Tag Archives: Romania

Article Note: Ion Popa, “Sanctuary from the Holocaust? Roman Catholic Conversion of Jews in Bucharest, Romania, 1942”

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 23, Number 4 (December 2017)

Article Note: Ion Popa, “Sanctuary from the Holocaust? Roman Catholic Conversion of Jews in Bucharest, Romania, 1942,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 29, no 1 (Spring 2015): 39-56.

By Doris L. Bergen, University of Toronto

Of the many painful topics around Christianity and the Holocaust, one of the thorniest is conversion. Even basic questions remain unanswered. How many Jews sought baptism? How willing were Christian clergy to help? How did the situation differ across regions and confessions? Did converting actually save lives? Ion Popa’s important article addresses these questions for Romania and in the process reveals the complex tangle of religious, political, military, and diplomatic interests that determined life and death for Jews during the Holocaust.

Popa’s meticulous research deepens and complicates the picture drawn by John Morley, Lya Benjamin, and others. In 1941, conversion of Jews to any other religion was forbidden in Romania, but the state, acting on its perception that the Vatican wielded vast power and eager to keep its options open, made exceptions for the Roman Catholic Church. The papal nuncio, Monsignor Andrea Cassulo, tried to exploit this opening to shelter Jews from deportation and death. But as Popa demonstrates, contrary to claims made at the time (and by some scholars since), Roman Catholics, whom Romanian reports regularly and inaccurately described as “Magyars,” did not baptize tens of thousands of Jews. The actual number, Popa concludes, is impossible to ascertain, but it was small: he estimates perhaps 500 people.

Still, those Romanian Jews who were baptized into the Roman Catholic church “generally” avoided deportation. This was not the case for the smaller number who converted to other forms of Christianity, including the majority Romanian Orthodox church. In fact, Popa shows, many recent converts were rounded up as Jews, some even arrested for violating the law against conversion. Other grim scenes include Romanian Orthodox churchmen whining because they were denied the lavish sums of money Catholics supposedly made by charging Jews for their services. (Popa reserves judgment as to whether converts indeed paid.) In the wake of the Axis debacle at Stalingrad, Antonescu lifted the ban on conversions—but only for the Roman Catholics, and without announcing the decision outside Bucharest for six months. This is a chilling view of leaders who wanted it both ways: when it served their interests, they supported the destruction of Jews, and when it no longer seemed opportune, they might allow others to try to help Jews. Existing scholarship sheds light on conversion in other jurisdictions (Nina Paulovicova’s 2012 dissertation, Rescue of Jews in the Slovak State; Beate Meyer’s many publications on German-Jewish history), but much remains to be done. Popa’s excellent article provides a strong framework for drawing comparisons and analyzing connections.

January 2009 Newsletter

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

January 2009 — Vol. XV, no. 1

Dear Friends,

My very best wishes to you all for the beginning of the New Year. It is particularly appropriate that my first Newsletter this year brings you word of the well-deserved award to our long-time mentor, Professor Gerhard Besier of Dresden University, of an Honorary Doctorate of Theology from Lund University, Sweden, for his outstanding contributions in the field of church history. I am sure our members will join me in sending you, Gerhard, our warmest congratulations. May you long continue to advance the cause of kirchliche Zeitgeschichte.

Once again I look forward to being in touch with you in 2009 even though, to my regret, I have not got the opportunity of meeting many of you in person. However do please correspond if there are points of interest which you find in these Newsletters. I am always glad to hear from you.

May I once again remind you please do NOT press the REPLY button to this message, but to communicate to me at my personal address given at the end of this message.

Contents:

1) Book review:

a) Gallacher, Hurley and Pius XII
b) Henry, We know only men. Rescuing Jews in France
c) Akinsha and Koslov, The Holy Place – Moscow’s Cathedral

2) Comment on Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania
3) Dissertation abstract – P. Latvala, Mission to the Soviet Union
4) Correction: Prof N. Stoltzfus, The Rosenstrasse protests.

List of books reviewed in Vol. XIV – 2008.

Among the movers and shakers of American Catholicism, Joseph P. Hurley (1894-1967) surely deserves a high place. As priest, bishop, Vatican envoy and ally of FDR, he was at the center of twentieth-century debates involving the Church. As influential in his day as his contemporary, Francis Spellman, Hurley remains far less known. Fortunately, with the publication of Charles Gallagher’s new work, Vatican Secret Diplomacy, this forgotten prelate finally receives the attention he deserves.

