Discussion Forum Sample #3

Discussion of the Holocaust

Student #1: Just for clarification purposes, the Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler was not predicated on Christian doctrine but in fact, persecuted Christianity quite violently. While the persecution did not, in most instances, involve the systematic murder of people as did the Jewish persecution, it did cut very deeply into the faith. Nazi leaders established the “National Reich Church” before the beginning of the war and accompanied that with a series of bylaws. These included forcing a halt to publication and distribution of Bibles, its replacement by copies of “Mein Kampf” (which was also a desperate plea to sell copies of an unheralded biography), and the replacement of the Christian Cross with the swastika in all churches. These facts can be read, along with others, in William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” (1992), pg 330-333. (In no way is this posting an attempt to insinuate that Dr. Kelly made any comments that would contradict this remark. It was simply a topic not usually discussed along with the tragedy of the Holocaust.)

My Response: Hi to all. Although I'm in Iowa at the moment, thanks to the magic of the web, I can keep in touch!  S's comment is an interesting one for everyone to think about. Because Germany was a profoundly religious society, roughly evenly divided between Catholics in the south and Protestants in the north (although not as rigidly as this sentence makes it sound), the Nazis had to figure out how to maintain and increase their level of support among the general population while not antagonizing religious believers (non-Jews, that is, since they didn't care what the Jews thought).  A very interesting book on this very subject has just appeared, titled Hitler's Pope, which resurrects and extends many traditional criticisms leveled at Pope Pius XII for his lack of overt opposition to Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Italy. While the book's conclusions remain to be debated, the author's account does raise a number of intriguing questions about how religious leaders, whatever their denomination, can manage their relationship with the prevailing regime, especially when that regime is one that acts in ways that run counter to that religion's beliefs.  Another aspect of the Nazi rise to power, and perhaps the one that sparked Sean's post, is the "religious" nature of Nazi ceremonial. Hitler and others in his regime were great copiers of what worked in other venues and were most impressed with the power of religious ritual. Much of their own public ritual was quite clearly copied from Christian tradition. On this subject, you can look at George Mosse's The Nationalization of the Masses, which discusses Nazi ritual in great detail.

Student #2: Every time we start talking about the Holocaust in class there is a point of question that comes to my mind every time we discuss the subject. The question I am having is the ideal of how passive the Jews were in this situation. We have learned in the class that close to 80,000 Jews were dying each month. This tells me that other Jews through out the county had to know that something was going on. Yet when it was their time to be called out to board the train they went just as they were told. This raises the question in my mind why were they so passive, if they knew they were about to die why did they agree to get on those trains. I do not know if it was simply due to fear or if it was some type of religious reasons. It seems to me that if I knew I were going to die or even be sent away I would put up a little more fight.

Student #3: The problem is most people just refused to belive it was true until it was shoved in their face. Much of the literature discussing the time (non-fiction, fiction) states that people had heard about it, but thought it was completely ludicrous. They couldn't possibly believe that anything bad was going to happen. What would you do if someone ran up and said the Men in Black and the Nordic aliens were leading an invasion force to wipe out everything on earth, and the United Nations was going to rule the planet? You would laugh at how stupid they were and go back to doing what you were doing. Now, we have TV and to fall back on and find out more information, but even in crucial times accurate information seems to be hard to find.

Student #4: I could never imagine the horror going through the Jews at that time. I could never imagine what type of person could kill without thinking. This is how many of the Jews were killed, without thought. What comes to my mind is the trial, and the defense many had of, how can I be braking this law if it was not made until after the war. This I will never understand. All of the defenses were weak, but a question to ask would have been something like this. If you knew something is wrong, very wrong, like killing a person, then why did you continue to do it? I think the people were so brain washed, they may have thought very deeply that the idea behind Hitler's cause was good.

Student #1 responds: I think it was not so much people's belief that killing Jews was good or that they agreed with Hitler, but obeying orders was a responsibility. Certainly there were people who did agree with the situation. Also, when you dehumanize the process the way the Nazis did by using the concentration camps almost like a business, it tends to make the things you do less personal.