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I am receiving so many letters from Jewish friends regarding my allusions to the Jewish problem in my recent volume, “The New Church and the New Germany,” that I desire to correct some evident misunderstandings and shall therefore appreciate it if you will print this letter. I made the following positive statements:
That Adolf Hitler has “shocked the sensibilities of the entire Christian world,” that his “obsession” amounts “almost to monomania,” and that the treatment of the Jews was a “deeply dark page” in his life.
That he had pursued a “method of fanatical intolerance … by a sweeping, undiscriminating, ruthless process.”
That “in many quarters the boycott has become permanent.”
That “the spirit, method, and practice were all wrong” and that “not one single constructive measure was taken” and that there were “no positive or ameliorative measures of any significance.”
That “if the implications of national socialism are fulfilled in accordance with Alfred Rosenberg’s politico-social theory, it means driving the last Jew out of German life.”
APPEALS TO HITLER
I appealed to Chancellor Hitler to “acknowledge his injustice.”
As an historian I also invited information on both sides and printed all that was claimed in the way of explanation and extenuation, but after doing this I said that the “indictment still stands.”
In my conference with the Chancellor and in correspondence since then, it is true that I have appealed for justice rather than to rest entirely on denunciation. In the treatment of the proposed application of the “Aryan Paragraph” to the Christian Church I brought out clearly the sophistry of “German Christians” and expressed the earnest hope that the Church would not only repudiate it, but that that would lead “to the larger question as to whether some things may be wrong for the Church but be right for the State?”
SAYS JEWS APPROVED
The chief objection appears to be that I chose the method of persuasion and appeal to the Chancellor and to the Church. Well, more than one Jew in Germany told me that much harm had come from other methods. Perhaps I may add that my statement of the problem was shown to Jews who felt that it was a fair one.
I still assume that the German people have at heart a better nature than has appeared in the revolution. I shall continue to proceed on that assumption in the hope that in the long run that will perhaps be more constructive than imprecations and boycotts. I do so, feeling that, unless the Christian Church in Germany can be brought to demand justice for the Jews, there is little hope.
In the meantime I shall continue, as I have done for over forty years, to condemn the anti-Semitism in our own country, where it can hardly be claimed as having any more justification than in Germany.
Very sincerely yours,
Rev. Charles S. Macfarland,
Secretary Emeritus, Federal
Council of the Churches of Christ in America.
Mountain Lakes, N. J.
Sept. 7, 1934.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
