Martyrdom in Judaism

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Martyrdom in Judaism is one of the main examples of Jews doing a kiddush Hashem, a Hebrew term which means "sanctification of [the] name". An example of this is public self-sacrifice in accordance with Jewish practice and identity, with the possibility of being killed for no other reason than being Jewish. There are specific conditions in Jewish law that deal with the details of self-sacrifice, be it willing or unwilling.

The opposite or converse of kiddush Hashem is chillul Hashem ("Desecration [of] God's Name" in Hebrew) and Jews are obligated to avoid it according to Halakha (Jewish religious law). There are instances, such as when they are faced with forced conversion to another religion, when Jews should choose martyrdom and sacrifice their lives rather than commit a chillul Hashem which desecrates the honor of God. Martyrdom in Judaism is thus driven by both the desire to Sanctify God's Name concurrently and the wish to avoid the Desecration of God's Name.

In Hebrew a martyr is known as a kaddosh which means "[a] holy [one]", and martyrs are known as kedoshim meaning "holy [ones]". Thus the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust are known as the Kedoshim.

Jewish history is replete with many episodes in which Jews who lived in different times and places chose to become individual and mass martyrs.

In the Hebrew Bible

Judaism, and the Abrahamic religions such as Christianity and Islam, all draw their notions of martyrdom from the Jews' Hebrew Bible as put forth in the Torah. Christian martyrs and Islamic martyrs, known as Shahids, both draw from the original Judaic sources for the concept or Mitzvah or commandment that calls upon one to unconditionally sacrifice one's life for one's God and religion if called upon and if circumstances so dictate, not to betray one's God, religion and beliefs.

Binding of Isaac

An angel prevents the sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham and Isaac, Rembrandt, 1634

The events described in the Bible known as the Binding of Isaac is the primal and archetypal example of martyrdom in the Torah. Abraham is called upon to fulfill God's commandment to slaughter his son Isaac, and Isaac to willingly submit to this and offer his life up as a korban or "sacrifice" and hence, if need be, dying as a martyr because God had so commanded it.

At the last minute God instructs Abraham to stop and to slaughter and offer up a ram instead. This was the worst of the ten tests of Abraham and the fact that Isaac was willing to give up his own life serves as a role model for all subsequent people who are called upon to sacrifice their lives for their God, religion and beliefs.

Martyrs during war

There are times that the Hebrew Bible records that the Children of Israel, also known as the Israelites, the ancestors of the Jews are instructed to wage war against their enemies in the Bible sometimes as instructed by God or their leaders or both. Examples are wars against Amalek and the Seven Nations. Such wars are known as Milkhemet Mitzvah ("war by commandment" in Hebrew, or "Holy War") and any Israelite or Jew who is killed in the course of fighting for the cause is automatically regarded as having died al Kiddush Hashem ("for Sanctifying God's Name") and is hence a Jewish martyr.

Some Biblical examples of martyrs

In Kabbalah Nadab and Abihu as described in the Book of Leviticus are consumed by fire and are sanctified by God and are examples of what God wants out of the death of martyrs. Samson in the Book of Judges is regarded as a martyr because he ultimately sacrificed his life to sanctify God's Name. In the Book of Samuel both King Saul and his sons especially Jonathan are regarded as martyrs because they sacrificed their own lives rather than being captured and humiliated by the Philistines. Zechariah ben Jehoiada a righteous priest who spoke up for justice was stoned to death on the orders of an evil king of Judah, as described in the Book of Chronicles. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego known in the Book of Daniel as Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were thrown into a fiery furnace for disobeying the Babylonian king who had commanded his subjects to worship an idol. By a miracle they survived but are nevertheless treated as heroes who risked martyrdom.

Jewish-Babylonian War

The Jewish-Babylonian War lasted from 601 to 586 BCE. It included many battles and two sieges of Jerusalem, the Siege of Jerusalem (597 BCE) and the Siege of Jerusalem (587 BCE). The final siege resulted in the complete destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonian Empire.

Since these events took place so long ago the main records are Biblical as well as some information gleaned from archaeology. Certainly many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Jews were killed and martyred during this period in history.

An indication of how seriously Jews and Judaism regard the scope, tragedy and impact of the destruction of the First Temple and the catastrophic impact on their land, the Kingdom of Judah, and their subsequent Babylonian Exile. Many Jewish fast days and mourning periods were instituted and observed since ancient times, all of which also commemorate the martyrdom of Jews in those times:

• Tenth of Tevet
• Seventeenth of Tamuz
• The Three Weeks
• The Nine Days
• Ninth of Av
• Fast of Gedalia

Maccabean Revolt and Book of Maccabees

1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees recount numerous martyrdoms suffered by Jews resisting Hellenization, being executed for such crimes as observing the Sabbath, circumcising their children or refusing to eat pork or meat sacrificed to foreign gods.

During the Maccabean Revolt from 167 to 160 BCE, during at least seven wars between the Jews and the Seleucid Greeks, tens of thousands of Jews died in battle or were killed as martyrs, including some of the original Maccabees. Some of the best known Jewish martyrs of this period is the story of the woman with seven sons and Eleazar (2 Maccabees).

The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah commemorates and celebrates the miracle of the triumph of the Jews against the ancient Greeks and of Judaism and Torah over classical Greek culture.

A number of Maccabees died as martyrs. Judah Maccabee, the leader of the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid Greeks was killed in the Battle of Elasa (160 BCE) and together with his men, they died as martyrs. Jonathan Maccabee was captured by a Seleucid king and executed. Eleazar Maccabee was killed in the Battle of Beth Zechariah (162 BCE). Simon Maccabee was assassinated in 135 BCE.

Jewish-Roman Wars and the destruction of the Second Temple

Martyrdom of Jews is a prominent aspect of the three major Jewish-Roman wars fought between the Jews in and out of ancient Judea and the Roman Empire in 66 CE to 136 CE that resulted in between one to two million Jewish casualties who are regarded as Jewish martyrs, such as Lulianos and Paphos.

Among other massacres Jews were massacred during the Alexandrian riots (38) and later during the Jewish revolt against Constantius Gallus (351-352).

During the Roman Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE) alone, according to Josephus, over one millions Jews died.

In Judaism and Jewish liturgy, recounting the killing of the Ten Martyrs, as taught in Midrash Eleh Ezkerah, by the Romans is considered by many a solemn high point of the Yom Kippur prayer service. The most prominent of these martyrs was Rabbi Akiva, the famous Talmudic sage.

