THE HOLOCAUST DID NOT JUST HAPPEN
Hugh Fogelman
In the beginning Christianity gave birth to the anti-Judaic word! In the end was the Final Solution!
The study of anti-Jewish incidents in history clearly shows that the arguments, accusations and actions of the anti-Semites of our day are not new, but old and very dangerous.
The historical incidents related here are examples only taken from a variety of locations. Sometimes Jews were protected by the church against the civic authorities. At other times these authorities protected them against a raging church. And at times both the church and the civic authorities persecuted them, or both could or would not stop mob attacks, sometimes incited by the lower clergy against the will of the bishops.
The following list of incidents is meant to create an interest in the study of the troubled Christian-Jewish relationship. It may also serve to show that the Nazi Holocaust was preceded by a long history of ill-treatment of Jews in so-called Christian countries and that the Christian church through its "teaching of contempt" contributed in great measure to Jewish suffering.
Categories of anti-Jewish behavior reach from hateful words to mass murder. It can never be said that just one incident caused the Final Solution; rather, it was years and years of conditioning. For centuries, the Jews were made to appear sub-human.
Hateful words in writings, sermons, plays (especially passion plays), tales, jokes, lies about conspiracies, Christ killers, and scapgoating;
Accusations of deicide (murder of God/Christ), ritual murder, desecration of the host (of the Eucharist), conspiracies;
Threats or coercions to extort ransom money, excess special taxes, to drive from home, to convert;
Restrictions on Jewish religious practice, social interaction, trade and professions, civil and political rights, residence (ghettoization), ownership;
Force used to make Jews pay higher taxes, take away their children (to raise them as Christians), lootings, vandalism, expulsions;
Violence in the attack of individual Jews and whole communities, in beatings and torture;
Murder and mass murder in "judicial" hangings, burnings, slaughters in riots, mob attacks, Crusades and pogroms; and
The Nazi "Final Solution" to the so-called "Jewish Problem" in the Holocaust.
It turns out to really have been a Christian problem throughout history.