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footnote: Even during the persecutions of the Jews under Hitler, Protestant Churches in Germany renounced their baptized Jewish members. On 17 December 1941 the bishops and presidents of the Synods of Saxony, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Anhalt, Thueringen and Luebeck published a declaration in which, with reference to Martin Luther, they defined the Jews as the "born enemies of the world and of the empire" and demanded the strictest measures to be taken against them: "Christian baptism will change nothing of the racial character, the national membership and biological nature of the Jew. A German Protestant church has the duty to look after and promote the religious life of fellow Germans. Christians of the Jewish race have no place and no right in it. This is why the undersigned Protestant churches and church leaders have cleared every community of Jewish Christians".
(162:4)
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