Gallagher, a Jesuit seminarian, is author of a previous work on the archdiocese of St. Augustine, Florida, which Hurley led from 1940-1967. Granted access to Hurley’s private papers, he has produced a fascinating study.As Gallagher tells it, Hurley was a classic pre-Conciliar Catholic. He believed, as did many U.S. bishops, that a “blessed harmony” existed between the Church and the United States, and thought patriotism “should have the strongest place in man’s affections.” Once ordained, a combative spirit animated him: “Dominating concepts of Catholic militarism, Americanism, patriotism, and athleticism would all be transferred to his religious outlook and his later diplomatic career….To compromise, dither, walk away from a fight, or ‘not face up to facts’ placed one in the detestable category of ‘the Catholic milksop’ ”Fighting the Good Lord’s fightas he saw itwas Hurley’s specialty. A man of the world as well as the cloth, his abilities were recognized by his superiors, who assigned him posts in India, Japan, and finally the Vatican. That Hurley took well to all these positionsdespite any formal diplomatic trainingspeaks to his natural talents.

Gallagher’s book is as much character study as religious biography. Hurley was a man of contradictions. Though outstanding in many respects, he sometimes allowed prejudice to overtake him. While serving in the Papal Secretariat of State (1934-1940), he sympathized with the controversial priest Charles Coughlin. When he finally took a stand against “Charlie,” as he called him, it was only because of Coughlin’s criticism of FDR, not his anti-Semitism. And yet, to Hurley’s credit, after he witnessed what was actually happening to Jews during the thirties and forties, he became their championdelivering scorching sermons against Hitler and his “criminal effort to eradicate the Jews.” He also aligned himself with the White House, becoming “the most outspoken critic of American Catholic non-interventionism and arguably the most ardent Catholic supporter of Roosevelt’s wartime foreign policy.” At a time of rampant isolationism, this was daring. Even after America’s entry into the War, conflicts continued, especially when the United States and the Holy See differed. Invariably, Hurley took his government’s side, even promoting the State Department’s “Black Propaganda” against the papacy (meant to influence its political stands). Had the Vatican become aware of this, it could have ended Hurley’s ecclesiastical career.

Though positive toward Hurley, Gallagher offers a one-sided view of Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII). Relying upon questionable evidence, Gallagher depicts Pacelli as overly cautious; more fearful of Communism than Nazism; and not as outspoken as his predecessor, Pius XI. These are familiar but unpersuasive charges, given that Hitler’s most fervent supporters always blamed Pacelli for the anti-Nazi line taken by the Holy See. Gallagher errs when he writes that Cardinal Pacelli’s 1937 warning to American diplomat Alfred Klieforth was “arguably the only time Pacelli personally expressed his disdain for Hitler.” In fact, as early as 1923, Pacelli, then papal nuncio in Germany, wrote the Vatican (following Hitler’s failed putsch), and denounced the future dictator by name. One of Gallagher’s sources against Pius XII is Hurley himself, who revered Pius XI but doubted Pacelli. But the claim that there was a big difference between Pius XI and Pius XII is unconvincing, since Pius XI appointed Cardinal Pacelli his Secretary of State, and said the Cardinal “speaks with my voice.”

Some of Hurley’s criticisms may have been based on simple ignorance. For example, Gallagher cites an entry in one of Hurley’s papers, where he praises Pius XI’s anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge: “Ratti [Pius XI] said it in March 1937, even if Pacelli missed the point later.” Apparently, Hurley was unaware that Pacelli drafted Pius XI’s encyclical. Similarly, Hurley believed Pius XII’s wartime statements were not direct enough; but the Nazis themselves denounced Pius as a “mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals,” and many rescuers have testified that Pius inspired them. In 1940, Pius XII suddenly appointed Hurley (still stationed in Rome) the bishop of St. Augustine, a move which had the effect of placing the outspoken prelate in a “backwater” diocese. Gallagher sees this as Pius’s punishment for Hurley’s independent ways. But whatever tensions existed, the pope must have admired the feisty American on some level; for when the War ended, he surprised Hurley by reviving his diplomatic career, appointing him acting chief of the apostolic nunciature in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. There he courageously battled the Communists, even as he met with constant frustration.

