be manipulated when weary or off-balance. Steve Hassan notes that we can be dominated if we are vulnerable behaviorally, intellectually, or emotionally. We can also be isolated and the flow of information limited so that we fall prey to contextual errors. None of us are immune, and all of us are vulnerable from time to time.
But for grace, there go I. People are also often naturally disposed to surrendering their liberty in favor of the guise of protection and provision. I think Dosoyevski said it best:
<i> “We have corrected Thy work and have founded it upon miracle, mystery and authority. And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep.”</i>
We are suckers for miracle, mystery and authority.
Today, Islamic priests are staying silent while States are abetting Kristallnacht style terrorism in South Asia and elsewhere.
We have started a website (The South Asian Idea) for college students in South Asia to raise awareness of this phenomenon. Any support and guidance would be much appreciated:
http://thesouthasianidea.com
By South Asian | Posted on January 10, 2009, 9:47 am
Pocket Change wrote: <i>I believe uneducated people can be herded like sheep</i>
Dr. Ashis Nandy, the leading political psychologist in India, recently placed the responsibility for the 2002 ethnic cleansing in Gujarat on the educated middle class of the state.
Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer, a scholar in Mumbai, asked why the educated middle class in India was more bigoted than the illiterate masses. His answer: because they are educated.
The content of education is critical. When education degenerates into indoctrination good apples can turn evil in the bad barrel.
By South Asian | Posted on January 10, 2009, 9:57 am
Pocket Change wrote: <i>I believe uneducated people can be herded like sheep</i>
Dr. Ashis Nandy, the leading political psychologist in India, recently placed the responsibility for the 2002 ethnic cleansing in Gujarat on the educated middle class of the state.
Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer, a scholar in Mumbai, asked why the educated middle class in India was more bigoted than the illiterate masses. His answer: because they are educated.
The content of education is critical. When education degenerates into indoctrination good apples can turn evil in the bad barrel.
By South Asian | Posted on January 10, 2009, 9:58 am
Thanks, Curtis, for your respectful commemoration of the horror of Kristallnacht and the collusion of the Church. As we struggle to understand how human beings can perpetrate such heinous acts, it's important that we see both individual responsibility and individual culpability. But the notion of "individual responsibility" is not limited to the isolated human making decisions in a vacuum, like a cartoon character with an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other. It includes the responsibility of people gathered in society to educate and train children to become adults who are aware of the insidious power of their social context to influence them toward evil. It includes the responsibility to elevate both the hero who acts to save the persecuted, and the hero who acts to reverse the evil tendencies that can lead to persecution. People need to be taught about the Lucifer Effect, the power of social context to warp good people into evil shapes. They need to be taught how to resist groupthink. They need to be given the vision of a world where every person is treated with dignity and respect. "Without vision the people perish." (Proverbs 29:18)
I think that the statement "there are always potential heroes present is absolutely true." Even though there will always be those who turn a blind eye to evil, we should all strive to be those who stand up to it. However, many people are too scared to sand up to it; they would rather just conform. I think that that is something we need to change about our society.
By Emma | Posted on January 24, 2010, 6:48 pm
I think that the statement "potential heroes are always present" is very true. There is always something someone can do to stop evil. The problem is doing it. It is rarely easy to do the right thing when everyone else is conforming. We need to do our best to stand up for what is right, even if we are standing alone.
