Remembrance and Repentance
Back in the early '90's, as a secondary school Social Studies teacher, I went to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles to research a WWII unit on the Holocaust. I got more than I bargained for on that day. I was launched on an unexpected lifetime trajectory of educational activism concerning the subject of the Nazi "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem," an enterprise that has often been met with more curiosity than sustainable interest, more detachment than intimacy.
I was told that morning by Aaron Breitbart, the Senior Researcher there, that I wouldn't really understand the Holocaust without first understanding the history of Christian Antisemitism. At the time, the two concepts seemed utterly oxymoronic to me. Then, a little later in the day, as I spoke privately with Livia, a survivor of Auschwitz, we were evacuated from the building with a great sense of urgency. This warm, kind, and gracious woman, Livia, who'd lost seventy-two of her family members in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, was, unthinkably, fifty years later, the target of a bomb threat. I pledged that day to never let the subject of the Shoah die. Now it had become personal. |
The Call to Remember and Memorialize the Holocaust
This book represents my pledge to Livia that I would never cease to cause people, especially my spiritual people, the Christian people, to remember. From the back cover:
"Holocaust studies are very important. We are living in a time when the last Holocaust survivors, the victims and eyewitnesses to the atrocity, are dying out. Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are on the rise, and it’s important for people to know what happened."
— Rabbi Dr. Michael Schiffman, Executive Director, Chevra USA
Christian anti-Semitism built the road that led to Auschwitz. In the Holocaust, two thousand years of anti-Jewish replacement theology culminated in genocide. European Christianity sat as if bewitched in the cold darkness of indifference just outside a fiery circle of doom while the ovens roared and the smoke of six million innocent Jewish lives filled the skies over Europe.
What has changed since then?
More than seven decades after the extermination began, Western Christianity still sits seemingly numb and in denial of any spiritual responsibility for its tragic failure to come to the aid of its Jewish neighbors as the Nazi monster consumed men, women, and children, grandparents and grandchildren. How? Why?
The Holocaust demands a reply. Now as the last survivors of that generation begin to fade, it is time for us to acknowledge culpability and take positive action to root out Christian anti-Semitism. This book is about remembering what happened in the past, understanding how we contributed to the nightmare, and learning from those mistakes to change the future.
"Holocaust studies are very important. We are living in a time when the last Holocaust survivors, the victims and eyewitnesses to the atrocity, are dying out. Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are on the rise, and it’s important for people to know what happened."
— Rabbi Dr. Michael Schiffman, Executive Director, Chevra USA
Christian anti-Semitism built the road that led to Auschwitz. In the Holocaust, two thousand years of anti-Jewish replacement theology culminated in genocide. European Christianity sat as if bewitched in the cold darkness of indifference just outside a fiery circle of doom while the ovens roared and the smoke of six million innocent Jewish lives filled the skies over Europe.
What has changed since then?
More than seven decades after the extermination began, Western Christianity still sits seemingly numb and in denial of any spiritual responsibility for its tragic failure to come to the aid of its Jewish neighbors as the Nazi monster consumed men, women, and children, grandparents and grandchildren. How? Why?
The Holocaust demands a reply. Now as the last survivors of that generation begin to fade, it is time for us to acknowledge culpability and take positive action to root out Christian anti-Semitism. This book is about remembering what happened in the past, understanding how we contributed to the nightmare, and learning from those mistakes to change the future.
Become aware. Become educated. Become active.
“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”
~ Hillel the Elder
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
~ Anne Frank
Preview and purchase the book here: http://ffoz.com/remembrance-and-repentance-book.html
NEXT PAGE: The Presentation ... "An Overview of the Holocaust from a Critical Perspective"
“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”
~ Hillel the Elder
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
~ Anne Frank
Preview and purchase the book here: http://ffoz.com/remembrance-and-repentance-book.html
NEXT PAGE: The Presentation ... "An Overview of the Holocaust from a Critical Perspective"
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