Children of the Holocaust

The level of hatred we are seeing against our Jewish neighbors in the United States, and around the world, since October 7, 2023, has accelerated at an alarming rate. Holocaust survivors report they are observing ominous parallels between antisemitism in the 1930s in Europe and recent events in the United States. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am absolutely appalled by the hatred and violence that has exploded in our nation since Israel was attacked unprovoked by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

Many groups and individuals are defending this new genocide against the Jewish people. They are gathering under the banner of the Arab-Palestinian cause by attacking Israel, a sovereign democratic nation responsible for protecting their citizens, especially children. Antisemitic tropes such as Anti-Zionism and “from the river to the sea” are disguised as political activism and concern for Palestinians. But Jew hatred hides behind many masks, ideologies, and ploys. Humanity, it is very clear, has learned very little since the Holocaust.

Although many people are familiar with the story of Anne Frank, a Jewish girl and her family hidden by Miep and Jan Gies during the Holocaust, many are unaware that 1.5 million Jewish children were systemically murdered during the Holocaust. Children were arrested, sometimes assigned numbers, often separated from their parents, and, in France for example, even had mug shots taken as if they were criminals. Serge Klarsfeld, the famous Nazi hunter, noted that on July 16, 1942, “thousands of Jewish families were arrested in their homes and on the streets of Paris.”

In addition to Jewish children, many thousands of Roma or Romani children, who were labeled “Zigeuner” or “Gypsies,” as well as Sinti (a subgroup of Roma people) and Slavic children, were classified as “subhuman” and brutally murdered in inconceivable ways. Jewish children were seen as “useless eaters.” Children were viewed solely as consumers of resources, not as human beings made in the image of God.

Public officials in most countries throughout Europe were involved in rounding up, arresting, and deporting Jewish families. Rather than displaying compassion by making exceptions for children, public officials made calculated decisions with ruthless expedience. French officials, for example, worried that making exceptions for Jewish children might result in their future demands for justice. As Nazi hunter, scholar, and memorialist Serge Klarsfeld states in French Children of the Holocaust:

For Leguay, Francois, and Tulard, it is absolutely necessary that the children be deported. If they are not, a problem will be created that will last for years. In addition, if one day the Germans are defeated, these children (who will) become adults will ask what has happened to their parents and will demand judgment of French officials responsible for their disappearance. (p. 40)

One Jewish young man, Josek Dziubak, wrote on the side of a train on June 5, 1945, expressing the collective outrage of many Jewish children whose parents disappeared at the hands of malicious officials:

Where are our parents, you Nazi murderers?

Ordinary citizens just like us, living in cities, towns, and villages throughout Europe, also rounded up their neighbor’s Jewish children. In addition to the cruelty of arrest and deportation, Jewish children were frequently separated from their parents. In France, children were often sent alone on transports, usually trains. As Serge Klarsfeld reports in French Children of the Holocaust:

If parents and children cannot be deported together…it is understood that parents will be deported first…a negative decision on the children’s deportation isn’t even considered…(which dwould) deliberately plunge these thousands of children into frightful emotional distress when they (French officials) separate them from their parents.

Livia Bitton-Jackson, author of the acclaimed book, I Have Lived a Thousand Years, describes Jewish children’s reactions in human terms, when their fathers, including her own father, were suddenly deported from a Hungarian ghetto in the middle of the night

My hysterical sobs surprise everyone…But I’m powerless in the face of my savage grief…I know what I wanted to tell my father in those moments of parting, and I was robbed of those moments…The fathers are gone and the ghetto plunges into profound gloom. Every movement slows, every sound is muffled. Only the crying of children is louder and more frequent.

Then, another sound is added. The chanting of Psalms. The older men left behind in the ghetto now sit on the ground in the synagogue and chant the Psalms all day long. And all night long. The chanting of old men and the crying of young children blend into a slow rhythmic cacophony.

How could ordinary people commit such brutal and calloused acts? In addition to the deep despair Jewish children experienced, horror was a primary emotion in the Holocaust. Living in a concentration camp, or being forced into cattle cars, was not an adult world of empty morality and broken ideals, but a terrifying reality children lived from morning until night: it was a lived experience of horror. This was not a world they contemplated, but a reality they endured…For the children, train journeys, selections, beatings, starvation, overcrowding, harsh labor conditions, and rampant disease were the stunning, unimaginable, but daily realities of life…However horrendous their lives had been in hiding, transit camps, ghettoes, this was a new stage of misery.