Jews and Judaism commemorate the tragedies leading up to and including the destruction of the Second Temple, its catastrophic aftermath, and the martyrdom of so many, on the solemn fast day of Tisha B'Av.

Under the Byzantines

The Jewish revolt against Heraclius (602-628) during the era of the Byzantines resulted in the deaths and martyrdom of thousands of Jews. See the section Jewish revolt against Heraclius: Massacre of the Jews as one example.

Under Christianity

There have been times of great upheaval between Jews and Christians and hence between Judaism and Christianity starting from the inception of Christianity as a religion independent and apart from its Judaic roots. This has resulted in the death and martyrdom of countless Jews and Jewish communities dating from Roman times to the present as outlined in the various sections of this article.

Crusades

The Crusades took place from the 11th to the 17th century during which time tens of thousands of Jews were martyred. Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn (1132-1196) chronicled the fate of Jewish communities in Germany, France and England from 1146 to 1196.

Examples of this are:

Germany

Jews burned alive for the alleged host desecration in Deggendorf, Bavaria, in 1338, and in Sternberg, Mecklenburg, in 1492; a woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)

There are testimonies about these events such as the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle, the Eliezer ben Nathan Chronicle, Mainz Anonymous Chronicle. During the Rhineland massacres (1096) and the Worms massacre (1096) thousands of Jews were martyred notable amongst them was Kalonymus ben Meshullam and his sons (died 1096) and Minna of Worms (died 1096). 

A special Hebrew prayer, Av HaRachamim ("Father [of] Mercy") still recited in Ashkenazi synagogues today was composed commemorating the Jewish martyrs resulting from the First Crusade (1096-1099).

The Rintfleisch massacres (1298) notably Mordechai ben Hillel (1250-1298). Erfurt massacre (1349) notably Alexander Suslin (died 1349).

England

There were massacres of Jews and their subsequent martyrdom in London, where Jacob of Orleans was murdered in 1189, and York, where notable victims were Rabbi Yom Tov of Joigny and Josce of York both of whom died in 1190. The hatred of Jews in England culminated with the Edict of Expulsion of 1290.

France

Mobs of French and German Crusaders led by Peter the Hermit ravaged Jewish communities in Speyer, Worms, and Mainz during the Rhineland massacres of 1096.

Jews in the areas of modern-day France were subject to the Crusades and many suffered martyrdom. Historian Ephraim ben Yaakov (1132-1200) describes Crusaders' massacres of Jews, including the massacre at Blois, where approximately forty Jews were killed following an accusation of ritual murder:

As they were led forth, they were told, 'You can save your lives if you will leave your religion and accept ours.' The Jews refused. They were beaten and tortured to make them accept the Christian religion, but still they refused. Rather, they encouraged each other to remain steadfast and die for the sanctification of God's Name.

Spain and the Inquisition

Jews who refused to convert to Christianity or leave Spain were called heretics would be burned to death on a stake

There were many instances of anti-Jewish violence under both the Muslim and Christian regimes in Spain with the subsequent killing and martyrdom of Jews, such as the. Sacks of Córdoba (1009–13), 1066 Granada massacre and the Massacre of 1391. Some examples of martyred famous Jews are Israel Alnaqua (died 1391) in Toledo and Joseph ibn Shem-Tov (died 1480).

During the Spanish Inquisition, many of those who were executed were Jews who refused to convert to Christianity. The status of those crypto-Jews who had pretended to adopt Christianity in an attempt to avoid persecution is unclear in Jewish Law that forbids Apostasy in Judaism under all circumstances. True adherents of Judaism were expelled from Spain following the Alhambra Decree of 1492 while remaining in Spain would mean death and martyrdom.

Maria Barbara Carillo (1625-1721) was burned at the stake for seeking to return to Judaism.

Blood libels and scapegoating

Jews were falsely accused of anti-Christian or anti-Muslim acts and activities and were often scapegoated and consequently thousands of Jews were killed and martyred over many centuries. Examples are the Brussels massacre (1370), 1910 Shiraz blood libel, Kunmadaras pogrom (1946).

During the Khmelnytsky Uprising

The Khmelnytsky Uprising was known to Jews as Gezeiras Tach VeTat, meaning the "Decree of [years] 408 and 409" (corresponding to 1648 and 1649). Some historians estimate that between 100,000 and 500,000 Jews were slaughtered during the Khmelnytsky Uprising from 1648 to 1658. See the section Khmelnytsky Uprising: Jews for an outline of the discussion about the actual numbers of Jews killed by the Cossacks.

Notable martyrs of this period include Rabbi Yechiel Michel ben Eliezer (died 1648) who is also known as the Martyr of Nemirov. Rabbi Samson ben Pesah Ostropoli (died 1648) was martyred together with 300 of his followers.

Pogroms

Black Death

During the time of the Black Death in the mid-1300s, Jews in Europe were scapegoated and martyred by the thousands. Notable were the Strasbourg massacre and the Basel massacre of 1349 and the Erfurt massacre (1349).

Russian Empire

Photo believed to show the victims, mostly Jewish children, of a 1905 pogrom in Yekaterinoslav (today's Dnipro)

 

Jews with bodies of their comrades killed in Odessa during the Russian revolution of 1905.

The modern notion of Pogroms began mostly in the Russian Empire during the early 19th century, beginning with the Odessa pogroms. Over more than a hundred years, tens of thousands of innocent Jewish civilians, men women and children were massacred by rampaging mobs. Those who were murdered in this barbaric fashion are regarded as Jewish martyrs.

The Pogroms overlap with the beginnings of the Holocaust as well as happening during and after the Holocaust.

The 1991 Crown Heights riot in Brooklyn, New York is regarded as a latter day Pogrom that resulted in the killing of Yankel Rosenbaum and another man who looked like a Hasidic Jew.

The Holocaust

The Holocaust
Part of World War II
From above. 1st row: Mass graves of Bergen-Belsen after his release in April 1945. 2nd row: Jewish prisoners from Hungary newly arrived at Auschwitz in May 1944; left image, chimneys of crematoriums II and III of Birkenau. 3rd row: corpses in April 1945 in the already liberated Nordhausen concentration camp (left). Crematory ovens in Buchenwald with bones of German women opposed to the Nazis, April 1945 (right). 4th and last row: Auschwitz
Location	Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe
Description	Genocide of the European Jews
Date	1939–1945
Attack type	Genocide, ethnic cleansing
Deaths	Around 6 million Jews
Perpetrators	Nazi Germany and its collaborators List of major perpetrators of the Holocaust
Motive	Antisemitism
Trials	Nuremberg trials, Subsequent Nuremberg trials, Trial of Adolf Eichmann, and others

The murdered approximately six million Jews who died during the Holocaust during the period of the Second World War are regarded as martyrs by most Jewish religious scholars. In Hebrew they are referred to as kedoshim ("holy ones") who died al kiddush Hashem ("for [the] sanctification [of] God's name").

