Jennifer has an interesting entry from yesterday about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, writer, dissident and martyr who was ultimately executed for his crimes against the Nazi regime. She shares an interesting excerpt from a documentary about his life:
The church has three possible ways it can act against the state. First, it can ask the state if its actions are legitimate. Second, it can aid the victims of the state action. The church has the unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society even if they do not belong to the Christian society. The third possibility is not just [to] bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself.
The relationship between the individual and the state and particularly between the Christian and the state has always interested me. For the most part, it seems that Christianity teaches that the individual is to go out of his way to be obedient and subservient to those in authority. But even in the well-known passages pointing to Christian humility found in the Sermon on the Mount, there are some hints at resistance to Roman rule.
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. –Matthew 5:39
This verse used to bother me. It seemed to me that Jesus was setting up all kinds of boundary problems in His followers. Accept persecution in His name, yes, but just outright abuse for no good reason? It also seems to violate the resistance Jesus himself offered to religious authorities.
Then I heard a discussion on Jewish customs of the time and found it to be quite interesting. In the culture of the time, it was acceptable to back hand someone on the cheek with your right hand…done from someone of higher rank to someone of lesser rank. Cultural taboos made it impossible to strike with the left hand and only equals were struck with the palm of the hand.
By turning your cheek, you were subtly telling the aggressor that you were an equal.
There are interesting examples from European history which illustrate just how powerful simple acts of respectful insubordination can be.
Perhaps this was not as dramatic as what Bonhoeffer planned in response to Nazi Germany. But there were other options to resist Hitler. Imagine if all who called themselves Christians responded as the tiny Protestant village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon who hid 5,000 Jews from authorities? What if all of Europe had responded as Denmark who managed to move almost its entire Jewish population out of the country with only two days warning that Germany was taking them to a concentration camp? Less than 500 of Denmark’s 7,500 Jews were captured, and the Danish government continued to work with Germany on their behalf. Care packages were sent and the Danish Red Cross arrived to inspect their condition at Theresienstadt. Eichmann did not dare move them to a death camp. Very few died. If I remember correctly, Denmark was also the only country which arranged to pick up the Jews as soon as Germany was defeated.
Denmark was also different and special in another way. Almost everywhere else in Europe, returning Jews found their homes had been broken into, and everything of value stolen. When the Danish Jews returned, they discovered that their homes, pets, gardens and personal belongings were cared for by their neighbors.
Had the Christian Church responded universally with such resistance, Nazi Germany never would have existed and violent measures would not have been necessary.
Photo: Danish fishermen saving Jews
Related Tags: Germany, Bonhoeffer, Christianity, passive resistance
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Beautiful and very moving account of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, and especially Denmark, thanks for sharing that.
Also, I hadn’t heard the discussion of Jewish customs regarding the turning of the cheek - really puts that command in a different light.
And didn’t the Danish king don a yellow star when the Nazis decreed that all Danish Jews must wear one?
[time passes as I go off to check]
Nope. Urban legend, but with a grain of substance:
http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/denmark.htm
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“A Swedish newspaper cartoon (possibly the origin of this legend) depicted the monarch talking with the former Danish prime minster, who asks him, ‘What are we going to do, Your Majesty, if Scavenius makes all the Jews wear yellow stars?’ (Erik Scavenius was the Danish foreign minister who became prime minister at the insistence of the Germans after the Danish government resigned in 1943.) The king responds by asserting, ‘We’ll all have to wear yellow stars.’”
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A fuller account is at the Snopes site.
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The ‘turning the cheek’ interpretation is enlightening. Thanks for that, Dana.
“Had the Christian Church responded universally with such resistance, Nazi Germany never would have existed and violent measures would not have been necessary.”
That might well put the shame of it on everyone’s shoulders, as it should be. Those who take what is not theirs, even if it has been handed to them by the government, are guilty in some degree for the backward slide of civilization. The “something for nothing” mentality works to destroy the value system required to sustain a worthy civilization.
In the case of NAZI Germany, many of the challenges were economic. There was a class envy situation, one which was exploited and used to separate rational thinking people from that which they had been taught in the scriptures. The Jews were portrayed as taking advantage of everyone through propaganda intended to incite hatred and it worked beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. The property which was confiscated shouldn’t have been theirs in the first place since they lied and cheated to obtain it; at least that was the rationalization. The transformation of a people willing to go along with confiscating property from their neighbors into the mentality required to exterminate the Jews was a natural progression of hatred, nothing that would have been taught in Christian churches. It took advantage of angry individuals who had been spoon fed hate filled messages daily by a media owned and operated by evil and agenda driven sociopaths.
Fast forward to present day and you will see that class envy is the tool used to divide the masses. Those greedy rich people only have stuff because they cheat and lie, the poor should have part of that and if you elect the right folks to office all those rich people will be taxed until the situation is made right. It isn’t fair that you should have to pay so much for prescription medicine, you are being gouged by the big corporations, and the list goes on and on as each day the wool is pulled over so many eyes as to leave them in a stupor of thought. Right becomes wrong and wrong becomes right, evil for good and good for evil as Satan leads many down the path to destruction.
Actually, that story is in the article I linked to on Danish resistance. Interestingly, not only did the Danes not don the stars, neither did the Danish Jews. Denmark was uncooperative all the way around.
Thanks, T.F.
There are so many things that led up to what happened in Germany it is difficult to isolate anything in particular. Anti-semitism is an old monster in Europe, but even Hitler had to tone down some of his rhetoric because it wasn’t as successful at rallying the people behind him as he would have maybe liked (I can’t remember where I read that).
One of the best books I have read on the subject is “Die Ermittlung” which is sort of a drama, but the text is taken from the trials. I wrote about it in January, but this bit of testimony perhaps captures the essence of why those closer to it were able to do what they did:
Mr. Chairman
I would like to explain something
Every third word in our school time
dealt with those
who were guilty of all
and that must be eradicated
It was hammered into us
that this was the best
for our own people
In the Fuehrer-schools we learned above all
to accept everything silently
When someone asked something else
then it was said
What was done was done according to the law
It helps nothing
that the laws are different today
They said to us
Your job is to learn
You need schooling more than bread
Mr. Chairman
Thinking was taken from us
That was done for us by others
(The accused laugh in agreement)