The most dehumanizing part of Nazi philosophy was the erroneous, pseudoscientific belief that Jewish people were racially “inferior” to Nordic races. “Racial science” promoted the false idea that there was a superior “Aryan” race resulting from natural selection, good breeding, and evolutionary progression. Some children with “superior” features-blond hair, blue eyes, and light skin-were taken from their parents and placed in “Aryan” homes. These adoptive parents were often lied to and told the children were orphans.

For many years, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago had a display of the world’s “races.” It included many fine bronze statues and busts of people from around the world. I remember viewing these statues with a combination of wonder and curiosity as a child. The different physical features of the world’s people, we were told, was evidence of distinct “races,” rather than variations in the beauty and diversity of the human family.

In the 1796, Phrenology was developed by the German physician Franz Joseph Gall. He argued that human personality and cognitive traits were related to different regions of the head and skull. For example, calculation ability was believed to be located next to the eyes, and color perception was believed to be above the eyes. Phrenologists even argued that qualities such as cautiousness, hope, and benevolence could be identified based on distinct head regions.

Today, however, we understand that parietal areas such as the horizontal intraparietal sulcus in the right hemisphere is a primary brain region involved with mathematics. Similarly, color vision is found in the primary visual cortex, which is in the back of the brain, not near the eyes as Gall proposed.

The Nazis applied phrenology to the human body to determine who was racially “superior” or “inferior.” It was referred to as anthropometry. Devices called anthropometers, calipers, and craniometers were used to measure body parts and physical characteristics.

These measurements included nose length, cheek and forehead width, chin size, head circumference, height, length of the middle finger, elbow to finger length (cubit), numerous body proportions, and arm, foot, & leg length, among many others. Eye and hair color were also used to determine “fitness” and genetic and racial superiority.

Terms such as “Jewish chest” and “Jewish face,” as well as brachycephaly or “broad head,” which was based on head width and length to arrive at a “cephalic index,” underscore the false terminology used to “prove” that Jewish parents and their children were “inferior” and therefore dangerous. Racist doctors and scientists utilized irrational ideas to arrive at false conclusions, which they then heralded as “scientific evidence.” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum notes:

Many supporters linked eugenics to race, and believed that “race mixing,” modern medicine, keeping the “unfit” alive to reproduce, and costly welfare programs hindered natural selection and would lead to the biological “degeneration” of society.

Livia Bitton-Jackson, who lived through the Holocaust as a young girl, in her book, I Have Lived a Thousand Years, noted that her factory supervisor, Herr Zerkubel, subjected girls and women: to the most curious scrutiny, peering deep into eyes, measuring the distance between eyes, eyebrows and cheekbones, and the height and width of foreheads with a small pocket ruler…Tall, blond, fair-skinned girls with blue or green eyes are commanded to step aside. Now Herr Zerkubel adds somewhat shorter girls with blond hair, blue or green eyes, and blond hair…Finally, he adds redheads, and even girls with light brown hair.

But all have light eyes and fair skin…Herr Zerkubel determines superior intellect by the colors of hair, skin, and eyes. The colors of the Aryan race…The next category consists of girls with brown hair and eyes, but fair skin. They are assigned less-complex, more routine metalwork…The black haired, dark eyed women, among them a notable physicist, a doctor, and a college professor, are assigned the most primitive task of polishing metal parts.

Intelligent women and girls were assigned menial work, based on the false assumptions of “racial science” that viewed darker hair, skin, and eyes as indications of intellectual inferiority.

Many scientists in the United States and Europe taught the same racial theories used by the Nazis. They believed these false ideas were objective and empirically valid. They often referred to the theory of evolution to support their conclusions. Racial theories about Jewish people are an example of how motives such as hatred and bigotry can permeate “objective research” and “experiments.” The resulting conclusions are not only false and unscientific, but destructive and deadly.

In contrast, the Scriptures clearly state that the world’s people are one race: the human race. The Psalms state that every human is “fearfully and wonderfully made” in the image of his or her Creator. Although we have different external features, each human being is made in the image of his or her Creator. We are one human family. Therefore, every individual has the same human nature shared by all other human beings. The Bible is clear that our shared human nature is fallen, which means that every human being has the potential to do great evil.

