Abstract
The received wisdom on religious responses to Kristallnacht leaves an impression of lackadaisical interest or outright complicity in the Nazi machinery that ratcheted up a program of mass genocide.1 This is perhaps no more evident than on the question of refusing assistance to the swarms of refugees flooding out of European countries between 1933 and 1945. Given the outcomes of this period, when so many suffered and perished, it seems altogether natural to judge churches or governments as acting in far too passive a manner in the face of the Nazi aggression. Recognition of the lack of assistance provided to those who wished to escape, and to whom it became a matter of life or death, can often lead to the conclusion that refugees did not count. The callousness evinced by institutions like religious bodies or governments—which ordinarily enjoy moral cover—is, in view of the subsequent tragedy, blameworthy.
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Notes
A survey of the historiography on this point is available in Frank Brecher, “David Wyman and the Historiography of America’s Response to the Holocaust: Counter-Considerations,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 5:4 (1990): 423–446.
Haim Genizi, “Christian Charity: The Unitarian Service Committee’s Relief Activities on Behalf of Refugees from Nazism, 1940–1945,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 2:2 (1987): 261–278.
Haim Genizi, American Apathy: The Plight of the Christian Refugees from Nazism (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1983), 141
Ibid., 146. This charge of antisemitism within the staff of the Bureau is echoed by Gershon Greenberg, who cites Genizi approvingly, in his “American Catholics During the Holocaust,” available online at http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=395083, accessed August 9, 2008. Oddly, in a later book, Genizi switches tack even further and, lapsing into hyperbole, claims that when it came to non-Aryans, “no Christian relief organization took care of them.” Cf. Haim Genizi, America’s Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945–1952 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), 2.
There are two unpublished dissertations on the NCWC and refugees, though these works touch on the subject only briefly. Cf., George V. Murry, Welcoming the Stranger: The American Catholic Church and Refugee Newcomers, 1936–1980 (Ph.D. diss., Washington, D.C.: George Washington University, 1995)
Earl Boyea, The National Catholic Welfare Conference: An Experience of Episcopal Leadership, 1935–1945 (Ph.D. diss., Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1987).
George N. Shuster, “The Conflict Among Catholics,” American Scholar 10 (Winter 1940–1941): 5–16.
On non-Aryans, see especially James Tent, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003)
Ursula Bütner and Martin Greschat, Die verlassenen Kinder der Kirche: Der Umgang mit Christen jüdischer Herkunft im “Dritten Reich” (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1998)
Aleksander-Sasa Vuletić, Christen jüdischer Herkunft im Dritten Reich: Verfolgung und organisierte Selbsthilfe, 1933–1939 (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1999)
Jeremy Noakes, “Nazi Policy towards German-Jewish ‘Mischlinge’ 1933–1945,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 34 (1989): 291–354
David Cesarini and Sarah Kavanaugh, Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies (New York: Routledge, 2004), 239–311.
David Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938–1941 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1968), xiv.
Cf. Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
Uwe D. Adam, “An Overall Plan for Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Third Reich,” Yad Vashem Studies 11 (1976): 33–55
Jacob Boas, “The Shrinking World of German Jewry, 1933–1938,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 31 (1986): 241–266
Abraham Margaliot, “The Reaction of the Jewish Public in Germany to the Nuremberg Laws,” Yad Vashem Studies 12 (1977): 75–107.
While this is not the place to enter into the question of the German Bildung, or cultivation, of authentic human personhood, the philosophical capitulation of the German intelligentsia to the National Socialist State undoubtedly influenced and mutually reinforced the wider cultural rejection of Jews and their kin within German society. See further, Jan Olof Bengtsson, The Worldview of Personalism: Origins and Early Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Perhaps as testament to their importance, the tenets encompassed by the natural law were rehabilitated in the aftermath of the Second World War, particularly in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. Cf. Michael S. Bryant, “Prosecuting the Cheerful Murderer: Natural Law and National Socialist Crimes in West German Courts, 1945–1950,” Human Rights Review 5:4 (2004): 86–103.
Mary Alice Gallin, German Resistence to Hitler: Ethical and Religious Factors (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1961).
Cf. Diemut Majer, “Non-Germans” Under the Third Reich: The Nazi Judicial and Administrative System in Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe with Special Regard to Occupied Poland, 1939–1945, trans. Peter Thomas Hill, Edward Vance Humphrey, and Brian Levin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 36–37.
Incredibly, there were non-Aryan Christians of Jewish descent who happily and actively sought association precisely on account of their loyalties to the National Socialist State. Cf. Werner Cohn, “Bearers of a Common Fate? The ‘Non-Aryan Christian Fate-Comrades’ of the Paulus Bund, 1933–1939,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 33 (1988): 327–366.