Hurley experienced far more success in his St. Augustine diocese, where he returned in 1950, expanding it through savvy real estate deals and religious gusto. If only Hurley’s knack for property development had been matched by a more prophetic imagination. A staunch traditionalist, he opposed Vatican II, and even ridiculed John Coutney Murray as a “master of double-talk.” Last, though an outspoken foe of racism abroad, Hurley was less sensitive to it back home. During 1964, Rev. Martin Luther King transformed St. Augustine into “a major area of civil rights activity and media attention.” Hurley wanted no part of this. Declining to meet with King, he instead sent him an equivocal letter expressing Christian fraternity “among people of different races,” but warning against “any act which might occasion…ill will.” Mind you, this was six years after the American bishops had issuedon the orders of a dying Pius XIIa pastoral condemning the sins of racial segregation. One wonders whether anyone, observing Hurley’s failure, might have mistaken him for a “Catholic milksop.”

William Doino Jr., Weston, Connecticut

1b) Patrick Henry, We only know men. The rescue of Jews in France during the Holocaust. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007. 191 pp
[This review appeared first in Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 74, no. 3, July 2008]

In 1979 an American professor of philosophy, Philip Hallie, published an account of the notable efforts by a small group of French Reformed Protestants during the second world war to give sanctuary to Jews oppressed by the Nazis and their Vichy collaborators. This pioneering work, Lest Innocent Blood be shed. The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There, described to English-speaking audiences how these villagers, on a lonely rural plateau a hundred miles south of Lyons, undertook what is now recognized as a uniquely heroic rescue attempt. No other communal effort on this scale occurred for this length of time anywhere else in Occupied Europe. Hallie’s findings were later followed by a moving documentary film, Weapons of the Spirit, produced by a film-maker who himself, as a child, was one of those rescued. Not surprisingly, these events have been given prominence, not only to support the cause of post-war Jewish-Christian reconciliation, but also to promote the image of the French resistance to Nazi-organized tyranny.

Patrick Henry, writing a generation later, seeks to amplify Hallie’s account, to correct a few historical errors, and to put the inhabitants of Le Chambon in a wider setting. He also takes issue with some of the mythical interpretations, which perhaps inevitably had crept in. Naturally Henry has to cover a lot of the same ground, but stresses particularly the role of these Protestant Huguenots as the successors to a long history of religious persecution in that part of France. This made them sensitive to the plight of the Jews, a sentiment reinforced by their strong sympathies with the people of the Bible.

Henry is at pains to dispute the view that the villagers of Le Chambon and district were primarily motivated by economic factors. Instead he emphasizes the spiritual calling which they shared with like-minded Christians of the area, such as Quakers, and Darbyites (Brethren). Since ninety percent of the area’s population was Protestant, the Catholics were underrepresented. Their efforts to assist Jews took place elsewhere, and are not here discussed.

This Protestant determination to resist Nazi oppression and to rescue Jews was all the more notable for being linked to their equal commitment to pacifist non-violence. Henry devotes one chapter to the uplifting story of Daniel Trocme, a young cousin of the Le Chambon’s pastor, who with six of his charges was deported by the Nazis. All lost their lives in concentration camps.

Henry also records the equally self-sacrificing but unknown witness of Madeleine Dreyfus, a righteous Jew, who took enormous risks to bring fellow Jews to the sanctuary on the plateau. Arrested in November 1943, she was to spend eleven months in the horrors of Bergen-Belsen, but luckily survived. Henry believes that her story, and that of other Jews who were part of the resistance in France, has been unfairly neglected and deserves to be better known.

In his concluding chapter Henry regrets that not enough attention has been paid to these rescuers. For the first fifty years after the Holocaust, survivors stressed the evils they had endured. But there was also goodness, even love and compassion amongst those, few and far between, who saved Jews. from the death camps. Unfortunately these efforts have sometimes been disparaged, or their motives challenged. Even notable figures, such as the only American Righteous Gentile, Varian Fry,who also operated in southern France, are largely unknown. Henry’s contribution seeks to rectify this omission, and to put the heroes of Le Chambon into a European-wide context. Their legacy, whether as Jews or Christians, is that they protested against the racial hatred of the day, and because they knew only men, witnessed to the essential similarity of all humanity.