Some famous rabbis who chose martyrdom al Kiddush Hashem ("for the sanctification of God's Name") immediately before they were murdered by the Nazis include Avraham Yitzchak Bloch, Elchonon Wasserman, Azriel Rabinowitz, Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Menachem Ziemba, and Ben Zion Halberstam.

The State of Israel has instituted a Holocaust Memorial Day known as Yom HaShoah ("Day [of] the Holocaust") in Hebrew, to memorialize the six million Jewish martyrs murdered by the Nazis and their cohorts. There are various religious observances and liturgy. Other nations have various other Holocaust Memorial Days such as Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust in the United States.

Under Islam

Many Jews have perished and been martyred during the rise, and under the rule, of Islam in various countries such as the destruction of the Banu Qurayza (627 CE) in Saudi Arabia, the 1066 Granada massacre in Spain, during the Mawza Exile (1679-1680 CE) in Yemen, in Allahdad (1839 CE) in Persia, during the Farhud (1941 CE) in Iraq, in the 1945 Anti-Jewish riots in Tripolitania in Libya, the 1948 Anti-Jewish riots in Oujda and Jerada in Morocco. For more examples see Anti-Jewish pogroms by Muslims.

Muslims and the Holocaust

Haj Amin al-Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler (28 November 1941).

 

November 1943 al-Husseini greeting Bosnian Waffen-SS volunteers with a Nazi salute. At right is SS General Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig.

 

During the Second World War, some Muslim leaders such as Amin al-Husseini colluded with the Nazis and hence contributed to the Holocaust and hence to Jewish martyrdom.

Arab-Israeli conflict

There are special Jewish memorial prayers, known as hazkaras in Hebrew, (see El Malei Rachamim), that are recited in synagogues and at special gatherings for the thousands of Jewish Israeli soldiers and civilians who are regarded as martyrs (kedoshim meaning "holy ones" in Hebrew) who have been killed in the course of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Modern Israel has instituted and dedicated a special day known as Yom HaZikaron ("Day [of] the Remembrance") in memory of those Jews killed in the service of building up and defending the state of Israel as well as in memory of those killed in terrorist attacks.

Victims of Antisemitism and Anti-Judaism

Jews who are murdered because of their race or religion (victims of antisemitic or anti-Judaic hate crimes), as in the 2019 Jersey City shooting, the 2019 Poway synagogue shooting, the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the assault against the Chabad house at Nariman House in India (one of the 2008 Mumbai attacks), the 1946 Kielce pogrom, are all regarded as martyrs by most Jewish religious scholars, and they are known as kedoshim ("holy ones") in Hebrew, Jews who have died al kiddush Hashem ("for [the] sanctification [of] God's Name).

Pogroms in the Russian Empire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogroms_in_the_Russian_Empire 

 

Photo believed to show the victims, mostly Jewish children, of a 1905 pogrom in Yekaterinoslav (today's Dnipro)

Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire (Russian: Еврейские погромы в России; Hebrew: הסופות בנגב‎ ha-sufot ba-negev; lit. "the storms in the South") were large-scale, targeted, and repeated anti-Jewish rioting that first began in the 19th century. Pogroms began occurring after the Russian Empire, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories with large Jewish populations from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Ottoman Empire during 1772–1815. These territories were designated "the Pale of Settlement" by the Imperial Russian government, within which Jews were reluctantly permitted to live, and it was within them that the pogroms largely took place. Jews were forbidden from moving to other parts of European Russia (including Finland), unless they converted from Judaism or obtained a university diploma or first guild merchant status. Migration to Caucasus, Siberia, Far East or Central Asia was not restricted.

Odessa, 1821

The first pogrom is sometimes considered to be the 1821 Odessa pogroms after the execution of the Greek Orthodox patriarch Gregory V in Constantinople, in which 14 Jews were killed. The initiators of the 1821 pogroms were the local Greeks, who used to have a substantial diaspora in the port cities of what was known as Novorossiya.

1881–84

The term "pogrom" became commonly used in English after a large-scale wave of anti-Jewish riots swept through south-western Imperial Russia (present-day Ukraine and Poland) from 1881 to 1884; during this time, more than 200 anti-Jewish events occurred in the Russian Empire, notably pogroms in Kiev, Warsaw and Odessa.

The trigger for these pogroms was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, for which some blamed "foreign influence agents", implying the Jews. One of the conspirators was of Jewish origins, and the importance of her role in the assassination was greatly exaggerated during the pogroms that followed; another conspirator was baselessly rumored to be Jewish. The extent to which the Russian press was responsible for encouraging perceptions of the assassination as a Jewish act has been disputed.

Local economic conditions (such as ancestral debts owed to moneylenders) are thought to have contributed significantly to the rioting, especially with regard to the participation of the business competitors of local Jews and the participation of railroad workers. At this time Russia was becoming more industrialized, causing Russians to be moving into and out of major cities. People trying to escape the big cities carried their antisemitic values with them, spreading these ideas throughout Russia causing more pogroms in different regions of Russia. It has been argued that this was actually more important than rumours of Jewish responsibility for the death of the Tsar. These rumours, however, were clearly of some importance, if only as a trigger, and they drew upon a small kernel of truth: one of the close associates of the assassins, Hesya Helfman, was born into a Jewish home. The fact that the other assassins were all atheists and that the wider Jewish community had nothing to do with the assassination had little impact on the spread of such antisemitic rumours and the assassination inspired "retaliatory" attacks on Jewish communities. During these pogroms thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, many families were reduced to poverty, and large numbers of men, women, and children were injured in 166 towns in the southwest provinces of the Empire such as Ukraine.

There also was a large pogrom on the night of 15–16 April 1881 (the day of Eastern Orthodox Easter) in the city of Yelizavetgrad (now Kropyvnytskyi). On 17 April, the Army units were dispatched and were forced to use firearms to extinguish the riot. However, that only incited the whole situation in the region and a week later series of pogroms rolled through parts of the Kherson Governorate.

