HO HO HO, CHRISTMAS IS SO WONDERFUL ─ NOT!

Hugh Fogelman & John Stone

 

For over 2,000 years, Christmas was never a season of Christian LOVE towards the Jewish people. Today, Christians want Jews to forget that that was then; only to think that “now” is different – NOW they love Jews. Based on Christian history everyone should ask, Just when is “now?” Is “now” this week, last year, or ten years ago? Or, on the 2,000 year old Christian calendar, would sixty years ago be in the “now” group? 

This year, 2005 was the 60th anniversary of “remembering” Jasenovac, the largest extermination camp in Croatia,1 where hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Jews, Serbs and Roma, were put to death by the Croatian Ustashe regime.2 What made this camp so unusual was that it was one of the most barbaric death camps of the Holocaust, where victims were tortured and murdered with extreme cruelty, and, get this, was the only death camp in Christian Europe to have been run by local people (93 percent Christians3) without any help of the Germans.

Did those Croatian Christians of NOW -─ 60 years ago ─ show any of the so-called Christian love? During Christmas did they ease up on their torture and murder? Or while this extreme cruelty took place, at the end of the day in the Christmas season, did they go to their warm homes, to their Christmas trees, and shinning lights, and a very filling meal singing Christmas songs about their beloved Jesus. Did they carol around town singing “Away in the Manger?”

It is pathetic that all the Christmas songs say “Christmas is love;” but its only “love” if ─ only if ─ you accept the dead man-god Jesus, the Invisible Man in the Sky.

In August, 2000 the leaders of Poland's Roman Catholic Church, in a letter of joint apologies4 for failings in its 2,000-year history, asked forgiveness for its toleration of anti-Semitism. Parish priests across Poland were to read this letter during Masses. About 95% in this nation of 39 million call themselves Catholic.

“We ask forgiveness for those among us who show disdain for people of other denominations or tolerate anti-Semitism, just like anti-Christianism is a sin”,5 

The Bishops said they clearly see the tragedy of the Nazi Holocaust in Poland, which the Germans occupied during World War II; although the horror was not limited to that country. Before the war, Poland's 3.5 million Jewish community was the largest in Europe and made up 10% of the nation's population. But only a few hundred survived the Holocaust ─ a few hundred out of 3.5 million. I’ll do the math for you; only 0.01% survived. In other words 99.99% of Poland’s Jews were murdered. All the while ─ throughout the years of the Holocaust ─ while Jews were being murdered, gassed, burned, tortured and starved, Christians set up their trees with shining lights and ornaments, sang Christmas hymns singing about baby Jesus (the dead man-god). You know they sang “O little town of Bethlehem;”6 so let’s see what was crossing their lips as they murdered Jews.

1. O little town of Bethlehem, ...

The hopes and fears of all the years

are met in thee tonight.

 

2. …While mortals sleep, the angels keep

their watch of wondering love...

and peace to men on earth!

 

3. …the dear Christ enters in.

 

4. …Where misery cries out …

The dark night wakes, the glory breaks,

and Christmas comes once more.

 

5. …We hear the Christmas angels,

the great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us,

our Lord Emmanuel!

Yes, Christmas is such a wonderful feeling of LOVE - NOT!

This so-called Christian “love” didn’t shine through in the 20th century when Jews had to change their last name just to secure a job. Where was the Christmas love during those dark winter days in America and England where Jews were not allowed to leave Nazi Germany and the Axis Europe and come to freedom? Christmas is such a wonderful feeling of LOVE - NOT!

In 1939, both Cuba and the United States refused to admit over 900 Jewish refugees who had sailed from Hamburg, Germany, on the "ST Louis," The ship was forced to return to Europe where, ultimately, many of the passengers perished in concentration or extermination camps.7

During World War II, even as reports of Nazi genocide filtered to the West, the U.S. Department of State failed to relax its strict limits on immigration. England did the same.8

Let’s take a brief look at some more Christmas time love in the “not too distant” past9:

1941 December 7-9, RIGA (Russia)

Within two days 80% of the Jews living in the ghetto (25,000 people) were shot including the famous historian Simon Dubnow. On December 8, at age 81, Dubnow was shot by a former student of his, now a Gestapo officer. His dying message to fellow Jews was: “Yidn, shreibt un farshreibt!” (“Jews, write and record!”).