While racial science certainly contributed to the murder of innocent Jewish children, the primary cause of the Holocaust was Judenhass, or Jew hatred. Throughout history, the Jewish people have been subjected to countless exclusions, ghettos, pogroms, mass murder, and genocide. Whether it was Haman in the Tanakh who sought to murder every Jew, or Hadrian, who renamed Judea as “Palestine” around 135 A.D. as a punitive measure to prevent Jews from being associated with their own land, or Hamas and Hezbollah, who have been attacking the Jewish people with missiles and terrorism in their native Israel, which they have occupied for over 3,000 years, the results of Jew hatred by Gentiles has been deadly. The horror of October 7, 2023 proved that Israel is currently surrounded by Arab neighbors who seek to annihilate every Jew.

Children in the Holocaust were often used by physicians in concentration and extermination camps for pseudoscientific “research” that was supposedly valuable to the Third Reich. Many of these so called brutal and pointless experiments were based on racial theories that viewed Jews, Roma (Romani), and Sinti as “racially inferior.” These experiments were conducted at Auschwitz, Dachau, and Ravensbruck, among other locations.

Dr. Mengele conducted experiments on Jewish twins that were tantamount to scientific fraud, depravity, and the murder of innocent children. During one such barbaric experiment, Mengele sewed together two twins, back-to-back. These innocent children suffered horrible pain and cried out for days before they died. On the Judenrampes, when Jewish families were forced out of cattle cars, Jewish twins were identified and quickly taken to Mengele for “research.”

Social Darwinists proposed that evolution resulted in superior development in certain “racial” groups. Evolutionary “science” provided the fundamental intellectual framework for Nazism, eugenics, forced sterilization, theories of racial superior and inferiority, including the Aryan race, “survival of the fittest,” and “scientific” conclusions that deemed certain groups, especially Jews, as “genetically undesirable.”

Throughout history, many Catholics, Lutherans, and Protestants have viewed and used Jewish people as scapegoats. They placed sole blame for the death of Jesus Christ, for example, who willingly laid down his life for humanity, based on the Will of the Father, on the Jewish people. Sadly, Nazi ideology was strongly influenced by these false views about Jews.

As a result of this underlying hatred and blame, the Final Solution became the conscious, planned, systematic, collective actions of millions of ordinary people throughout Europe to exterminate the Jewish people once and for all. Ordinary citizens just like us, living in cities, towns, and villages throughout Europe, rounded up their neighbor’s Jewish children.

Every person, Gentile and Jew, possesses a shared human nature that is capable of good and evil. Every human being has a conscience and latitude to choose good or evil. Ultimately, our conscience is not controlled by fate, circumstances, history, or personality, although these factors can make it more difficult, but certainly not impossible, to choose good in the face of evil.

Sadly, contemporary scientists, as we well as philosophers and even theologians, propose, to the fascination of a credulous public, a special category of evil necessary to murder your neighbors. Contemporary scientists propose that anatomical differences in the brain determine if a person will choose good or evil. They propose a type of cognitive phrenology that reduces evil actions to brain dysfunction and/or personality abnormalities.

“Broken brains” orpsychopathic/sociopathic personality disorders are proposed by these social scientists to explain the depraved slaughter of millions of Jewish children and their families. These so-called scientific explanations are a naturalistic and secular way of saying “my brain made me do it!” These dubious theories are as unscientific as they are untheological.

Other scientists and anthropologists argue that human beings have a “killer instinct” resulting from our evolutionary past as hunters. Yet there is no definitive, consistent brain research that proves murder, and more specifically, the mass murder and genocide of our Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust, is due to factors such as biochemical, electrical, cellular, physiological, or biological aberrations, or to epigenetic or evolutionary factors.

Hate is the fundamental cause of murder: If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a lair; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20) and: Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer. (1 John 3:15)

Spiritually, one of the ways to grieve the Holy Spirit of God is to be filled with hate and hostility toward others. These emotions are contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit Himself. Similarly, those Christians who are false professors do not have the Holy Spirit indwelling them. As a result, they are unable to follow the commands to love truth, as well as to love their neighbors, given in the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 2:14; Romans 8:9).

Therefore, those “Christians” who are not indwelt by the Holy Spirit do not belong to Jesus Christ. Yet, to Jewish people murdered by their Christian neighbors, this distinction must seem unconvincing. The fact remains that millions of Gentiles who called themselves Christians participated in the systematic murder of their Jewish neighbors. It is a dire warning today to anyone who confesses Jesus Christ as Lord!

Even many Christians today would maintain that they are not capable or murder, nor would they see their anger as complicity in murder of the neighbors. Will Durant, the author of the 11 Volume The Story of Civilization, wrote: A state is ruled not by ideals but by the nature of men.

