The rabid, creationist lunatic wing has recently revved up, once again, the idiotic lie that Darwin's ideas on evolution are the direct cause of the Holocaust. Social Darwinism--which Darwin himself rejected--is cited as the link between the two. Never mind that Hitler's diseased brain thoroughly misunderstood almost any idea presented to it. The Holocaust is all Darwin's fault, according to the creationists!
Well, as a history teacher who for many years taught a course on the history of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, I think it's important to understand the historical context in which nineteenth century racist ideas emerged, and to see what ideas were already in the minds of Europe's people in that era, ideas that had been passed down from generation to generation, ideas that made the nonsense of the racists seem plausible. Let's take a look.
From the fifth century theologian Augustine:
But the Jews who slew Him, and would not believe in Him, because it behoved Him to die and rise again, were yet more miserably wasted by the Romans, and utterly rooted out from their kingdom, where aliens had already ruled over them, and were dispersed through the lands (so that indeed there is no place where they are not), and are thus by their own Scriptures a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ. And very many of them, considering this, even before His passion, but chiefly after His resurrection, believed on Him, of whom it was predicted, "Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant shall be saved." [Isaiah 10:22 and Romans 9:27-28] But the rest are blinded, of whom it was predicted, "Let their table be made before them a trap, and a retribution, and a stumbling-block. Let their eyes be darkened lest they see, and bow down their back alway." [Psalm 69:22-23 and Romans 9:9-10] Therefore, when they do not believe our Scriptures, their own, which they blindly read, are fulfilled in them, lest perchance any one should say that the Christians have forged these prophecies about Christ which are quoted under the name of the sibyl, or of others, if such there be, who do not belong to the Jewish people. For us, indeed, those suffice which are quoted from the books of our enemies, to whom we make our acknowledgment, on account of this testimony which, in spite of themselves, they contribute by their possession of these books, while they themselves are dispersed among all nations, wherever the Church of Christ is spread abroad. For a prophecy about this thing was sent before in the Psalms, which they also read, where it is written, "My God, His mercy shall prevent me. My God hath shown me concerning mine enemies, that Thou shalt not slay them, lest they should at last forget Thy law: disperse them in Thy might."[Psalm 69:10-11] Therefore God has shown the Church in her enemies the Jews the grace of His compassion, [Emphasis added] since, as saith the apostle, "their offence is the salvation of the Gentiles."[Romans 11:11] And therefore He has not slain them, that is, He has not let the knowledge that they are Jews be lost in them, although they have been conquered by the Romans, lest they should forget the law of God, and their testimony should be of no avail in this matter of which we treat. But it was not enough that he should say, "Slay them not, lest they should at last forget Thy law," unless he had also added, "Disperse them;" because if they had only been in their own land with that testimony of the Scriptures, and not every where, certainly the Church which is everywhere could not have had them as witnesses among all nations to the prophecies which were sent before concerning Christ.
In short, the suffering of the Jews is the fulfillment of prophecy and an example of what happens to those who reject Christ's message.
From St. John Chrysostom, Fourth Century:
Although such beasts [Jews] are unfit for work, they are fit for killing. And this is what happened to the Jews: while they were making themselves unfit for work, they grew fit for slaughter. This is why Christ said: "But as for these my enemies, who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and slay them". You Jews should have fasted then, when drunkenness was doing those terrible things to you, when your gluttony was giving birth to your ungodliness-not now. Now your fasting is untimely and an abomination. Who said so? Isaiah himself when he called out in a loud voice: "I did not choose this fast, say the Lord". Why? "You quarrel and squabble when you fast and strike those subject to you with your fists". But if you fasting was an abomination when you were striking your fellow slaves, does it become acceptable now that you have slain your Master? How could that be right?
No comment necessary.