 

1941 December 31, ERETZ ISRAEL

Due to the war and British restrictions, only 4,600 Jews made it to Israel (the lowest number in 10 years) and only five new settlements were established.

 

1942 December 8, PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT (USA)

After submitting to friendly pressure by Stephen Wise, who stated that refusal to meet with them may be “gravely misunderstood,” met with Jewish leaders of the Temporary Committee for half an hour. Roosevelt spoke 80% of the time and mostly about issues unrelated to the plight of the Jews, although he did agree to issue a war crimes warning. This was his only meeting with Jewish leaders concerning the Holocaust. His only other meeting to discuss the issue was with 7 Jewish congressmen on April 1 1943.

 

1942 December 19, THE UNITED NATIONS INFORMATION OFFICE (New York, USA)

Published a report confirming that the Nazis had made Poland “One vast center for murdering Jews.”

 

1943 December, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT

Issued a new visa application which was four feet long. The waiting period for processing was now nine months. In addition Jews in Nazi held territories had no way of making visa applications since there were no American consulates. Any refugee who succeeded in reaching countries that had an American consulate (Spain, Portugal) was now considered “not in acute danger” and was therefore denied a visa.

So you now see that Christian “love” was NOT present even in the first half of the 20th Century.

Even modern Popes document this as well.

Pope John Paul II, in November 3, 1997, only eight years ago, said at the Vatican conference on the Roots of anti-Judaism in Christian Circles:

 “… wrong and unjust interpretations of the New Testament relating to the Jewish people and their presumed guilt circulated for too long, engendering sentiments of hostility toward these people.”10

In Pope John Paul II realized that the New Testament was the source of Christian anti-Judaism. The Pope indirectly admitted there was no Christian love towards Jews.  An excerpt from the Vatican document on the Holocaust: follows:

“The fact that the Shoah took place in Europe, that is, in countries of long-standing Christian civilization, raises the question of the relation between the Nazi persecution and the attitudes down the centuries of Christians towards the Jews”.11

During Christmas throughout those years, where was the Christian LOVE? But wait; perhaps those were NOT true Christians. And perhaps 60 years ago out of 2,000 year history doesn’t mean “NOW.”

So, let’s bring this ‘“we love Jews now” into present time. In 2004, I answered a Protestant pastor in our local newspaper, who claimed Christianity is indeed LOVE. I had to answer him, and in his reply to me, he said he did “love” the Jewish people, but didn’t love Judaism. This is the logic of the Christian mind.

I guess the Presbyterian, the Episcopal, and the Anglican churches all “love” the Jewish people, but hate Israel enough to weaken it economically when they pushed their congregations for divestments from the Jewish state.

In July 2005, by an overwhelming vote 431 to 62 of its general assembly, the three-million strong USA Presbyterian Church voted to divest from Israel. And after a visit to Israel, the 29 Anglican Church leaders, which in the U.S. includes the Episcopal Church, advocating this same punitive move ― which amounts to removing capital from Israel.  The issue came up in September 2004, when they again voted economically divert business interests in Israel.

And on a more personal note, just last year ― NOW, not 60 years ago ― Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, said:

"What concerns us is that many of the gains we had seen in building a more tolerant and accepting America seem not to have taken hold as firmly as we had hoped.  While there are many factors at play, the findings suggest that anti-Semitic beliefs endure and resonate with a substantial segment of the population, nearly 35 million people." 12

Ho, ho, ho, and a merry Christmas to all you say to the public; all the while saying in private “yes, we love the Jews, but hate Judaism.”