All people are ruled by a fallen human nature. More importantly, Jesus Christ taught:

You have heard it said the anyone who murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you that anyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hellfire…First, be reconciled to your brother.

Jesus Christ taught that anger is equivalent to murder in the eyes of God. God’s standard is so high that no human being can respond in the negative, saying, “Not me!” Anger is a universal human emotion. Jesus is saying that we are all guilty before God Almighty because of our fallen sinful nature.

The potential for evil lives in every human being. It is important to remember that nearly a third of the Scriptures were written by men who were murderers or complicit in murder: Moses, David, and the Apostle Paul. If these mighty men of God were capable of murder, are we any different, better than they were? Nonetheless, God redeemed these men to use for His purposes. Indeed, He can redeem any human being who comes to Him in humble repentance.

Why does one human being choose to murder Jews, while another human being chooses to hide Jews? Both are ordinary people in every sense of the word. One chose evil and other chose good. Perhaps one could not live with the thought that he participated in evil, while another could live with that knowledge? Or one knew she would give an account to God one day, and the other did not believe in divine accountability?

Or perhaps one Gentile saw the dire need of a human face and had to respond to that face, while another Gentile remained unmoved by any moral or human obligation to relieve suffering in an unfamiliar face? Or one saw a human brother or sister, and the other did not even see a human being? Or one saw himself first, and the other second-or even last, while another saw the other as first, and herself second?

God gave every person the ability to choose good or evil. Very few Gentiles stood up to the horror of children and their families being rounded up, deported, and systemically murdered. It is estimated there were 690 to 700 million Gentiles in Europe at the time of the Holocaust. The majority identified as Catholic, Lutheran, or Protestant. Yet, only a few thousand Gentiles were involved in the protection and rescue of Jews.

Yad Vashem has a list of the Righteous Gentiles of the Nations. These ordinary people risked their lives to rescue Jewish parents and their children. Their stories are riveting and humbling. Oscar Schindler, who saved Jewish workers in his factory, as well as Miep & Jan Gies, who hid Anne Frank and her sister and parents, are the most well-known Righteous Gentiles of the Nations.

Yet, many of these courageous rescuers viewed saving Jews as nothing special, but obligatory. Dr. Eva Fogelman, who has interviewed and studied rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, wrote about a category of Gentiles who displayed a “clear sense of right and wrong”:

Moral rescuers were people who, when they were asked why they rescued Jews, often answered, “How else should we react when a human being is endangered?” Their concept of right and wrong was so much a part of who they are and were, that it was as if I had asked them why they breathed.

Contrast this clear sense of right and wrong with the once esteemed former president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay. She was asked by Representative Elise Stefanik a clear question, if “calling for the genocide of Jews” was in violation of Harvard’s ethical code of conduct. Gay replied: It can be, depending on the context.

Claudine Gay’s answer makes us ask, in what “context” would genocide of Jews NOT be in violation of ANY ethical or human code of conduct, ANYWHERE? Any call for genocide against the Jewish people is an absolute violation of our human understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, and an affront to the conscience of every person, Gentile and Jew.

Later, Claudine Gay, to her credit perhaps, or under intense public pressure, expressed regret. She acknowledged that her answer was “deeply problematic.” She had “neglected to clearly articulate that calls for genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable.” I would add that calling for the genocide of Jewish people is depraved, barbaric, evil, unconscionable, inhuman, unchristian, unamerican, demonic.

It is easy for us to express outrage at Gay’s response to a simple question about good and evil. Yet, if we examine ourselves, haven’t we ever engaged in similar conduct by not speaking up, by compromising with evil, or by carefully choosing words in a legalistic manner to prevent one group from being offended or critical?

What does your conscience say about Jew hatred? Do you condone it quietly in your heart? Do you speak up, or are you silent? Are you an upstander or a down-stander? Are you indifferent to your Jewish neighbors? Do you hate all Jewish people because Israel has been targeting Hamas terrorists in Gaza?

Or are you merely indifferent to the plight of the Jews? Indifference appears to be a casual lack of concern, yet it often conceals hatred. Words and attitudes are the overflow of the heart. Evil always starts close to home, hiding in our own heart before we act, or fail to act. Indifference is a form of subdued hatred, therefore, that merely waits to express itself in real life circumstances.

I have heard Christians wrongly argue that the Holocaust was God’s judgment on Jews. Are not all in an age of grace? Paul writes in Romans 11:6:

And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; otherwise, grace would no longer be grace.

