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  In the very early stages of the Christian faith, many Jews regarded

  Christians as members of a Jewish sect. The first Christians, after all,

  still observed the Jewish law. They had merely added a few nonessential practices, such as baptism, to their religious life. But their view was changed abruptly when Christ was elevated to Godhood. The Jews

  have only one God. This God is indivisible. He is a jealous God and

  admits of no other gods. He is not Christ, and Christ is not He. Christianity and Judaism have since been irreconcilable. An acceptance of Christianity has since signified an abandonment of Judaism.

  In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, Jews did not abandon Judaism

  lightly. With patience and persistence the Church attempted to convert

  obstinate Jewry, and for twelve hundred years the theological argument was fought without interruption. The Jews were not convinced.

  Gradually the Church began to back its words with force. The Papacy

  did not permit pressure to be put on individual Jews; Rome prohibited

  forceful conversions.2 3 4 However, the clergy did use pressure on the

  whole. Step by step, but with ever widening effect, the Church adopted

  “defensive” measures against its passive victims. Christians were “protected” from the “harmful” consequences of intercourse with Jews by rigid laws against intermarriage, by prohibitions of discussions about

  religious issues, by laws against domicile in common abodes. The

  Church “protected” its Christians from the “harmful” Jewish teachings

  by burning the Talmud and by barring Jews from public office.’

  These

  measures

  were

  precedent-making

  destructive

  activities.

  How little success the Church had in accomplishing its aim is revealed

  by the treatment of the few Jews who succumbed to the Christian

  religion. The clergy was not sure of its success—hence the widespread

  practice, in the Middle Ages, of identifying proselytes as former Jews;2

  hence the inquisition of new Christians suspected of heresy;’ hence the

  issuance

  in

  Spain

  of

  certificates

  of

  "purity”

  (limpieza).

  signifying

  purely Christian ancestry, and the specification of "half-new Chris-

  2. This prohibition had one weakness: once converted, even though forcibly, a tew

  was forbidden to return to his faith. Guido Kisch, The Jews in Medieval Germany

  (Chicago, 1949), pp. 201-2.

  3. Actually, non-Jews who wished to become Jews faced formidable obstacles. See

  Louis Finkelstein, “The Jewish Religion: Its Beliefs and Practices," in Louis Finkelstein,

  ed.. The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion (New York. 1949). vol. 2, p. 1376.

  4. Kisch, Jews in Medieval Germany, p. 315.

  6

  PRECEDENTS

  tians,” “quarter-new Christians," “one-eighth-new Christians,” and so

  on.‘

  The failure of conversion had far-reaching consequences. The unsuccessful Church began to look on the Jews as a special group of people, different from Christians, deaf to Christianity, and dangerous

  to the Christian faith. In 1542 Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, wrote the following lines:

  And if there were a spark of common sense and understanding in them,

  they would truly have to think like this: O my Cod, it does not stand and

  go well with us; our misery is too great, too long, too hard; Cod has

  forgotten us, etc. I am no Jew, but 1 do not like to think in earnest about

  such brutal wrath of God against this people, for I am terrified at the

  thought that cuts through my body and soul: What is going to happen with

  the eternal wrath in hell against all false Christians and unbelievers?6 7 8

  In short, if he were a Jew, he would have accepted Christianity long

  ago.

  A people cannot suffer for fifteen hundred years and still think of

  itself as the chosen people. But this people was blind. It had been

  stricken by the wrath of God. He had struck them “with frenzy, blindness, and raging heart, with the eternal fire, of which the Prophets say: The wrath of God will hurl itself outward like a fire that no one can

  smother.’’*

  The Lutheran manuscript was published at a time of increasing

  hatred for the Jew. Too much had been invested in twelve hundred

  years of conversion policy. Too little had been gained. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, the Jews of England, France, Germany, Spain, Bohemia, and Italy were presented with ultimatums that gave

  them no choice but one: conversion or expulsion.

  6. Cecil Roth, “Marranos and Racial Anti-Semitism—A Study in Parallels,” Jewish

  Social Studies 2 (1940): 239-48. New Christian doctors were accused of killing patients, a

  Toledo tribunal handed down a decision in 1449 to the effect that new Christians were

  ineligible for public office, and In 1604 new Christians were barred from the University of

  Coimbra (ibid.). Anyone who was a descendant of Jews or Moors was also ineligible to

  serve in the “Militia of Christ,” Torquemada's army, which tortured and burned ''heretics.” Franz Helbing, Die Tortur—Gesckichte der Folter im Kriminaiverfahren alter Vdlker und Zeiten (Berlin, 1902), p. 118.

  7. Martin Luther, Von den Jueden und Jren Luegen (Wittenberg, 1543), p. Aiii.

  Page numbers in the original edition of Luther's book are placed on the bottom of every

  second or fourth page, as follows: A, Aii. Aiii, B, Bii, BUI, to Z, Zii, Ziii, starting over

  with a, aii, aiii.

