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footnote: This was the fruit of century-long defamations by the Fathers of the Church and Popes against the Jews who were not willing to be converted. Pope Leo the Great had called them "abominable and detestable", Pope Stephen "dogs", and Innocent III in 1205 called them "slaves accused in the eyes of God". (162:1) footnote: The Reformation did not bring about any change either, Luther, who believed the Jews to be "worse than a sow" was a raving antisemite who used a language which Julius Streicher's "Stuermer" (a notorious Nazi agitation-paper of anti-semitic character) drew from: "These Jews are such a desperate, utterly wicked and corrupted and bedeviled sort that for these last 1,400 years they have been and still are our torment, pestilence and all our misfortune. 'Suma" they are proper devils". "Here in Wittenberg in our parish church there is a sow carved in stone; under it lie young piglets and Jews, which are sucking; behind the sow stands a rabbi who lifts up the right leg of a sow and with his left hand pulls the tail over himself, he bends down and with eagerness looks under the tail of the sow into the Talmud as if he wanted to read and observe something exact and important... The Germans say of a person who, for no apparent reason, pretends great intelligence: where did he get it from? To talk bluntly, from the backside of a sow". In his essay, "About the Jews and their lies", he wrote: "I want to give a piece of sincere advice. First that their synagogues be set on fire... Second that their houses be pulled down and destroyed, too... Third that all their prayer-booklets be taken away from them... Fourth that their rabbis be forbidden to teach any more at the risk of losing their life. Fifth that freedom of movement and the right to go out in the streets be completely removed from the Jews... Sixth that they be forbidden to practice usury and that all ready money and valuables in gold and silver be taken away from them... Seventh that the young, strong Jews and Jewesses be given axes, picks, shovels and spindles in the hand and be made to earn their bread by the sweat of their noses... But if we fear that they could do us some harm if they have to work and serve us... let us get back from them what they have extorted from us by usury and then drive them out of the land for ever". These are the words of one of the men who had a lasting influence on the way of thinking and the character of the Germans. "What Hitler did, Luther had recommended" is Karl Jasper's opinion. (see book "Light Shineth in Darkness" for list of references). (162:2) footnote: The persecutions of the Jews by Christians lasted until the nineteenth century and continued in Russia until the twentieth century. Equality of rights in the state came into being only under the influence of the Enlightenment. The Christian anti-semitism of the Middle Ages which had its root in Christian theology was followed in the nineteenth century by the racially-founded philosophy that, in the recent past, with the annihilation of six million Jews, has demonstrated that it is an explosive force which has outlived centuries. (162:3) 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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