Pope Gregory I, the Great (died 604 AD) from the Jewish Encyclopedia.com:
Gregory had a deep-seated aversion to Judaism, which to him was Jewish superstition ("superstitio"), depravity ("perditio"), and faithlessness ("perfidia"). He discarded the literal interpretation of the Bible which prevailed among the Jews, and designated their attacks upon Christianity as idle prattle. He forbade the literal observance of the Sabbath law, wide-spread among the Christians, on the ground that it was Jewish; and his deepest grievance against the Nestorians was that they were like the Jews. He extolled the Visigothic king Reccared for his severe measures against the Jews and for his firmness against their attempts at bribery.
In fairness, it should be stated that Gregory at least forbade violence against Jews and was opposed to forcible conversion and forced baptism.
From Gates of Jewish Heritage, an account of the First Crusade, 1095-96:
In 1095 Pope Urban II declared a holy war, a Crusade, against the Muslims to make the Holy Land Christian again. Meanwhile, the feudal system in Europe was beginning to break up. The huge land barons and the Church owed millions of dollars to the Jewish money lenders who had financed the building of major cathedrals in Europe. The common folk were starving and undirected. There were serious droughts and a famine in 1095. With Urban's call and the Church's support, thousands of townspeople found a direction for their frustration and hate. With rabble-rousers leading them on, mobs formed intending to march to the Holy Land and kill the enemies of Christ. According to many rabble-rousers, however, there was a traditional enemy of Christ much closer than the Holy Land: the Jews in the Rhineland. Before the knights of Europe had even started to get organized, a "Crusade" of Christian mobs was declared. From these ranks were heard the words of a respected knight, Godfrey of Bouillon, stating that he wouldn't leave his country for the Holy Land until he had avenged the crucifixion by spilling a Jew's blood with his own hands.The mobs assembled near the wealthy Jewish communities in the Rhineland in April, 1096. It wasn't until May 3, after Easter, however, that they actually attacked. The attacks lasted into June.According to some eyewitness reports, some noblemen tried to protect Jews, but the incensed mobs ignored them. More than 1,000 Jews were slaughtered at Worms. In Mainz, more than 1,300 Jews lost their lives. Before the Crusaders ever left Europe, more than 10,000 Jews lay murdered. Not coincidentally, one of the casualties of the Rhineland slaughters was all of the records of loans made by the land barons and the Church to the Jewish money-lenders. Rhineland Jewry never did collect on those huge loans.
From an interview with historian Norman Cohn:
What happened when the crusaders conquered Jerusalem?
When the crusading armies arrived at Jerusalem finally in mid-June of 1099, one of the things that they did was to immediately have a religious procession around the whole city, a penitential rite, because Crusade was also pilgrimage; and then to have an immediate assault on the city, because they felt again that God was on their side. That assault failed. And so then the Christians began to build siege machines in order to attack the city over the next few weeks. And then finally, in the middle of July (July 12th and 13th through the 15th) the siege machines enabled the city to be breached, the crusaders to rush in, and then the most terrible thing to happen: a slaughter, almost universal slaughter of Muslims and Jews in the city, which is still the worst stain on the Crusade, I think, that history leaves to us.
How many people killed?
It's difficult to know exactly how many people were slaughtered at the conquest of the city, but it seems to have been some tens of thousands. ... Crusading chronicles say that the blood from the slaughtered reached up to the knees of their horses.
From the Lateran Council of 1215:
In some provinces a difference in dress distinguishes the Jews or Saracens from the Christians, but in certain others such a confusion has grown up that they cannot be distinguished by any difference. Thus it happens at times that through error Christians have relations with the women of Jews or Saracens, and Jews and Saracens with Christian women. Therefore, that they may not, under pretext of error of this sort, excuse themselves in the future for the excesses of such prohibited intercourse, we decree that such Jews and Saracens of both sexes in every Christian province and at all times shall be marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples through the character of their dress. Particularly, since it may be read in the writings of Moses [Numbers 15:37-41], that this very law has been enjoined upon them.
Moreover, during the last three days before Easter and especially on Good Friday, they shall not go forth in public at all, for the reason that some of them on these very days, as we hear, do not blush to go forth better dressed and are not afraid to mock the Christians who maintain the memory of the most holy Passion by wearing signs of mourning.