  8. Luther, Von den Jueden. p. diii. The reference to frenzy is an inversion. Frenzy

  Is one of the punishments for deserting the one and only God.

  PRECEDENTS

  Expulsion is the second anti-Jewish policy in history. In its origin, this

  policy presented itself only as an alternative—moreover, as an alternative

  that was left to the Jews. But long after the separation of church and state,

  long after the state had ceased to carry out church policy, expulsion and

  exclusion remained the goal of anti-Jewish activity.

  The anti-Semites of the nineteenth century, who divorced themselves from religious aims, espoused the emigration of the Jews. The anti-Semites hated the Jews with a feeling of righteousness and reason,

  as

  though

  they

  had

  acquired

  the

  antagonism

  of

  the

  church

  like

  speculators

  buying

  the

  rights

  of

  a bankrupt

  corporation. With

  this

  hatred, the post-ecclesiastic enemies of Jewry also took the idea that

  the Jews could not be changed, that they could not be converted, that

  they could not be assimilated, that they were a finished product, inflexible in their ways, set in their notions, fixed in their beliefs.

  The expulsion and exclusion policy was adopted by the Nazis and

  remained the goal of all anti-Jewish activity until 1941. That year marks

  a turning point in anti-Jewish history. In 1941 the Nazis found themselves in the midst of a total war. Several million Jews were incarcerated in ghettos. Emigration was impossible. A last-minute project to ship the Jews to the African island of Madagascar had fallen through.

  The “Jewish prob
lem” had to be “solved” in some other way. At this

  crucial time, the idea of a “territorial solution” emerged in Nazi minds.

  The “territorial solution,” or “the final solution of the Jewish question

  in Europe,” as it became known, envisaged the death of European

  Jewry. The European Jews were to be killed. This was the third anti-

  Jewish policy in history.

  To summarize: Since the fourth century after Christ there have

  been

  three

  anti-Jewish

  policies:

  conversion,

  expulsion,

  and

  annihilation. The second appeared as an alternative to the first, and the third

  emerged as an alternative to the second.

  The destruction of the European Jews between 1933 and 1945 appears

  to us now as an unprecedented event in history. Indeed, in its dimensions and total configuration, nothing like it had ever happened before.

  As a result of an organized undertaking, five million people were killed

  in the short space of a few years. The operation was over before

  anyone could grasp its enormity, let alone its implications for the future.

  Yet, if we analyze this singularly massive upheaval, we discover

  that most of what happened in those twelve years had already happened before. The Nazi destruction process did not come out of a void;

  PRECEDENTS

  it was the culmination of a cyclical trend.’ We have observed the trend

  in the three successive goals of anti-Jewish administrators. The missionaries of Christianity had said in effect: You have no right to live among us as Jews. The secular rulers who followed had proclaimed:

  You have no right to live among us. The German Nazis at last decreed:

  You have no right to live.

  These progressively more drastic goals brought in their wake a

  slow and steady growth of anti-Jewish action and anti-Jewish thinking.

  The process began with the attempt to drive the Jews into Christianity.

  The development was continued in order to force the victims into exile.

  It was finished when the Jews were driven to their deaths. The German

  Nazis, then, did not discard the past; they built upon it. They did not

  begin a development; they completed it. In the deep recesses of anti-

  Jewish history we shall find many of the administrative and psychological tools with which the Nazis implemented their destruction process.

  In the hollows of the past we shall also discover the roots of the

  characteristic Jewish response to an outside attack.

  The significance of the historical precedents will most easily be

  understood in the administrative sphere. The destruction of the Jews

  was an administrative process, and the annihilation of Jewry required

  the

  implementation

  of

  systematic

  administrative

  measures

  in

  successive steps. There are not many ways in which a modem society can, in

  short order, kill a large number of people living in its midst. This is an

  efficiency problem of the greatest dimensions, one which poses uncounted difficulties and innumerable obstacles. Yet, in reviewing the documentary record of the destruction of the Jews, one is almost immediately

  impressed

  with

  the

  fact

  that

  the

  German

  administration

  knew what it was doing. With an unfailing sense of direction and with

  an

  uncanny

  pathfinding

  ability,

  the

  German

  bureaucracy

  found

  the

  shortest road to the final goal.

  We know, of course, that the very nature of a task determines the

  form of its fulfillment. Where there is the will, there is also the way, and if

  the will is only strong enough, the way will be found. But what if there is

  no time to experiment? What if the task must be solved quickly and

  efficiently? A rat in a maze that has only one path to the goal learns to

  choose that path after many trials. Bureaucrats, too, are sometimes

  caught in a maze, but they cannot afford a trial run. There may be no time 9

  9.