On 26 April 1881, an even bigger disorder engulfed the city of Kiev. The Kiev pogrom of 1881 is considered the worst one that took place in 1881. The pogroms of 1881 did not stop then. They continued on through the summer, spreading across a big territory of modern-day Ukraine: (Podolie Governorate, Volyn Governorate, Chernigov Governorate, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, and others). During these pogroms the first local Jewish self-defense organizations started to form, the most prominent one in Odessa. It was organized by the Jewish students of the Novorossiysk University.

For decades after the 1881 pogroms, most government officials had antisemitic beliefs that Jews in villages were more dangerous than Jews who lived in towns. The Minister of the Interior Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev rejected the theory that pogroms were caused by revolutionary socialists and instead, he adopted the idea that they were a protest by the rural population against Jewish exploitation. With this idea in mind, he wrongly believed and spread the idea that pogroms had spread from villages to towns. Historians today recognize that although rural peasantry did largely participate in the pogrom violence, pogroms began in the towns and spread to the villages.

The new Tsar Alexander III initially blamed revolutionaries and the Jews themselves for the riots and in May 1882 issued the May Laws, a series of harsh restrictions on Jews. 

The pogroms continued for more than three years and were thought to have benefited from at least the tacit support of the authorities, although there were also attempts by the Russian government to end the rioting.

The pogroms and the official reaction to them led many Russian Jews to reassess their perceptions of their status within the Russian Empire, and so led to significant Jewish emigration, mostly to the United States.

These pogroms were referred to among Jews as the "Storms in the South." Changed perceptions among Russian Jews also indirectly gave a significant boost to the early Zionist movement.

Casualties

At least 40 Jews were killed during pogroms during April to December 1881. Of these, 17 were reportedly killed while being raped. An additional 225 incidents of Jewish women being raped were reported.

British reaction

The leaders of the Jewish community in London were slow to speak out. It was only after Louisa Goldsmid's support following leadership from an anonymous writer named "Juriscontalus" and the editor of The Jewish Chronicle that action was taken in 1881. Public meetings were held across the country and Jewish and Christian leaders in Britain spoke out against the atrocities.

1903–1906

A much bloodier wave of pogroms broke out from 1903 to 1906, leaving an estimated 2,000 Jews dead and many more wounded, as the Jews took to arms to defend their families and property from the attackers. The 1905 pogrom against Jews in Odessa was the most serious pogrom of the period, with reports of up to 2,500 Jews killed.

Home at last by Moshe Maimon. The house's occupants return when it is safe, to find the house thoroughly looted. A rabbi is saying Kaddish for a member of the household who was killed.

The New York Times described the First Kishinev pogrom of Easter, 1903:

The anti-Jewish riots in Kishinev, Bessarabia [modern Moldova], are worse than the censor will permit to publish. There was a well laid-out plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Orthodox Easter. The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, "Kill the Jews", was taken up all over the city. The Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120 [Note: the actual number of dead was 47–48] and the injured about 500. The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babies were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews.

This series of pogroms affected 64 towns (including Odessa, Yekaterinoslav, Kiev, Kishinev, Simferopol, Romny, Kremenchug, Nikolayev, Chernigov, Kamenets-Podolski, Yelizavetgrad), and 626 small towns (Russian: городок) and villages, mostly in Ukraine and Bessarabia.

Historians such as Edward Radzinsky suggest that many pogroms were incited by authorities and supported by the Tsarist Russian secret police (the Okhrana), even if some happened spontaneously. The perpetrators who were prosecuted usually received clemency by Tsar's decree.

Even outside of these main outbreaks, pogroms remained common; there was an anti-Jewish riot in Odessa in 1905 in which thousands of Jews were killed.

The 1903 Kishinev pogrom, also known as the Kishinev Massacre, in present-day Moldova killed 47–49 persons. It provoked an international outcry after it was publicized by The Times and The New York Times. There was a second, smaller Kishinev pogrom in 1905.

A pogrom on July 20, 1905, in Yekaterinoslav (present-day Dnipro, Ukraine), was stopped by the Jewish self-defense group (one man in the group killed).

On July 31, 1905, there was the first pogrom outside the Pale of Settlement, in the town of Makariev (near Nizhni Novgorod), where a patriotic procession led by the mayor turned violent.

At a pogrom in Kerch in Crimea on 31 July 1905, the mayor ordered the police to fire at the self-defence group, and two fighters were killed (one of them, P. Kirilenko, was a Ukrainian who joined the Jewish defence group). The pogrom was conducted by the port workers apparently brought in for the purpose.

After the publication of the Tsar's Manifesto of October 17, 1905, pogroms erupted in 660 towns mainly in the present-day Ukraine, in the Southern and Southeastern areas of the Pale of Settlement. In contrast, there were no pogroms in present-day Lithuania. There were also very few incidents in Belarus or Russia proper. There were 24 pogroms outside of the Pale of Settlement, but those were directed at the revolutionaries rather than Jews.

The greatest number of pogroms were registered in the Chernigov gubernia in northern Ukraine. The pogroms there in October 1905 took 800 Jewish lives, the material damages estimated at 70,000,000 rubles. 400 were killed in Odessa, over 150 in Rostov-on-Don, 67 in Yekaterinoslav, 54 in Minsk, 30 in Simferopol—over 40, in Orsha—over 30.

In 1906, the pogroms continued: January — in Gomel, June — in Bialystok (ca. 80 dead), and August — in Siedlce (ca. 30 dead). The Russian secret police and the military personnel organized the massacres.

In many of these incidents the most prominent participants were railway workers, industrial workers, and small shopkeepers and craftsmen, and (if the town was a river port (e.g. Dnipro) or a seaport (e.g. Kerch)), waterfront workmen; peasants mainly joined in to loot.

Organization of the pogroms

The pogroms are generally thought to have been either organized or at least condoned by the authorities. This view was challenged by Hans Rogger, I. Michael Aronson and John Klier, who couldn't find such sanctions documented in the state archives. However, the antisemitic policy that was carried out from 1881 to 1917 made them possible. Official persecution and harassment of Jews influenced numerous antisemites to presume that their violence was legitimate, and this sentiment was reinforced by the active participation of a few high and many minor officials in fomenting attacks, as well as by the reluctance of the government to stop pogroms and to punish those responsible for them.