Waldemar Gurian, Hitler and the Christians, trans. E. F. Peeler (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1935), 47.
Indeed, the work of Gordon Zahn and Donald Dietrich shows that not only was there loyalty to the Fatherland among Catholic clergy, there were frequent links between expressions that may be seen as jingoistic and overtly antsemitic. See Gordon Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars: A Study in Social Control (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962)
Donald Dietrich, Catholic Citizens in the Third Reich: Psycho-Social Principles and Moral Reasoning (New Brunswick, NJ Transaction Publishers, 1988).
Kevin P. Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 127
The situation of German emigration has been comprehensively described by Sir John Hope Simpson, who helped the world understand the tremendous difficulties faced by German émigrés in a report issued initially in 1938 and supplemented over the next few years. John Hope Simpson, The Refugee Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939).
Dorothy Thompson’s Refugees: Anarchy or Organization (New York: Random House, 1938)
Consider the Jews of the Sudetenland. In 1930 their numbers were around 25,000, but in 1938 there were 28,000. But a precipitous decline ensued, so that by November 1938, 12,000 had left. On this transformation, see especially Jörg Osterloh, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung im Reichsgau Sudetenland 1938–1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006).
John P. Fox, review of The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy Toward German Jews 1933–1939 by Karl A. Schleunes, and La Diplomatie du IIIe Reich et les Juifs (1933–1939) by Eliahu Ben Elissar in International Affairs 47:4 (October 1971): 771–773.
On the estimated numbers of non-Aryans in Germany prior to November 1938, cf. Jeremy Noakes, “Nazi Policy towards German-Jewish ‘Mischlinge’ 1933–1945,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 34 (1989): 291–354.
Helmreich, The German Churches Under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue (Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1979), 522
Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 288
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961), 267.
William D. Rubenstein, The Myth of Rescue: Why Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis (New York: Routlege, 1997)
Cf. Patrick J. Hayes, “J. Elliot Ross and the National Conference of Jews and Christians: A Catholic Contribution to Tolerance in America,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 37:3/4 (2000): 321–332
Cf. s.v., “Indifferentism,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Gale Press, 2003), VII: 421–422; N. Molinski, “Indifferentism,” in Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Karl Rahner et al. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), III: 120–121.
The theological analysis and ensuing debate over intercredal cooperation was carried on most prominently in a series of essays beginning in the 1940s. Cf. John LaFarge, “Some Questions as to Interdenominational Cooperation,” Theological Studies 3:3 (1942), 315–332
John Courtney Murray, “Current Theology: Christian Co-operation,” Theological Studies 3:3 (1942): 413–431
Wilfrid Parsons, “Intercredal Co-operation in the Papal Documents,” Theological Studies 4:2 (1943): 159–182
Francis M. Connell, “Catholics and ‘Interfaith’ Groups,” American Ecclesiastical Review 105 (1941): 336–353.
Jacques Maritain, “The Achievement of Co-operation among Men of Different Creeds,” Journal of Religion 21 (1941): 332–364
T. Lincoln Bouscaren, “Co-operation with Non-Catholics: Canonical Legislation,” Theological Studies 3:4 (1942): 475–512.
Cf., Eric D’Arcy, “The Logic and Meaning of the Dictum: ‘Error Has No Rights,’” in Thomistica Morum Principia: Communicationes v. Congressus Thomistici Internationalis, v. 3, ed. Charles Boyer (Rome: Catholic Book Agency, 1960), 287–297.
This is not the place to go into the particulars of canon law on these subjects, but for a contemporary study on them in light of the Pio-Benedictine Code of 1917, cf. Francis J. Schenck, The Matrimonial Impediments of Mixed Religion and Disparity of Cult, Canon Law Studies 51 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1929).
Cf. Ready to L. J. Kelly, April 22, 1938, in Archives of Catholic University, NCWC/USCCB, Office of the General Secretary, Box 83:7 (hereafter ACUA, NCWC/USCCB, OGS). On Evian, cf. Proceedings of the Intergovernmental Committee, Evian, July 6th to 15th, 1938, Verbatim Record of the Plenary Meetings of the Committee, n.p., 1938. Cf., also, S. Adler-Rudel, “The Evian Conference on the Refugee Question,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 13 (1968): 235–276
Saul S. Friedman, No Haven for the Oppressed (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1973)
McDonald’s legacy is only now becoming available to a wider public and his humanitarian work is given further contextualization through publication of the first volume of his diaries and papers. Cf. Richard Breitman, Barbara McDonald Stewart, and Severin Hochberg, eds. Advocate for the Doomed: The Diaries and Papers of James McDonald, 1932–1935 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).