  A regular trend is unbroken (for instance, an increase of population); a cyclical

  trend is observed in some of the recurring phenomena. We may speak, for example, of a

  set of wars that become progressively more destructive, depressions that decline in

  severity, etc.

  PRECEDENTS

  for hesitations and stoppages. This is why past performance is so important; this is why past experience is so essential. Necessity is said to be the mother of invention, but if precedents have already been formed, if a

  guide has already been constructed, invention is no longer a necessity.

  The German bureaucracy could draw upon such precedents and follow

  such a guide, for the German bureaucrats could dip into a vast reservoir

  of administrative experience, a reservoir that church and state had filled

  in fifteen hundred years of destructive activity.

  In the course of its attempt to convert the Jews, the Catholic

  Church had taken many measures against the Jewish population. These

  measures

  were designed to

  “protect”

  the Christian community from

  Jewish teachings and, not incidentally, to weaken the Jews in their

  “obstinacy.” It is characteristic that as soon as Christianity became the

  state religion of Rome, in the fourth century a.d., Jewish equality of

  citizenship was ended. “The Church and the Christian state, concilium

  decisions and imperial laws, henceforth worked hand in hand to persecute the Jews.”1“ Table 1-1 compares the basic anti-Jewish measures of the Catholic Church and the modern counterparts enacted by the

  Nazi regime."

  No summation of the canonical law can be as revealing as a description of the Rome ghetto, maintained by the Papal State until the occupation of the city by the Royal Italian Army in 1870. A German

  journalist who visited the ghetto in its closing days published such a

  description in the Neue Freie Presse.10 11 12 The ghetto consisted of a few

  damp, dark, and dirty streets, into which 4,700 human creatures had

  been packed tightly (eingepfercht).

  To rent any house or business establishment outside of the ghetto

  boundaries, the Jews needed the permission of the Cardinal Vicar.

  Acquisition of real estate outside the ghetto was prohibited. Trade in

  industrial

  products

  or

  books

  was

  prohibited.

  Higher

  schooling

  was

  prohibited. The professions of lawyer, druggist, notary, painter, and

  architect were prohibited. A Jew could be a doctor, provided that he

  confined his practice to Jewish patients. No Jew could hold office.

  Jews were required to pay taxes like everyone else and, in addition, the

  following: (1) a yearly stipend for the upkeep of the Catholic officials

  who supervised the Ghetto Finance Administration and the Jewish

  10. Stobbe, Die Juden in Deutschland, p. 2.

  11. The list of Church measures is taken in its entirety from J. E. Scherer, Die

  Rechtsverhältnisse der Juden in den deutsch-österreichischen
Ländern (Leipzig, 1901),

  pp. 39-49. Only the first date of each measure is listed in Table 1-1.

  12. Carl Eduard Bauemschmid in Neue Freie Presse. May 17, 1870. Reprinted in

  Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums (Leipzig), July 19, 1870, pp. 580-82.

  10

  T A B L E 1 - 1

  CANONICAL AND NAZI ANTI-JEWISH MEASURES

  Canonical Law

  Nazi Measure

  Prohibition of intermarriage and of

  Law for the Protection of German

  sexual intercourse between Chris­

  Blood and Honor, September 15,

  tians and Jews, Synod of Elvira,

  1935 (RGB I I, 1146.)

  306

  Jews and Christians not permitted to

  Jews

  barred

  from

  dining

  cars

  eat together. Synod of Elvira, 306

  (Transport

  Minister

  to

  Interior

  Minister, December 30,

  1939,

  Document NG-3995.)

  Jews not allowed to hold public

  Law for the Re-establishment of the

  office, Synod of Clermont, 535

  Professional Civil Service, April 7,

  1933 (RGB1 I, 175.)

  Jews not allowed to employ Christian

  Law for the Protection of German

  servants

  or

  possess

  Christian

  Blood and Honor, September 15,

  slaves, 3d Synod of Orléans, 538

  1935 (RGB11, 1146.)

  Jews not permitted to show them­

  Decree authorizing local authorities

  selves in the streets during Passion

  to bar Jews from the streets on cer­

  Week, 3d Synod of Orléans, 538

  tain days (i.e., Na2i holidays), December 3, 1938 (RGBI I, 1676.)

  Burning of the Talmud and other

  Book burnings in Nazi Germany

  books, 12th Synod of Toledo, 681

  Christians not permitted to patronize

  Decree of July 25, 1938 (RGBI I,

  Jewish doctors, Trulanic Synod,

  969.)

  692

  Christians not permitted to live in

  Directive by Goring providing for

  Jewish homes, Synod of Narbonne,

  concentration of Jews in houses,

  1050

  December 28, 1938 (Bormann to

  Rosenberg, January 17, 1939, PS-

  69.)

  Jews obliged to pay taxes for support

  The “Sozialausgleichsabgabe” which

  of the Church to the same extent as

  provided that Jews pay a special in­

  Christians, Synod of Oerona, 1078