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

2. Early Church Statements

20 ≤ Early Church Statements Despite its silence about the 1 April boycott, there were early signs that the church would resist any attempt to alter church law. On 5 May 1933 the Regional Church Government in Kassel sent a statement to the central German Evangelical Church Committee in Berlin.∞ Titled ‘‘To the Conscience of the Evangelical Church,’’ it deplored the fact that the church and its members, like professional associations and organizations , private clubs and lodges, sportsmen’s and private garden clubs, had succumbed to the pull of Nazi Gleichschaltung (the synchronization ofalllevelsofGermanlifetobringthemunderNazicontrol).Theauthors recognized that ‘‘regulation of the ‘Jewish question’ ’’ was clearly being carried out on the basis of the 1920 National Socialist party program. From the church’s perspective, the most important section of the 1920 program was article 24, which protected religious freedom as long as it didn’t ‘‘conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the Germanic race.’’≤ One of the first to see through article 24 had been Hermann Sasse, the former editor of the church yearbook.≥ The clear-sighted Kassel church officials agreed with Sasse and appealed to the consciences of their fellow Christians: ‘‘The Evangelical Church must be reproached strongly for not putting an end to the persecution of its own children in the faith—indeed, for giving its blessing from the pulpit to those who are working against its own children in the faith . . . and for banishing people of the same faith, with whom they joined in worship, before the church’s very doors as though they were mangy dogs.’’∂ The letter described the official party distinction between Jews and non-Aryans. Protestant or Roman Catholic Christians whose parents or grandparents were either practicing Jews or had converted to Christianity were considered non-Aryan. According to the party, even nonAryans baptized as Christians were Jewish; in the terminology of the time, ‘‘blood comes before faith.’’ The concern of the Kassel letter was limited to ‘‘members of the Evangelical Church—baptized Jews and the so-called non-Aryans.’’ The Kassel writers believed that observant Jews were being cared for sufficiently by their own religious community. Jews were still allowed to practice their faith in the synagogue; non-Aryan Christians, however, had been left on the church’s doorstep: Early Church Statements 21 Why is it [the Scripture] not valid for those who are Jews according to birth and belief ? Because these Jews, in contrast to the non-Aryans and baptized Jews so degraded today, have one genuine consolation: they can pray to their God in their church. They have a religious community that helps them bear their trial. In the prayer that their priests taught them, they can call upon their God to whom their fathers prayed in difficult times. Though the material and spiritual injury endured by these German citizens—banished and rendered second-class human beings because of their blood—be ever so great, they have the right and the opportunity to pray to their God. They have their communion before God; they have their holy sanctuary in their temple, in which they can pray. . . . They trust in the foundation of their faith. With the non-Aryans, it is different. Like the Jews, they are excluded from the ranks of ‘‘full’’ citizens of the state. But in the church to which they belong, they seek consolation in vain. . . . The Evangelical Church to which they belong, the faith in which they were baptized, confirmed, and married—the church that wanted to prepare them for the path to God—that same church expels them by meekly tolerating their expulsion from the ranks of fellow believers. . . . God is held up as the partisan defender of a group defined by blood. Where shall the Protestant ‘‘non-Aryan’’—where shall the Protestant Jew find hope in faith?∑ The Kassel writers called their church government to account because it had declared its solidarity with the party and the state and sought racial separation instead of confirming the bonds of faith. Finally, the Kassel writers attempted to arouse the church’s conscience on behalf of the Jewish and non-Aryan brethren: Despised and proscribed—betrayed by their own church—robbed of their God—they also stand before the collapse of their material existence . Not—because they may have worked against God; not—because they may have revolted against the state, against Volk and Fatherland; not—because they were criminals and deceivers; not—because they were political enemies of other...