 

Footnotes:

1.  World Jewish Congress Report, Fall 2005, Holocaust Commemoration,  [ http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/wjcreport/05fall/hc_p14.html ]

 

2.  2.  The Ustaše (often spelled Ustashe in English; singular Ustaša or Ustasha) was a Croatian far-right organization put in charge of the Independent State of Croatia by the Axis Powers in 1941. They pursued Nazi/fascist policies and were subsequently expelled by the communist Yugoslav partisans and the Red Army in 1945. At the time of their founding in 1929, the Ustaše were nationalist political organizations that committed terrorist acts. When they came to power in WWII, they also had military formations (Ustasha Army/Ustaška Vojnica) that later numbered some 76,000 strong at their peak in 1944 [ http://ustase.ask.dyndns.dk/ ]

3.  According to the CIA World Fact Book, 2005 version, the religions of the people of Croatia are: Roman Catholic 87.8%, Orthodox 4.4% other Christian 0.4%.

4.  Poland church asks pardon for history of anti-Semitism, Associated Press, August 27, 2000,

WARSAW, Poland ─ The leaders of Poland's Roman Catholic Church have asked forgiveness for its toleration of anti-Semitism … in a letter of joint apologies for failings in its 2,000-year history.

The bishops approved the letter late Friday at a special Jubilee Year session at the nation's holiest shrine in the southern city of Czestochowa, with the contents published by Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper yesterday.

Parish priests across Poland are expected to read the letter during Sunday Masses. Some 95 percent in this nation of 39 million call themselves Catholic. The bishops said they clearly see the tragedy of the Nazi Holocaust in Poland, which the Germans occupied during World War II ― though the horror was not limited to that country.

5.  Polish Catholics Apologize for Anti-Semitism, Los Angeles Times, August 27, 2000, Part A, p. 8

6.  Words: Phillips Brooks, 1868. Words: Phillips Brooks, 1868. Sheet Music by A. F. M. Custance from Rev. Charles Lewis Hutchins

7.  Refugees, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. [ http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005139 ]

May 14, 1939 GERMAN LINER ST. LOUIS (Germany-Cuba-USA):  Set sail from Hamburg with 930 Jewish refugees with American quota permits and special permission to stay temporarily in Cuba. Cuban President Frederico Bru declared all but 30 of the permits worthless due to new regulations. Despite exhaustive efforts by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the depositing of half a million dollars in a Havana account, President Bru refused to budge. The U.S. also refused to take in any refugees and sent Coast Guard boats to prevent passengers from jumping overboard. After all efforts failed, The St. Louis was forced to return to Europe. The German Press gloated: "We say we don't want Jews while the democracies claim they are willing to receive them." A Gallup poll reported that 83 percent of Americans opposed the admission of a larger number of Jewish refugees. [http://www.jewishhistory.org.il/1930.htm ]

8.  Refugees, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. [ http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005139 ]

1939 May 15, RAVENSBRUECK (Germany): A women's concentration camp was opened near Mecklenburg. The camp originally took in political prisoners and Gypsies and eventually resistance fighters and Jews. Many of the prisoners were used for "medical" experiments. The camp was active until April 1944 when the Red Cross negotiated the release of the survivors (see April 1944). Of the 132,000 women who were sent to Ravensbrueck 92,000 died.

1939 May 17, WHITE PAPER (England): Pressured by Arab Nationalists and landowners and concerned with preserving the British Empire, England decided to favor the Arabs. They issued a declaration limiting Jewish immigration to fifteen thousand per year for the next five years, thus ensuring a permanent Jewish minority. This sealed off the final escape route for European Jewry, resulting in illegal immigration and terrorist action against the British. The document was also known as the MacDonald White Paper, named for the Colonial Secretary. There were 6 white papers regarding the British Mandate issued between 1922 and 1939. Each of these policy position papers took its name from the person responsible for its issue. [http://www.jewishhistory.org.il/1930.htm ]

9.  Eli Birnbaum, The History of the Jewish People, [http://www.jewishhistory.org.il/ ]

10.  Delivered in the final statement of symposium on the religious roots of anti-Judaism in Christianity. Speaking in Polish to pilgrims in St Peter's Square on All Souls Day, when the church commemorates the dead, the 77-year-old Pontiff recalled those who died "in Auschwitz and other concentration camps."

11. Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, President of the Holy See's Commission For Religious Relations With the Jews, March 16, 1998

[ http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_16031998_shoah_en.html ]

12.  ADL Press Release, April 4, 2005, [ http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASUS_12/4680_12.htm ]

 

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