The glass is still broken

Time to repair the damage Christians have inflicted on Jews.

By Charles Gardner | | Topics: CHRISTIANS
Israeli soldiers attend a ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance at the Yad Vashem holocaust museum, on Holocaust Remembrance Day April 18, 2023. Photo by Erik Marmor/Flash90

As we approach the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht – a foretaste of the Holocaust to come which should have been a wake-up call for Europe – it’s surely time to learn the lessons we failed so miserably to comprehend then.

A 25-year-old article written by an eyewitness of that fateful Night of Broken Glass has re-awakened my spirit to some deeply disturbing signs that not much has changed – even among evangelical Christians. The article came to my attention well before the latest outrage broke out with the Hamas slaughter of October 7th.

Fritz Voll, the source of my earlier piece on the German Pentecostal Church’s complicity in the Holocaust through supporting Hitler’s race laws of the late 1930s, was just eight years old when he watched the burning of a synagogue diagonally opposite his home in Arnswalde.

He was totally unaware of the plight of the Jews, but later became an ardent campaigner for righting the wrongs of antisemitism, especially among his fellow Christians.

Describing his parents as evangelicals with a Pentecostal leaning, his family attended the German Pentecostal Church which, he said, was an “outgrowth of the Holiness movement from England”.

As I pointed out previously in A Shocking Revelation, this church passed a resolution in 1938 essentially backing Nazi plans to deport all Jews from the country, though this was well before the ‘Final Solution’ came into effect.

As a Pentecostal myself, I was particularly shocked to learn of this because more should be expected of people claiming to have experienced a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit.

In an article entitled Autobiographical reflections on the night of November 9, 1938, and beyond published on the Jewish-Christian Relations website, Fritz asked: “Where were the Christians of Germany? Only very few even prayed for the Jews. During all my childhood I never heard a single prayer for the Jewish people in the evangelical churches we attended… And when we did not see them anymore because they were sent to their deaths in the camps, why did we not notice?”

He also wrote: “In Sunday School and in church we were only taught about the Jews of the so-called Old Testament and about those that were supposedly responsible for the death of Jesus and his followers.”

I am deeply troubled by this, not because I have never heard these questions before, but because I see so little change in attitude, although there are some positive signs, with many newly concerned over the plight of Jews in the UK and elsewhere. But in general terms – and I have experienced evangelical and Pentecostal churches in the UK over 50-plus years – the German church scenario described above is what I still see in Britain.

The international Holocaust Memorial Day which our former Prime Minister Tony Blair so helpfully introduced, is a perfect opportunity for Christians and others to stand with the Jewish people who have given us so many spiritual blessings. But each year when it comes around on January 25th, the day in 1945 when Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, I don’t even hear a reference to it in church, let alone a prayer.

And yet our local (secular) council once marked the occasion by organising an event in support of our small Jewish community. There were a few individual Christians there, but church congregations seem to think it has nothing to do with them, thereby deepening Jewish mistrust of the gospel Christians claim to care about.

Fritz Voll also recalled an occasion in 1984 when he was speaking at the inauguration of a newly-built Orthodox synagogue – in Canada, I believe, though the location wasn’t clear. The venue was filled to capacity, though without a single representative of the 300-plus Christian congregations in the city.

He wrote: “When I think about the stories I have heard from Jewish survivors (of the Holocaust), I wonder how I can survive as a Christian, how Christianity can survive, if it does not repent its age-old anti-Judaism.”

Significantly, he recalled his parents mentioning that, in addition to the codeword for violence against Jews (i.e. Kristallnacht), there was another codeword for violence against Christians (Reichssternennacht – Night of the Stars). But he never managed to ascertain whether this was indeed the Nazi plan – to go after the true Christians once they’d finished with the Jews.

Yet today we witness all too clearly how Islamic fundamentalists (who cooperated with the Nazis) are as much opposed to Christians as they are to Jews. Is it not time we stood squarely with Jesus’ brothers in the flesh in their hour of need?

For he will surely say: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40)

But those who failed to help them would suffer eternal punishment (verse 46). Christians, wake up!

 

 

Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon; Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com; To the Jew First, A Nation Reborn, and King of the Jews, all available from Christian Publications International.

 

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Israel Today comments guidelines Kommentar-Regeln

5 responses to “The glass is still broken”

  1. Jake Wilson says:
    November 6, 2023 at 7:37 pm

    I am not anti-Judaic, yet regarding the Shoah I agree with Rabbi Manis Friedmann.

    “I will pursue them with sword, famine and plague and make them an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth; and they will bring on themselves cursing, astonishment, ridicule and reproach among all the nations where I have driven them [anti-Semitism]. Yes, you will be continually oppressed and crushed. Hashem will send your enemy against you; and you will serve him when you are hungry, thirsty, poorly clothed and lacking everything; he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he destroys you.” (Jer 29:18; Deut 28:33, 48)

    This gradually increasing national punishment (aka 7-Times Punishment) lasted from 536 BCE until 1948, comprising 2,520 years prophetic years of 360 days.

    This is not excuse the evil perpetrated by Christians during the Shoah. In fact, any nation who has persecuted Jewry will still be dealt with.

  2. Jake Wilson says:
    November 6, 2023 at 7:38 pm

    However, since 1948 non-Jews are to apply this verse:

    “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your G-d. “Speak kindly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her, that her sentence is served, her penalty is paid, that she has received from Hashem’s hand double for all her sins.” (Isa 40:1–2)

    • Elizabeth Blauw says:
      November 9, 2023 at 10:41 am

      As a child I grow up in a Christian home, praying for a meal, reading the Children Bible after dinner, prayer before going to sleep. Sunday school. My parents were active in the church. I sent to a Christian school. When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I remembered only lately when that thought came back to me. I know the stories of the Bible it is all about Jewish people, Jesus was a Jew. Why am I not a Jew. For a young child, a reasonable thought, but I never asked anybody that question.
      I always knew the Jewish people are the apple of God’s eye.
      Still now, I am 80 years old, it so naturally when you are a follower of Jesus, you love the Jewish people and Israel.
      (My parents and grandparents did hide Jewish people during the war in Holland )

  3. Esther Wischer says:
    November 7, 2023 at 10:04 am

    I live in a small country town in Australia, and I am leading a weekly prayer meeting for Israel. On Sundays our pastor prays for Israel. Be comforted – there are many Christians who know their Bible – especially Paul’s epistle to the Roman church – and stand with Israel!

  4. spenglersilvia says:
    November 7, 2023 at 4:33 pm

    Ja, zu Israel, zu den Juden – daher kommt unser Glaube und der Retter, Messias, König der Juden;
    Wenn ER wiederkommt mit den Heiligen, Seine Füße auf Zion stehen,
    dann werden die dabei sein, die für die Juden einstehen, die sie bei Gefahr schützten, versteckten, für sie kämpften – wenn sie das nicht mehr konnten, in Schwachheit mit ihnen weinen und beten, bußfertig ihre Herzen beschneiden ließen, damit Er sie würdigt dabei zu sein. Es werden die Misshandelten und verfolgten Christen sein und die, die sich demütig hintenanstellen und wissen: Es ist der König der Juden, der Sein Volk trösten wird. Diesmal kommt Er mit Macht! Rahel wird nicht mehr ihre Kinder beweinen.

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