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Martin Luther Supplemental Toward Responsibility

Martin Luther Supplemental Toward Responsibility. The Holocaust. Martin Luther. 1483 – 1546 Considered father of the Protestant Reformation (95 Theses, 1517 / Heidelberg Disputation, 1519). Martin Luther. Approach to Jews varied throughout life Student and teacher of the Hebrew Bible

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Martin Luther Supplemental Toward Responsibility

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  1. Martin LutherSupplementalToward Responsibility The Holocaust

  2. Martin Luther • 1483 – 1546 • Considered father of the Protestant Reformation • (95 Theses, 1517 /Heidelberg Disputation, 1519)

  3. Martin Luther • Approach to Jews varied throughout life • Student and teacher of the Hebrew Bible • Opposed 1510 controversy attempting to ban Hebrew books • Demonstrated “marked sympathy” toward Jews in earlier writings that the Jewish community received warmly

  4. Martin Luther • That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, 1523 (Luther’s Works [LW] 45) • If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian.… I hope that if one deals in a kindly way with the Jews and instructs them carefully from Holy Scripture, many of them will become genuine Christians and turn again to the faith of their fathers, the prophets and patriarchs. They will only be frightened further away from it if their Judaism is so utterly rejected that nothing is allowed to remain, and they are treated only with arrogance and scorn.” • Furthermore, Luther adds, Gentiles should remember that, humanly speaking, Jews are closer to Jesus: “We are aliens and in-laws; they are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord.”

  5. Martin Luther • European Jews were generally positive about the political and religious effect of the Reformation: reclamation of the Hebrew Bible and diminished authority of the Empire • 20 years later (1543), however, Luther’s zeal for conversion had evaporated. • Jews had not “come along” and become Christians. • Luther’s comments in 1543 are reflective of his medieval context and are thus not surprising. • His policy recommendations were not adopted in his own time but were later explicitly used to justify Nazi practices. • Notice correspondence between Luther’s recommendations and Nuremberg Laws of 1935.

  6. Martin LutherOn the Jews and Their Lies, 1543 (LW 47) • What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? • 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. (47:268)

  7. Martin LutherOn the Jews and Their Lies, 1543 (LW 47) • 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 the fact 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. (47:269) • 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. (47:269) • Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. (47:269)

  8. Martin LutherOn the Jews and Their Lies, 1543 (LW 47) • Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside. (47:270) • Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. The reason for such a measure is that, as said above, they have no other means of earning a livelihood than usury, and by it they have stolen and robbed from us all they possess. (47:270)

  9. Martin LutherOn the Jews and Their Lies, 1543 (LW 47) • Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen. 3). For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. (47:272)

  10. Martin LutherOn the Jews and Their Lies, 1543 (LW 47) • “I do not believe that even the notorious Der Stürmer of Dr. Streicher surpassed the sayings of Brother Martin.”— Peter WienerMartin Luther: Hitler’s Spiritual Ancestor (1944) • In honor of his birthday in 1937, the city of Nuremberg presented Julius Streicher, editor of the National Socialist newspaper, with a first edition copy of Luther’s Von den Juden und ihren Lügen, described later that year in Der Stürmer as the most radically anti-Semitic tract ever published.

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