Nazi anti-Jewish atrocities have been severely criticized for the first time by a leader of the Lutheran Church in Germany who emphasized that they “will bring the German people no blessing.”
The Swiss press reports today that the Lutheran Bishop, Theophil Wurm, addressed a protest to the Nazi Governor of Wurttemberg, Germany, demanding that “all measures must be stopped by which human beings belonging to another race or nation are killed without judgment of a military or civil court merely because of nationality or race.”
“We do not want the responsibility before God for all the terrible things happening in Germany or neighboring territories,” the Bishop wrote. “What under the ideology now involved is being done against other peoples and races cannot be placed on the shoulders of the German people alone. A small minority carries out and enjoys these deeds. The church tells those responsible that these things are against God’s law and will bring the German people no blessing.”
The Swiss newspapers also report that priests of the Confession Church in Prussia are telling their congregations that Christians in Germany share the guilt for the Nazi brutalities against Jews.
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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.