Influence of the pogroms

The pogroms of the 1880s caused a worldwide outcry and, along with harsh laws, propelled mass Jewish emigration. Among the passed antisemitic laws were the 1882 May Laws. They prohibited Jews from moving into villages in an attempt to address the cause of the pogroms, when in fact, the pogroms were caused by a different reason. The majority of High Commission for the Review of Jewish Legislation (1883-1888) actually noted the fact that almost all of the pogroms had begun in the towns and attempted to abolish the Laws. Yet, the minority of the High Commission ignored the facts and backed the anti-semitic May Laws. Two million Jews fled the Russian Empire between 1880 and 1920, with many going to the United Kingdom and United States.

In reaction to the pogroms and other oppressions of the Tsarist period, Jews increasingly became politically active. Jewish participation in The General Jewish Labor Bund, colloquially known as The Bund, and in the Bolshevik movements, was directly influenced by the pogroms. Similarly, the organization of Jewish self-defense leagues (which stopped the pogromists in certain areas during the second Kishinev pogrom), such as Hovevei Zion, led to a strong embrace of Zionism, especially by Russian Jews.

Cultural references

In 1903, Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik wrote the poem In the City of Slaughter in response to the Kishinev pogrom.

Elie Wiesel's The Trial of God depicts Jews fleeing a pogrom and setting up a fictitious "trial of God" for His negligence in not assisting them against the bloodthirsty mobs. In the end, it turns out that the mysterious stranger who has argued as God's advocate is none other than Lucifer. The experience of a Russian Jew is also depicted in Elie Wiesel's The Testament.

A pogrom is one of the central events in the play Fiddler on the Roof, which is adapted from Russian author Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman stories. Aleichem writes about the pogroms in a story called "Lekh-Lekho". The famous Broadway musical and film Fiddler on the Roof showed the cruelty of the Russian pogroms on the Jews in the fictional Anatevka in the early 20th century.

In the adult animated musical drama film American Pop, set during Imperial Russia during the late 1890s, a rabbi's wife and her young son Zalmie escape to America while the rabbi is killed by the Cossacks.

In the animated film An American Tail, set during and after the 1880s pogroms, Fievel and his family's village is destroyed by a pogrom. (Fievel and his family are mice, and their Cossack attackers are cats.) 

The novel The Sacrifice by Adele Wiseman also deals with a family that is displaced after a pogrom in their home country and who emigrate to Canada after losing two sons to the riot and barely surviving themselves. The loss and murder of the sons haunts the entire story.

Mark Twain gives graphic descriptions of the Russian pogroms in Reflections on Religion, Part 3, published in 1906.

Joseph Joffo describes the early history of his mother, a Jew in the Russia of Tsar Nicholas II, in the biographical 'Anna and her Orchestra'. He describes the raids by Cossacks on Jewish quarters and the eventual retribution inflicted by Anna's father and brothers on the Cossacks who murdered and burnt homes at the behest of the tsar.

In Bernard Malamud's novel The Fixer, set in Czarist Russia around 1911, a Russian-Jewish handyman, Yakov Bog, is wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime. It was later made into a film directed by John Frankenheimer with a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo.

Enabling Act of 1933

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 

 

Hitler's Reichstag speech promoting the bill was delivered at the Kroll Opera House, following the Reichstag fire.

 

The Enabling Act (German: Ermächtigungsgesetz) of 1933, formally titled Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich ("Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich"), was a law that gave the German Cabinet—in effect, the Chancellor—the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag, and to override fundamental aspects of the Weimar Constitution. The Enabling Act gave Hitler plenary powers and followed on the heels of the Reichstag Fire Decree, which had abolished most civil liberties and transferred state powers to the Reich government. The combined effect of the two laws was to transform Hitler's government into a legal dictatorship. 

The act passed in both the Reichstag and Reichsrat on 23 March 1933, and was signed by President Paul von Hindenburg later that day. The act stated that it was to last four years unless renewed by the Reichstag, which occurred twice. 

The law was enacted by the Reichstag (meeting at the Kroll Opera House), where non-Nazi members were surrounded and threatened by members of the SA and the SS. The Communists had already been repressed and were not allowed to be present or to vote, and some Social Democrats were kept away as well. In the end most of those present voted for the act, except for the Social Democrats, who voted against it.

Background

After being appointed Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, Hitler asked President von Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag. A general election was scheduled for 5 March 1933. A secret meeting was held between Hitler and 20 to 25 industrialists at the official residence of Hermann Göring in the Reichstag Presidential Palace, aimed at financing the election campaign of the Nazi Party.

The burning of the Reichstag, depicted by the Nazis as the beginning of a communist revolution, resulted in the presidential Reichstag Fire Decree, which among other things suspended freedom of press and habeas corpus rights just five days before the election. Hitler used the decree to have the Communist Party's offices raided and its representatives arrested, effectively eliminating them as a political force. 

Although they received five million more votes than in the previous election, the Nazis failed to gain an absolute majority in parliament, and depended on the 8% of seats won by their coalition partner, the German National People's Party, to reach 52% in total.

To free himself from this dependency, Hitler had the cabinet, in its first post-election meeting on 15 March, draw up plans for an Enabling Act which would give the cabinet legislative power for four years. The Nazis devised the Enabling Act to gain complete political power without the need of the support of a majority in the Reichstag and without the need to bargain with their coalition partners.

Preparations and negotiations

The Enabling Act allowed the cabinet to enact legislation, including laws deviating from or altering the constitution, without the consent of the Reichstag. Because this law allowed for departures from the constitution, it was itself considered a constitutional amendment. Thus, its passage required the support of two-thirds of those deputies who were present and voting. A quorum of two-thirds of the entire Reichstag was required to be present in order to call up the bill.

The Social Democrats (SPD) and the Communists (KPD) were expected to vote against the Act. The government had already arrested all Communist and some Social Democrat deputies under the Reichstag Fire Decree. The Nazis expected the parties representing the middle class, the Junkers and business interests to vote for the measure, as they had grown weary of the instability of the Weimar Republic and would not dare to resist.

Hitler believed that with the Centre Party members' votes, he would get the necessary two-thirds majority. Hitler negotiated with the Centre Party's chairman, Ludwig Kaas, a Catholic priest, finalising an agreement by 22 March. Kaas agreed to support the Act in exchange for assurances of the Centre Party's continued existence, the protection of Catholics' civil and religious liberties, religious schools and the retention of civil servants affiliated with the Centre Party. It has also been suggested that some members of the SPD were intimidated by the presence of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) throughout the proceedings.