All are being offered grace, Jew and Gentile. But aren’t the Jewish people being judged by God for rejecting Him? Jesus said:

Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam feel and killed them, do you think that they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.

Jesus Christ got the heart of the matter, the heart itself. Every human being, Gentile and Jew, has offended a holy, loving, perfect GOD. All are guilty in God’s eyes (Romans 3:23). The book of Job also disproves the mistaken belief that tragedies are due to divine judgment. The Holocaust was due to the actions of millions of Gentiles. Evil men acted together to bring Jewish death and destruction.

Are branches being torn out of the Gentile church? Or were branches torn out of the Jewish church?

Do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you…So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you…provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off.

Is God finished with Israel? According to many professing Christian theologies and denominations today, “the church” has replaced Israel. The theologians, teachers, and leaders tell us GOD has broken his unilateral covenant with Israel! God has warned Gentile denominations and theologies: “…you too will be cut off!”

Protestant pastors, as well as Catholics and Lutherans, supported Hitler and helped bring about the depraved genocide of God’s chosen people. They put into action what Martin Luther advised Christians to do in The Jews and Their Lies. Luther, the “author” of grace, told fellow Protestants:

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…Second, I advise that their houses be razed and destroyed…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…Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb…Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews…Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and fold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping…Seventh, I commend 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 break in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam.

After Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when Jewish synagogues and businesses were destroyed and burned, Martin Sasse, bishop of the Evangelical Church of Thuringia, called Luther a “prophet” and wrote:

On 10 November, Luther’s birthday, the synagogues are burning…At this moment, we hear the voice of the prophet of the Germans from the sixteenth century, who out of ignorance began as a friend of the Jews but who, guided by his conscience, experience, and reality became the greatest antisemite of the age, the one who warned his nation against the Jews.

Do you believe Luther as teacher, leader, theologian, and “father” of the church? Or do you believe what the Apostle Paul, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, wrote:

For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches (the Jewish people), be grafted back in their own olive tree.

You do not believe this irrevocable revelation to the church? Then you are calling God a liar. Do you interpret these clear words differently? Then you are distorting and perverting the Word of God. Do you believe Christians have replaced God’s holy tree, the Nation of Israel, the Israel of God? Then you are contradicting the truth of the Scriptures to fit human theology.

Jesus Christ said:

But none of you should be called a teacher. You have only one teacher, and all of you are like brothers and sisters. Do not call anyone on earth your father. All of you have the same father in heaven. None of you should be called leader. The Messiah is your only leader. Whoever is the greatest should be the servant of the others. If you put yourself above others, you will be put down. But if you humble yourself, you will be honored. (Matthew 23:8-12)

If you are a believer, with all sincerity of heart and clarity of mind, humbly ask the Holy Spirit to teach you about Romans 9, 10, and 11.

The level of hatred and evil necessary to brutally murder children is difficult to comprehend. The mass murderers of Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust were ordinary citizens just like us. Many had children of their own. Contrary to the misnomer that Gentiles had no choice but to participate in the mass murder of Jews, we now know that many Gentiles willingly participated in genocide and crimes against Jewish humanity, often with a “clean” conscience.

These Gentiles were civilized, educated, religious, law-abiding, moral, family-oriented, hardworking, church-attending people, just like us. “Ordinary.” Again, most of them identified as “Christian” in one form or another. All over Europe, these Gentiles participated in the evil of the Third Reich. Jan Grabowski, a prominent Holocaust scholar, noted in his article, White Wash, in the Jewish Quarterly:

Harming Jews, or preying on Jewish misery, became a widespread phenomenon during the Holocaust, occurring-albeit to varying degrees-in all countries of occupied Europe.

One Jewish survivor, Inge Auerbacher, who was a little girl during the Holocaust, asks in her powerful book, I Am a Star:

Where were the church and all the good and decent people of the world while this barbarism was going on? The heads of the Christian churches and the leaders of Islam and Buddhism made no protest against this inhumanity…very few of the clergy…became involved…

Past Holocaust scholarship has designated three primary groups in the Holocaust: victims, perpetrators, and bystanders, as well as a small minority known as rescuers. Based on my own Holocaust research and writing, I propose that bystanders may be divided into two groups: down-standers and over-standers. I believe the term bystander, although certainly accurate in many respects, removes full accountability before our neighbors and God.

Down-standers were Gentiles, both Christian and non-Christian, who sought to disengage themselves from their binding human and moral responsibility for their Jewish neighbors. They were marked primarily by indifference. Indifference is more than apathy, however. It is low-level hatred that veils itself in passivity and compromise.