This, however, we forbid most severely, that any one should presume at all to break forth in insult to the Redeemer. And since we ought not to ignore any insult to Him who blotted out our disgraceful deeds, we command that such impudent fellows be checked by the secular princes by imposing them proper punishment so that they shall not at all presume to blaspheme Him who was crucified for us.
Jews, in other words, are ordered to wear distinctive badges so that they might be clearly identified.
From Magna Carta, 1215:
10. If one who has borrowed from the Jews any sum, great or small, die before that loan can be repaid, the debt shall not bear interest while the heir is under age, of whomsoever he may hold; and if the debt fall into our hands, we will not take anything except the principal sum contained in the bond.
11. And if any one die indebted to the Jews, his wife shall have her dower and pay nothing of that debt; and if any children of the deceased are left underage, necessaries shall be provided for them in keeping with the holding of the deceased; and out of the residue the debt shall be paid, reserving, however, service due to feudal lords; in like manner let it be done touching debts due to others than Jews.
Although stating that all debts will be handled in the same way, isn't it interesting that Jewish debt-holders were specifically singled out.
From the Medieval Sourcebook, an account of how Jews were forced to confess, under torture, that they were deliberately "causing" the Black Death--and what was done about it in 1348:
I. The Confession of Agimet of Geneva, Châtel, October 20, 1348
The year of our Lord 1348.
[The Jew Agimet] confesses further that he put some of this poison [The Black Death] into the public fountain of the city of Toulouse and in the wells that are near the [Mediterranean] sea. Asked if at the time that he scattered the venom and poisoned the wells, above mentioned, any people had died, he said that he did not know inasmuch as he had left everyone of the above mentioned places in a hurry. Asked if any of the Jews of those places were guilty in the above mentioned matter, he answered that he did not know. And now by all that which is contained in the five books of Moses and the scroll of the Jews, he declared that this was true, and that he was in no wise lying, no matter what might happen to him. [This Jew does not seem to know that the books of Moses and the scroll of the Jews are identical!]
II. The Cremation of Strasbourg Jewry St. Valentine's Day, February 14, 1349 - About The Great Plague And The Burning Of The Jews
In the year 1349 there occurred the greatest epidemic that ever happened. Death went from one end of the earth to the other, on that side and this side of the sea, and it was greater among the Saracens than among the Christians. In some lands everyone died so that no one was left. Ships were also found on the sea laden with wares; the crew had all died and no one guided the ship. The Bishop of Marseilles and priests and monks and more than half of all the people there died with them. In other kingdoms and cities so many people perished that it would be horrible to describe. The pope at Avignon stopped all sessions of court, locked himself in a room, allowed no one to approach him and had a fire burning before him all the time. [This last was probably intended as some sort of disinfectant.] And from what this epidemic came, all wise teachers and physicians could only say that it was God's will. And as the plague was now here, so was it in other places, and lasted more than a whole year. This epidemic also came to Strasbourg in the summer of the above mentioned year, and it is estimated that about sixteen thousand people died.
In the matter of this plague the Jews throughout the world were reviled and accused in all lands of having caused it through the poison which they are said to have put into the water and the wells-that is what they were accused of-and for this reason the Jews were burnt all the way from the Mediterranean into Germany, but not in Avignon, for the pope protected them there.
Nevertheless they tortured a number of Jews in Berne and Zofingen [Switzerland] who then admitted that they had put poison into many wells, and they also found the poison in the wells. Thereupon they burnt the Jews in many towns and wrote of this affair to Strasbourg, Freiburg, and Basel in order that they too should burn their Jews. But the leaders in these three cities in whose hands the government lay did not believe that anything ought to be done to the Jews. However in Basel the citizens marched to the city-hall and compelled the council to take an oath that they would burn the Jews, and that they would allow no Jew to enter the city for the next two hundred years. Thereupon the Jews were arrested in all these places and a conference was arranged to meet at Benfeld rAlsace, February 8, 13491. The Bishop of Strasbourg [Berthold II], all the feudal lords of Alsace, and representatives of the three above mentioned cities came there. The deputies of the city of Strasbourg were asked what they were going to do with their Jews. Thev answered and said that they knew no evil of them. Then they asked the Strasbourgers why they had closed the wells and put away the buckets, and there was a great indignation and clamor against the deputies from Strasbourg. So finally the Bishop and the lords and the Imperial Cities agreed to do away with the Jews. The result was that they were burnt in many cities, and wherever they were expelled they were caught by the peasants and stabbed to death or drowned. . .