Cf. Donald Warren, Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, the Father of Hate Radio (New York: Free Press, 1996), 109–110.
Frank Coppa, “Pope Pius XI’s ‘Encyclical’ Humani Generis Unitas Against Racism and Anti-Semitism and the’ silence’ of Pope Pius XII,” Journal of Church and State 40:4 (1998): 775–795.
A characterization made by Robert A. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent: American Entry into World War II (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), 55
David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 419.
Samuel Untermyer, “No Pasaran” (They Shall Not Pass): Religion Answers the Nazi Challenge: Address of Samuel Untermyer Before the Temple and Synagogue Brotherhoods at Baltimore, Md., December 19, 1937 (New York: 1938), 1–32. Untermyer was, until 1938, head of the “Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights.” Cf. Richard Hawkins, “‘Hitler’s Bittersweet Foe’: Samuel Untermyer and the Boycott of Nazi Germany, 1933–1938,” American Jewish History 93:1 (March 2007): 21–50.
Cf., Jim Forest, Love is the Measure: A Biography of Dorothy Day (rev. ed. Maryknoll: Orbis Press, 2002), 73–74.
These policies have been examined in considerable detail. See, for example, Robert L. Beir, Roosevelt and the Holocaust: A Rooseveltian Examines the Policies and Remembers the Times (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2006)
Vicki Caron, Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933–1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999)
Maurice Davie, Refugees in America (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947)
Henry L. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938–1945 (New York: Holocaust Library, 1980)
Walter Laquer, Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, published by University Press of New England, 2001)
Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews, 1933–1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees, and the Holocaust (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Michael Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985)
Robert Rosen, Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006)
A. J. Sherman, Island Refuge: Britain and Refugees from the Third Reich, 1933–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).
On Evian, one might first consult the official record: Proceedings of the Intergovernmental Committee, Evian, July 6th to 15th, 1938, Verbatim Record of the Plenary Meetings of the Committee, n.p., 1938. Cf., also, S. Adler-Rudel, “The Evian Conference on the Refugee Question,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 13 (1968): 235–276
Saul S. Friedman, No Haven for the Oppressed (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1973)
Pierre Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War According to the Archives of the Vatican, trans. Lawrence J. Johnson (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1999), 141.
According to Spicer, “the real heart of the Hilfswerk was Dr. Margarete Sommer, a devout Catholic laywoman who courageously risked her life to run the Hilfswerk throughout the Nazi years. She not only endeavored to make sure that the Hilfswerk met the material and spiritual needs of those it assisted, but also built up a variety of contacts through which she gained extensive knowledge about the persecution, ghettoization, and murder of European Jews. At great personal danger, Sommer dauntlessly passed this information on to Preysing and his fellow bishops.” Cf. Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich, 132. Spicer then notes that it is “significant” that von Preysing established the Hilfswerk prior to Reichkristallnacht (November 9–10, 1938), but he is vague about why. In my view, it is significant precisely because the situation was getting utterly desperate and it was hoped that such a move might prevent future problems. It anticipated making links to overseas aid agencies like the NCWC. On the Hilfswerk’s efforts, Wolfgang Knauft, “Einsatz für verfolgte Juden, 1938–1945: Das Hilfswerk beim Bischöflichen Ordinariat Berlin,” Stimmen der Zeit 206 (1988): 591–603
Michael Phayer, Protestant and Catholic Women in Nazi Germany (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 204
Lutz-Eugen Reutter, Die Hilfstätigkeit katholischer Organisationen und kirchlicher Stellen fur die im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland Verfolgten (Hamburg: Universität Hamburg, 1969)
Lutz-Eugen Reutter, Katholische Kirche als Fluchthelfer im Dritten Reich: Die Betreuung von Auswanderern durch den St. Raphaels-Verein (Recklinghausen-Hamburg: Paulus, 1971).
Cf. von Dirksen’s comment in Documents on German Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1949)
I pass over an enormous literature on intercontinental antisemitism, though one may consult with profit Doris Bergen, “Catholics, Protestants, and Christian Antisemitism in Nazi Germany,” Central European History 27:3 (September 1994): 329–348.
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Hayes, P.J. (2009). American Catholics Respond to Kristallnacht: Ncwc Refugee Policy and the Plight of Non-Aryans. In: Mazzenga, M. (eds) American Religious Responses to Kristallnacht. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623309_6
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