Some historians, such as Klaus Scholder, have maintained that Hitler also promised to negotiate a Reichskonkordat with the Holy See, a treaty that formalised the position of the Catholic Church in Germany on a national level. Kaas was a close associate of Cardinal Pacelli, then Vatican Secretary of State (and later Pope Pius XII). Pacelli had been pursuing a German concordat as a key policy for some years, but the instability of Weimar governments as well as the enmity of some parties to such a treaty had blocked the project. The day after the Enabling Act vote, Kaas went to Rome in order to, in his own words, "investigate the possibilities for a comprehensive understanding between church and state". However, so far no evidence for a link between the Enabling Act and the Reichskonkordat signed on 20 July 1933 has surfaced.

Text

As with most of the laws passed in the process of Gleichschaltung, the Enabling Act is quite short, especially considering its implications. The full text, in German and English, follows: 

Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich	Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich
Der Reichstag hat das folgende Gesetz beschlossen, das mit Zustimmung des Reichsrats hiermit verkündet wird, nachdem festgestellt ist, daß die Erfordernisse verfassungsändernder Gesetzgebung erfüllt sind:	The Reichstag has enacted the following law, which is hereby proclaimed with the assent of the Reichsrat, it having been established that the requirements for a constitutional amendment have been fulfilled:
Artikel 1	Article 1
Reichsgesetze können außer in dem in der Reichsverfassung vorgesehenen Verfahren auch durch die Reichsregierung beschlossen werden. Dies gilt auch für die in den Artikeln 85 Abs. 2 und 87 der Reichsverfassung bezeichneten Gesetze.	In addition to the procedure prescribed by the constitution, laws of the Reich may also be enacted by the government of the Reich. This includes the laws referred to by Articles 85 Paragraph 2 and Article 87 of the constitution.
Artikel 2	Article 2
Die von der Reichsregierung beschlossenen Reichsgesetze können von der Reichsverfassung abweichen, soweit sie nicht die Einrichtung des Reichstags und des Reichsrats als solche zum Gegenstand haben. Die Rechte des Reichspräsidenten bleiben unberührt.	Laws enacted by the government of the Reich may deviate from the constitution as long as they do not affect the institutions of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat. The rights of the President remain unaffected.
Artikel 3	Article 3
Die von der Reichsregierung beschlossenen Reichsgesetze werden vom Reichskanzler ausgefertigt und im Reichsgesetzblatt verkündet. Sie treten, soweit sie nichts anderes bestimmen, mit dem auf die Verkündung folgenden Tage in Kraft. Die Artikel 68 bis 77 der Reichsverfassung finden auf die von der Reichsregierung beschlossenen Gesetze keine Anwendung.	Laws enacted by the Reich government shall be issued by the Chancellor and announced in the Reich Gazette. They shall take effect on the day following the announcement, unless they prescribe a different date. Articles 68 to 77 of the Constitution do not apply to laws enacted by the Reich government.
Artikel 4	Article 4
Verträge des Reiches mit fremden Staaten, die sich auf Gegenstände der Reichsgesetzgebung beziehen, bedürfen für die Dauer der Geltung dieser Gesetze nicht der Zustimmung der an der Gesetzgebung beteiligten Körperschaften. Die Reichsregierung erläßt die zur Durchführung dieser Verträge erforderlichen Vorschriften.	Treaties of the Reich with foreign states, which relate to matters of Reich legislation, shall for the duration of the validity of these laws not require the consent of the legislative authorities. The Reich government shall enact the legislation necessary to implement these agreements.
Artikel 5	Article 5
Dieses Gesetz tritt mit dem Tage seiner Verkündung in Kraft. Es tritt mit dem 1. April 1937 außer Kraft; es tritt ferner außer Kraft, wenn die gegenwärtige Reichsregierung durch eine andere abgelöst wird.	This law enters into force on the day of its proclamation. It expires on 1 April 1937; it expires furthermore if the present Reich government is replaced by another.

Articles 1 and 4 gave the government the right to draw up the budget and approve treaties without input from the Reichstag. 

Act (page 1)

 

Act (page 2 with signatures)

Passage

Debate within the Centre Party continued until the day of the vote, 23 March 1933, with Kaas advocating voting in favour of the act, referring to an upcoming written guarantee from Hitler, while former Chancellor Heinrich Brüning called for a rejection of the Act. The majority sided with Kaas, and Brüning agreed to maintain party discipline by voting for the Act.

The Reichstag, led by its President, Hermann Göring, changed its rules of procedure to make it easier to pass the bill. Under the Weimar Constitution, a quorum of two-thirds of the entire Reichstag membership was required to be present in order to bring up a constitutional amendment bill. In this case, 432 of the Reichstag's 647 deputies would have normally been required for a quorum. However, Göring reduced the quorum to 378 by not counting the 81 KPD deputies. Despite the virulent rhetoric directed against the Communists, the Nazis did not formally ban the KPD right away. Not only did they fear a violent uprising, but they hoped the KPD's presence on the ballot would siphon off votes from the SPD. However, it was an open secret that the KPD deputies would never be allowed to take their seats; they were thrown in jail as quickly as the police could track them down. Courts began taking the line that since the Communists were responsible for the fire, KPD membership was an act of treason. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the KPD was banned as of 6 March, the day after the election.

Göring also declared that any deputy who was "absent without excuse" was to be considered as present, in order to overcome obstructions. Leaving nothing to chance, the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to detain several SPD deputies. A few others saw the writing on the wall and fled into exile.

Later that day, the Reichstag assembled under intimidating circumstances, with SA men swarming inside and outside the chamber. Hitler's speech, which emphasised the importance of Christianity in German culture, was aimed particularly at appeasing the Centre Party's sensibilities and incorporated Kaas' requested guarantees almost verbatim. Kaas gave a speech, voicing the Centre's support for the bill amid "concerns put aside", while Brüning notably remained silent.

Only SPD chairman Otto Wels spoke against the Act, declaring that the proposed bill could not "destroy ideas which are eternal and indestructible." Kaas had still not received the written constitutional guarantees he had negotiated, but with the assurance it was being "typed up", voting began. Kaas never received the letter.

At this stage, the majority of deputies already supported the bill, and any deputies who might have been reluctant to vote in favour were intimidated by the SA troops surrounding the meeting. In the end, all parties except the SPD voted in favour of the Enabling Act. With the KPD banned and 26 SPD deputies arrested or in hiding, the final tally was 444 in favour of the Enabling Act against 94 (all Social Democrats) opposed. The Reichstag had adopted the Enabling Act with the support of 83% of the deputies. The session took place under such intimidating conditions that even if all SPD deputies had been present, it would have still passed with 78.7% support. The same day in the evening, the Reichsrat also gave its approval, unanimously and without prior discussion. The Act was then signed into law by President Hindenburg.

