And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews

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‘‘Gerlach tenaciously pursues evidence of anti-Jewish attitudes among Confessing Church leaders, and he ties these attitudes to their Christian suppositions. This helps to establish the overlap of Christian and racial antisemitism. It also helps us understand how the antiJewish policies of Nazi Germany could evoke so little opposition , so much acceptance, and, in many cases, such ready participation. This book is an important contribution to a very important trend in the historiography of modern Germany.’’ — Robert P. Ericksen, coeditor of Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust. An endlessly perplexing question of the twentieth century is how ‘‘decent’’ people came to allow, and sometimes even participate in, the Final Solution. Fear obviously had its place, as did apathy. But how does one explain the silence of those people who were committed, active, and often fearless opponents of the Nazi regime on other grounds — those who spoke out against Nazi activities in many areas yet whose response to genocide ranged from tepid disquiet to avoidance? One such group was the Confessing Church, Protestants who often risked their own safety to aid Christian victims of Nazi oppression but whose reponse to pogroms against Jews was ambivalent. Wolfgang Gerlach is a retired pastor in the Evangelical Church of Germany. Victoria J. Barnett is a consultant for the Department of Church Relations at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the editor of Bystanders : Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust. University of Nebraska Press Lincoln NE 68588-0484 www.nebraskapress.unl.edu And the Witnesses Were Silent The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews by wolfgang gerlach translated and edited by victoria j. barnett University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London This publication is a slightly revised version of the German original, Als die Zeugen Schwiegen, which was published in 1987 and 1993. This volume was published with the support of a generous grant from the Cleveland Foundation to the Department of Religion at Case Western Reserve University as part of a project on Jewish-Christian relations directed by Professors Susannah Heschel and Eldon Jay Epp. ∫ 2000 by the University of Nebraska Press. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America ! Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gerlach, Wolfgang. [Als die Zeugen schwiegen. English] And the witnesses were silent: the Confessing Church and the persecution of the Jews / by Wolfgang Gerlach; translated and edited by Victoria J. Barnett p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8032-2165-7 (cloth: alkaline paper) 1. Antisemitism — Germany 2. Christianity and antisemitism. 3. Jews — Persecutions — Germany. 4. Bekennende Kirche — History. 5. Protestant churches — Germany — History — 20th century. i. Barnett, Victoria. ii. Title. ds146.g4813 2000 261.8%348924043%099043—dc21 99-044916 ...