JSC

1c) Konstantin Akinsha and Grogorij Kozlov, with Sylvia Hadfield, The Holy Place: architecture, ideology and history in Russia. New York: Yale University Press 2007. 212 Pp. ISBN 978-0-300-11027-2

Two hundred years ago Napoleon’s defeat in Russia seemed to the then Czar, Alexander I, to be a miracle which deserved to be commemorated. He resolved to build a cathedral in Moscow, dedicated to Christ the Saviour. The story of this cathedral, its construction, subsequent demolition and final reconstruction, as told in this sprightly account by two Russian architectural historians, is more of a parable about Russia’s turbulent political history than an architectural treatise, but entertaining on both levels. This is the story of a holy place, where successive rulers of Russia wanted to indulge their views. Alexander yearned for a symbol of universal Christendom; Stalin wanted its replacement to be the tallest building in the world; Yeltsin rebuilt it as a reparation for seventy-four years of Soviet tyranny. Architects of all stripes created hundreds of proposals for the site, but most were doomed to remain unfulfilled. Thinkers, ideologues and artists planned grand decorations which were never realized. As the authors wryly remark: “Alexander was compared to King Solomon creating the Temple, but the history of Christ the Saviour reminds us more of another biblical construction: the Tower of Babel.”

The original site proposed for the cathedral was on the Sparrow Hills, where the University of Moscow now stands. But the vast task assigned to Alexander’s chosen architect, quarrels amongst the leading politicians, problems with the recruited labour, suspicion of Masonic influences, corruption in the procurement of building materials, all caused delays. Then Alexander suddenly died and the project was doomed.

Not until twenty years later was it to be revived. This time, the site was moved to the banks of the Moscow River, not far from the Kremlin, as being much more suitable for ceremonial parades and processions. Czar Nicholas I wanted it to become, not the symbol of European unity, but of Russia’s national superiority and its historic destiny. The decorations and furnishings reflected this new emphasis. The murals, frescoes and numerous statues, all spoke of the history of holy Russia, and included mementos of how God had granted Russia victory over the anti-Christ Napoleon. But progress was very slow, and the cathedral was still not finished in 1855 when Nicholas died from shock at his army’s defeat in the Crimea. Slowly work resumed with more and more expensive, even luxurious decorations added. More than nine hundred thousand pounds of gold were used for the dome alone. The result of these extra embellishments was stylistic cacophany, with East and West reflecting uneasily Russia’s central position in the world. The total cost exceeded more than fifteen million rubles. The Cathedral was finally consecrated in May 1883.

Despite the criticisms of the artistic elite, the cathedral was popular with the masses. Its very size, as the largest church in all Russia, was impressive, even awe-inspiring. It became the most successful mass culture project of its age, instructing the onlooker in the history of both Russia and the Bible. The visitor could be filled with wonder and pride in being Russian.

However, the Cathedral – even with a gigantic statue of Czar Alexander III erected in the 1890s and placed by the front entrance – did not long endure as the mascot of Russia’s imperial monarchy. Thirty-four years after its inauguration, the last Czar, Nicholas II, was deposed and soon after murdered by Bolshevik extremists. The revolutionary violence which engulfed the country, the mass executions of class enemies, and the wholesale confiscation of property, including the church’s, did not leave the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour unscathed. For a while it became the seat of the new Patriarch, whose sermons and decrees were aimed at arousing resistance to the new Communist rulers. He was soon enough placed under house arrest and remained so for several years. His pulpit was then occupied by a fellow-traveller with the Communists, who claimed that the teachings of Christ and Marx were identical. The kingdom of heaven would now result from the success of the Communist revolution. The Cathedral became cold, empty and bird-spattered.

On 5 December 1931, on the orders of the Soviet Politburo, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was demolished, blown up by dynamite. In its place, a Palace of Soviets was proposed. Stalin himself gave this idea his full support. Numerous avant-garde architects from all over the world entered the competition to find the appropriate style for the embodiment of the Soviet New Order. The new palace was to be the crowning glory of the Five-Year Plan, and a triumphant vindication of the Communist ideology.

