american-holocaust

248 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTNative peoples, however, are not alone as objects of Christianity's disdain.During most of the past millennium of European history-since atleast the first pogrom in Germany in the year 1096-Jews have lived inwary knowledge of their own precarious existence. Entire volumes existthat detail Christian Europe's long-entrenched and pathological hatred ofJews and all things Jewish. There is neither room nor need to recountagain that bitter history here. But one example will make a necessary point.In a lengthy tract of 1543 entitled On the jews and Their Lies, MartinLuther referred to Jews as "a plague, a pestilence," as "venomous, bitterworms," as "a desperate, thoroughly evil, poisonous, and devilish lot," as"useless, evil, pernicious people," as "tricky serpents, assassins, and childrenof the devil," as a "brood of vipers," and as "mad dogs." With hischaracteristically crude eloquence Luther, of course, was only speaking thethoughts that countless Christian saints and saintly aspirants had held andexpressed regarding Jews for centuries. So, too, was he representing theideas of Christian masses when he offered his "sincere advice":to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirtwhatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinderof them .... I [also] advise that their houses be razed and destroyed ....I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which suchidolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. . ..that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life andlimb. . . . that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely forthe Jews. . . . that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken fromthem and put aside for safekeeping .... I [also] recommend putting a flail,an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strongJews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of theirbrow. . . . But if the authorities are reluctant to use force and restrain theJews' devilish wantonness, the latter should, as we said, be expelled from thecountry and be told to return to their land and their possessions in Jerusalem,where they may lie, curse, blaspheme, defame, murder, steal, rob, practiceusury, mock, and indulge in all those infamous abominations which theypractice among us, and leave us our government, our country, our life, andour property, much more leave our Lord the Messiah, our faith, and ourchurch undefiled and uncontaminated with their devilish tyranny and malice.1Even to someone possessed of Luther's towering ferocity and hate,however, Jews in that time were not yet considered a separate category ofbeing. Indeed, after almost 200 pages of vituperative screed such as thatextracted out above, Luther closes his diatribe by saying: "May Christ,our dear Lord, convert them mercifully and preserve us steadfastly andimmovably in the knowledge of him, which is eternal life. Amen." 2In sum, for all their allegedly despicable traits, Jews still had souls, they