Consequences

Under the Act, the government had acquired the authority to pass laws without either parliamentary consent or control. These laws could (with certain exceptions) even deviate from the Constitution. The Act effectively eliminated the Reichstag as active player in German politics. While its existence was protected by the Enabling Act, for all intents and purposes it reduced the Reichstag to a mere stage for Hitler's speeches. It only met sporadically until the end of World War II, held no debates and enacted only a few laws. Within three months of the passage of the Enabling Act, all parties except the Nazi Party were banned or pressured into dissolving themselves, followed on 14 July by a law that made the Nazi Party the only legally permitted party in the country. With this, Hitler had fulfilled what he had promised in earlier campaign speeches: "I set for myself one aim ... to sweep these thirty parties out of Germany!"

During the negotiations between the government and the political parties, it was agreed that the government should inform the Reichstag parties of legislative measures passed under the Enabling Act. For this purpose, a working committee was set up, co-chaired by Hitler and Centre Party chairman Kaas. However, this committee met only three times without any major impact, and rapidly became a dead letter even before all other parties were banned.

Though the Act had formally given legislative powers to the government as a whole, these powers were for all intents and purposes exercised by Hitler himself. After its passage, there were no longer serious deliberations in Cabinet meetings. Its meetings became more and more infrequent after 1934, and it never met in full after 1938.

Due to the great care that Hitler took to give his dictatorship an appearance of legality, the Enabling Act was renewed twice, in 1937 and 1941. However, its renewal was practically assured since all other parties were banned. Voters were presented with a single list of Nazis and Nazi-approved "guest" candidates under far-from-secret conditions. In 1942, the Reichstag passed a law giving Hitler power of life and death over every citizen, effectively extending the provisions of the Enabling Act for the duration of the war.

Ironically, at least two, and possibly three, of the penultimate measures Hitler took to consolidate his power in 1934 violated the Enabling Act. In February 1934, the Reichsrat, representing the states, was abolished even though Article 2 of the Enabling Act specifically protected the existence of both the Reichstag and the Reichsrat. It can be argued that the Enabling Act had been breached two weeks earlier by the Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich, which transferred the states' powers to the Reich and effectively left the Reichsrat impotent. Article 2 stated that laws passed under the Enabling Act could not affect the institutions of either chamber.

In August, Hindenburg died, and Hitler seized the president's powers for himself in accordance with a law passed the previous day, an action confirmed via a referendum later that month. Article 2 stated that the president's powers were to remain "undisturbed" (or "unaffected", depending on the translation), which has long been interpreted to mean that it forbade Hitler from tampering with the presidency. A 1932 amendment to the constitution made the president of the High Court of Justice, not the chancellor, first in the line of succession to the presidency—and even then on an interim basis pending new elections. However, the Enabling Act provided no remedy for any violations of Article 2, and these actions were never challenged in court.

In his book, The Coming of the Third Reich, British historian Richard J. Evans argued that the Enabling Act was legally invalid. He contended that Göring had no right to arbitrarily reduce the quorum required to bring the bill up for a vote. While the Enabling Act only required the support of two-thirds of those present and voting, two-thirds of the entire Reichstag's membership had to be present in order for the legislature to consider a constitutional amendment. According to Evans, while Göring was not required to count the KPD deputies in order to get the Enabling Act passed, he was required to "recognize their existence" by counting them for purposes of the quorum needed to call it up, making his refusal to do so "an illegal act". (Even if the Communists had been present and voting, the session's atmosphere was so intimidating that the Act would have still passed with, at the very least, 68.7% support.) He also argued that the act's passage in the Reichsrat was tainted by the overthrow of the state governments under the Reichstag Fire Decree; as Evans put it, the states were no longer "properly constituted or represented", making the Enabling Act's passage in the Reichsrat "irregular".

In the Federal Republic of Germany

Article 9 of the German Constitution, enacted in 1949, allows for social groups to be labeled verfassungsfeindlich ("hostile to the constitution") and to be proscribed by the federal government. Political parties can be labeled enemies to the constitution only by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court), according to Art. 21 II. The idea behind the concept is the notion that even a majority rule of the people cannot be allowed to install a totalitarian or autocratic regime such as with the Enabling Act of 1933, thereby violating the principles of the German constitution.

Portrayal in films

The 2003 film Hitler: The Rise of Evil contains a scene portraying the passage of the Enabling Act. The portrayal in the film is inaccurate, with the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree (which in practice, as the name states, was a decree issued by President Hindenburg weeks before the Enabling Act) merged into the Act. Non-Nazi members of the Reichstag, including Vice-Chancellor von Papen, are shown objecting. In reality the Act met little resistance, with only the centre-left Social Democratic Party voting against passage.

The same film also shows Hermann Göring, the then speaker of the house, begin singing the "Deutschlandlied". Nazi representatives then stand and immediately join in with Göring, all other party members join in too, with everyone performing the Hitler salute. In reality, this never happened.

"On the Jews and Their Lies" (by Martin Luther)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies 

Title page of Martin Luther's On the Jews and Their Lies. Wittenberg, 1543

On the Jews and Their Lies (German: Von den Jüden und iren Lügen; in modern spelling Von den Juden und ihren Lügen) is a 65,000-word anti-Judaic treatise written in 1543 by the German Reformation leader Martin Luther (1483-1546).

Luther's attitude toward the Jews took different forms during his lifetime. In his earlier period, until 1537 or not much earlier, he wanted to convert Jews to Lutheranism (Protestant Christianity), but failed. In his later period when he wrote On the Jews and Their Lies, he denounced them and urged their persecution.

In the treatise, he argues that Jewish synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes burned, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and "these poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He also seems to advocate their murder, writing "[W]e are at fault in not slaying them".

The book may have had an impact on creating antisemitic Germanic thought through the Middle Ages. During World War II, copies of the book were held up by Nazis at rallies, and the prevailing scholarly consensus is that it had a significant impact on the Holocaust. Since then, the book has been denounced by many Lutheran churches.

Content

In the treatise, Martin Luther describes Jews (in the sense of followers of Judaism) as a "base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth". Luther wrote that they are "full of the devil's feces ... which they wallow in like swine", and the synagogue is an "incorrigible whore and an evil slut".