Over-standers, on the other hand, were mostly Christian Gentiles during HaShoah. Over-standers believed they were superior to Jews and God’s righteous judges of Jewish “sin and rejection of Christ.” They falsely believed they were carrying out a necessary, divinely directed judgment on Jews.

Many religious clerics in the Vatican had this viewpoint, as did Pope Pius XII himself. Many Protestants, Lutherans, and Catholics had similar views. Over-standers saw Jews as evil and themselves as righteous. Thus, down-standers were compromising cowards, while over-standers were arrogant hypocrites. God Almighty warns followers of Jesus Christ not to display cowardly (Revelation 21:8) or arrogant (Romans 11:18-21) attitudes of the heart.

In contrast to down-standers and over-standers, upstanders were Gentiles who rescued and hid Jewish children and adults during the Holocaust. Gentile upstanders were marked by moral courage, doing what was right regardless of the consequences. The cost of upstanding for Jewish neighbors varied, but could lead to arrest, imprisonment, loss of property, being sent to concentration camps, and execution.

Notable Gentile upstanders who rescued Jews during the Holocaust include Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie Ten Boom and her family, Pastor Heinrich Gruber of the Bureau Gruber, the Ulma family of Poland, Miep and Jan Gies, who hid Anne Frank and her family in the “Secret Annex,” and Oskar Schindler.

One of the most notable upstanders during the Holocaust was Charles “Carl” Lutz. Carl Lutz was Swiss Vice-Consul in Budapest who issued Schutzbriefe or “protective letters” to Jewish families. He also established safe houses for Jews in Budapest. One such shelter, a former factory, housed 3,000 Jews and was known as The Glass House.

It is estimated that his actions saved the lives of over 60,000 Jews from certain death. His wife Gertrude also cared for Jews and risked her life during the Holocaust. Lutz helped nearly 10,000 Hungarian Jewish children emigrate to Israel through the Jewish Agency for Israel. Finally, Raoul Wallenburg was the Swedish special envoy in Bucharest who was responsible for issuing passports and providing shelter for Jews. His efforts saved around 4,500 Jewish lives.

Hatred and indifference toward our Jewish neighbors are spreading in the United States and throughout the world. While prejudice contributes to harassment and exclusion, Jew hatred grows until it manifests as violence and murder against our Jewish neighbors. The human heart is not good by nature, and is capable of murder and complicity in murder. The Holocaust demonstrated what the prophet Isaiah wrote, and the Apostle Paul quoted in the New Testament, that “there is none good, no not one.” Romans 11:32 says, “For God consigned everyone to disobedience so that He may have mercy on everyone.”

Ordinary people like you and I are capable of every form of disobedience, including indifference, complicit silence, hate, murder, and even genocide against Jews, His chosen people, the apple of His eye. What must we do then? I can only examine my own heart. You must examine your heart. The only true way I have found to examine my heart is to read the Scriptures. I look in the mirror of God’s Word and see how I compare to God’s standard.

For twenty years I was an atheist. During that time, I looked into the mirrors of countless philosophies, religions, and secular ideas and teachings. None of them had the truth or power to give me a new heart. Only the Gospel brought regeneration, peace, and fullness of life as a new creation. I know many of my Jewish friends are not convinced of this fact. They will simply say that another Gentile is trying to convert them to Jesus. On the contrary, human beings have absolutely no power to convict or convert anyone.

I affirm today that the deplorable behavior of many professing Gentile Christians during the Holocaust, with sins of commission and omission, as well as countless pogroms, forced conversions, and the murder of Jews throughout history, has strongly contributed to the Jewish people’s distrust and disbelief in Christian sincerity, love, and truth. No organization or group is capable of repentance. Only individuals, through the Holy Spirit, are capable of self-examination and repentance.

The God of the Jews revealed the Shema to humanity: His Agape love and holiness. The New Testament reveals to every person how to receive His Salvation. Therefore, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I believe He alone has given Light and Life, as well as His Holy Spirit, who every human being needs to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Love sacrifices me for my neighbors. My Jewish neighbors. All my neighbors. This is the standard of Agape love that will ultimately be followed by every person who professes Jesus as Lord. Empty words and self-deception are never acceptable for any follower of Christ. For those Gentiles who will not live by this clear teaching of Jesus Christ, to walk the Shema in the fruits of the Holy Spirit, even unto death, their use the word Christian is not only a lie, but blasphemy against the Most High.