.
[The town-council of Strasbourg which wanted to save the Jews was deposed on the 9th-10th of February, and the new council gave in to the mob, who then arrested the Jews on Friday, the 13th.]
[The town-council of Strasbourg which wanted to save the Jews was deposed on the 9th-10th of February, and the new council gave in to the mob, who then arrested the Jews on Friday, the 13th.]
THE JEWS ARE BURNT
On Saturday - that was St. Valentine's Day-they burnt the Jews on a wooden platform in their cemetery. There were about two thousand people of them. Those who wanted to baptize themselves were spared. [Some say that about a thousand accepted baptism.] Many small children were taken out of the fire and baptized against the will of their fathers and mothers. And everything that was owed to the Jews was cancelled, and the Jews had to surrender all pledges and notes that they had taken for debts. The council, however, took the cash that the Jews possessed and divided it among the working-men proportionately. The money was indeed the thing that killed the Jews. If they had been poor and if the feudal lords had not been in debt to them, they would not have been burnt. After this wealth was divided among the artisans some gave their share to the Cathedral or to the Church on the advice of their confessors.
Thus were the Jews burnt at Strasbourg, and in the same year in all the cities of the Rhine, whether Free Cities or Imperial Cities or cities belonging to the lords. In some towns they burnt the Jews after a trial, in others, without a trial. In some cities the Jews themselves set fire to their houses and cremated themselves.
A map of Jewish expulsions from medieval states may be found here.
From On the Jews and Their Lies by Martin Luther, 1543:
What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blaspemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must pratice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengenance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:
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. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly - and I myself was unaware of it - will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.
Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.
Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. (remainder omitted)
Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses (Deuternomy 17 [:10 ff.]) in which he commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: "what they teach you in accord with the law of the Lord." Thoses villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people's obedience contrary to the law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison, cursing, and blasphemy. In the same way the pope also held us captive with the declaration in Matthew 16 {:18], "You are Peter," etc, inducing us to believe all the lies and deceptions that issued from his devilish mind. He did not teach in accord with the word of God, and therefore he forfeited the righ to teach.
Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let they stay at home.
It was ferocious Christian anti-Semitism that helped set the psychological stage for the mass murder of Jews in the 20th century. Although I love and cherish the Christians in my life, as a historian I must testify to the facts. I mean the citation of these historical examples as no disrespect to the many wonderful Christians who love and respect Jews and speak up in their defense, nor is it an indictment of the many Christian rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, especially those in Bulgaria, Denmark, and Hungary. But in order to deal with the past, we must confront it honestly.
Other causes of the Holocaust: fierce German nationalism combined with romanticism (Herder), later stemming in part from the German reaction in the early 19th century to subjugation by Napoleon (Fichte, Hegel); racist ideas such as those spread by Gobineau and H. S. Chamberlain; Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the vicious forgery from Russia which Hitler fiercely believed; anti-Semitic groups in Vienna which influenced the teenage Hitler; the social upheaval in post-World War I Germany and the (false) association of Jews with Germany's defeat; and Hitler's misinterpretation of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, among others.
All huge historical events have deep and complex causes. For the enemies of reason and scientific rationalism to blame Darwin for the Holocaust is both obscene and preposterous. It shows a willful ignorance of history that cannot be countenanced. Evolution is a historical fact. To accuse its discoverers and interpreters of having caused the horrible crimes of the Nazis is grotesque in the deepest sense--and as wrong as anything people have ever believed.
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