In the first ten sections of the treatise, Luther expounds, at considerable length, upon his views concerning Jews and Judaism and how these compare to Protestants and Protestant Christianity. Following the exposition, Section XI of the treatise advises Protestants to carry out seven remedial actions, namely:

1. to burn down Jewish synagogues and schools and warn people against them
2. to refuse to let Jews own houses among Christians
3. to take away Jewish religious writings
4. to forbid rabbis from preaching
5. to offer no protection to Jews on highways
6. for usury to be prohibited and for all Jews' silver and gold to be removed, put aside for safekeeping, and given back to Jews who truly convert
7. to give young, strong Jews flail, axe, spade, and spindle, and let them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow

Luther's essay consistently distinguishes between Jews who accept Christianity (with whom he has no issues) and Jews who practise Judaism (whom he excoriates viciously). In modern terminology, therefore, Luther expresses an anti-Judaic rather than a racist anti-semitic view.

The tract specifically acknowledges that many early Christians, including prominent ones, had a Judaic background.

Evolution of Luther's views

Medieval Church and the Jews

Early in his life, Luther had argued that the Jews had been prevented from converting to Christianity by the proclamation of what he believed to be an impure gospel by the Catholic Church, and he believed they would respond favorably to the evangelical message if it were presented to them gently. He expressed concern for the poor conditions in which they were forced to live, and insisted that anyone denying that Jesus was born a Jew was committing heresy.

Luther's first known comment about the Jews is in a letter written to Reverend Spalatin in 1514:

Conversion of the Jews will be the work of God alone operating from within, and not of man working – or rather playing – from without. If these offences be taken away, worse will follow. For they are thus given over by the wrath of God to reprobation, that they may become incorrigible, as Ecclesiastes says, for every one who is incorrigible is rendered worse rather than better by correction.

In 1519, Luther challenged the doctrine Servitus Judaeorum ("Servitude of the Jews"), established in Corpus Juris Civilis by Justinian I in 529. He wrote: "Absurd theologians defend hatred for the Jews. ... What Jew would consent to enter our ranks when he sees the cruelty and enmity we wreak on them – that in our behavior towards them we less resemble Christians than beasts?"

In his commentary on the Magnificat, Luther is critical of the emphasis Judaism places on the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. He states that they "undertook to keep the law by their own strength, and failed to learn from it their needy and cursed state". Yet, he concludes that God's grace will continue for Jews as Abraham's descendants for all time, since they may always become Christians. "We ought ... not to treat the Jews in so unkindly a spirit, for there are future Christians among them."

In his 1523 essay That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, Luther condemned the inhuman treatment of the Jews and urged Christians to treat them kindly. Luther's fervent desire was that Jews would hear the gospel proclaimed clearly and be moved to convert to Christianity. Thus he argued:

If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian. They have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs rather than human beings; they have done little else than deride them and seize their property. When they baptize them they show them nothing of Christian doctrine or life, but only subject them to popishness and monkery ... If the apostles, who also were Jews, had dealt with us Gentiles as we Gentiles deal with the Jews, there would never have been a Christian among the Gentiles ... When we are inclined to boast of our position [as Christians] we should remember that we are but Gentiles, while the Jews are of the lineage of Christ. We are aliens and in-laws; they are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord. Therefore, if one is to boast of flesh and blood the Jews are actually nearer to Christ than we are ... If we really want to help them, we must be guided in our dealings with them not by papal law but by the law of Christian love. We must receive them cordially, and permit them to trade and work with us, that they may have occasion and opportunity to associate with us, hear our Christian teaching, and witness our Christian life. If some of them should prove stiff-necked, what of it? After all, we ourselves are not all good Christians either.

Against the Jews

In August 1536, Luther's prince, John Frederick, Elector of Saxony, issued a mandate that prohibited Jews from inhabiting, engaging in business in, or passing through his realm. An Alsatian shtadlan, Rabbi Josel of Rosheim, asked a reformer, Wolfgang Capito, to approach Luther in order to obtain an audience with the prince, but Luther refused every intercession. In response to Josel, Luther referred to his unsuccessful attempts to convert the Jews: "I would willingly do my best for your people but I will not contribute to your [Jewish] obstinacy by my own kind actions. You must find another intermediary with my good lord." Heiko Oberman notes this event as significant in Luther's attitude toward the Jews: "Even today this refusal is often judged to be the decisive turning point in Luther's career from friendliness to hostility toward the Jews"; yet, Oberman contends that Luther would have denied any such "turning point". Rather he felt that Jews were to be treated in a "friendly way" in order to avoid placing unnecessary obstacles in their path to Christian conversion, a genuine concern of Luther.

Paul Johnson writes that "Luther was not content with verbal abuse. Even before he wrote his anti-Semitic pamphlet, he got Jews expelled from Saxony in 1537, and in the 1540s he drove them from many German towns; he tried unsuccessfully to get the elector to expel them from Brandenburg in 1543."

Michael Berenbaum writes that Luther's reliance on the Bible as the sole source of Christian authority fed his later fury toward Jews over their rejection of Jesus as the messiah. For Luther, salvation depended on the belief Jesus was Son of God, a belief that adherents of Judaism do not share. Graham Noble writes that Luther wanted to save Jews, in his own terms, not exterminate them, but beneath his apparent reasonableness toward them, there was a "biting intolerance", which produced "ever more furious demands for their conversion to his own brand of Christianity". (Noble, 1–2) When they failed to convert, he turned on them.

History since publication

The prevailing scholarly view since the Second World War is that the treatise exercised a major and persistent influence on Germany's attitude toward its Jewish citizens in the centuries between the Reformation and the Holocaust. Four hundred years after it was written, the Nazis displayed On the Jews and Their Lies during Nuremberg rallies, and the city of Nuremberg presented a first edition to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, the newspaper describing it, on Streicher's first encounter with the treatise in 1937, as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published.

Against this view, theologian Johannes Wallmann writes that the treatise had no continuity of influence in Germany, and was in fact largely ignored during the 18th and 19th centuries. Hans Hillerbrand argues that to focus on Luther's role in the development of German antisemitism is to underestimate the "larger peculiarities of German history".

Since the 1980s, some Lutheran church bodies have formally denounced and dissociated themselves from Luther's vitriol about the Jews. In November 1998, on the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria issued a statement: "It is imperative for the Lutheran Church, which knows itself to be indebted to the work and tradition of Martin Luther, to take seriously also his anti-Jewish utterances, to acknowledge their theological function, and to reflect on their consequences. It has to distance itself from every [expression of] anti-Judaism in Lutheran theology."