Akinsha’s descriptions of the rival plans for this mammoth piece of architectural idolatry are suitably sardonic. But, as he makes clear, the ordinary Russians were not impressed. The Cathedral’s destruction had been a cruel blow. Memories of its splendour were, however, preserved for an as yet unimaginable future. Instead, under Stalin’s command, a vast and unrivalled edifice was to be built, crowned by a gigantic statue of Lenin. Once the site had been cleared, preparations began for its new fate. By 1941 only a large circular foundation had been built. Then in June the German invasion began. Men and material were immediately transferred for the war effort. The work was never resumed.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, this hole in the ground was turned into Russia’s largest swimming pool, even heated through the depths of winter. But the Cathedral was not forgotten. Its demolition came to be seen as symbolic of the Soviet crimes against civilisation, and its former richness as a sign of Russia’s long-lost heritage. Nostalgia grew for the Cathedral’s golden dome so ruthlessly destroyed by the agents of an increasingly discredited ideology. A revival of interest in religion in the 1970s and 1980s also helped.

With the downfall of the Soviet empire, Russia needed a new identity. Its new leader, Boris Yeltsin, turned to the Orthodox Church as a still viable source for national renewal. The Patriarch, Alexei II, welcomed the chance to recover from seventy years of persecution and exclusion. The price demanded was the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, on its former site, but not with the same elaborate decoration. In September 1994 a powerful committee of both church and state leaders gave the signal for plans for the reconstruction to begin.

Opposition was of course heard from those who objected to the great expense the rebuilding would incur, or from those who wanted to retain their favourite swimming pool. But the church and the city of Moscow authorities launched a large-scale public relations drive and fund-raising campaign which proved highly successful. The Cathedral now became the symbol of the renaissance of the new Russia. By 1997 the exterior was finished in time for Moscow’s 950th birthday, celebrated with passionate Russian enthusiasm. Finally in early 2000, on the Orthodox Church’s first Christmas of the new millennium, the Cathedral was opened for public worship. A few months later, an even more impressive ceremony was held during which the last Czar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra were granted sainthood. At long last, the ruined cathedral was resurrected and the murdered czar sanctified.

JSC

2) Comment on Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania (Newsletter, November 2008, Vol . XIV, no. 11, p. 8.

The following comment has been sent in by an Oxford scholar who has recently had occasion to visit Romania several times on church business:

“The two authors, L.Stan and L Turcescu, have clearly gone through
the trauma of living through the horrible stages of Ceausescu’s rule
and eventual death, then within a year or two transferring
themselves to Canada, and taking up, no doubt with considerable
enthusiasm, the freedoms and questioning that Canada allows and
encourages. In particular they have clearly adopted a good many of
the ‘assumptions’ about human society which North Americans take for
granted, but which not only looked different in Romania when they
were there because of the Communist rule and ideology, but which are
also very different in Romania and most other countries, in Europe
and in different ways in other continents. North America has had its
specific history and ideologies which have shaped a set of
assumptions which some people, including these two, find congenial
and ‘natural’, but others are more sceptical about (including me !).
The way they approach the particular questions they choose to
give their space to – church and state, religious education in
schools, homosexuality – is entirely that of a certain sort of
North Americans. They no doubt still speak and read Romanian, but write
as outsiders rather than as insiders. It is also evident that the
great majority of the ‘scholarly’ books they refer to,
understandably enough given that they are living in Canada, are by
American authors and reflect their sets of ‘values’ and assumptions.

I don’t say this ‘against’ them, but I feel sure that most Romanians
reading them will be struck by this North American-centred approach (which I
have of course all too often met in books dealing with China,
especially with China’s Christians!). For some it may be welcome,
as illustrating how they are seen, but for many others I feel pretty
sure that they will be looked at more than a little askance, as
writers who are no longer ‘one of us’ ! And I suppose that my
long-standing search and habitual starting-point has been, and
remains, to try and understand any given society, and the people I
am meeting and hoping in some way to serve, from within their
own outlook(s) and assumptions. I may well not ‘agree’ with
some, even many, of those but it’s virtually always more important
to show people that one has understood and sympathised with them
rather than to rush into showing how differently they ‘ought’ to see
things and behave, let alone how much better they could have done
this and that if only they had listened to me !

So while I find the book, of course, interesting and at points
illuminating, it isn’t the Romania I have met and begun to love in
the people I have been with ! Where are the delights of those
‘painted monasteries’ in Moldavia whose tradition is still so alive
and kicking in the Romanian Orthodox Church, where the hundreds of
young women crowding into the nunneries and offering their time and
service to the poor (of whom there are of course still many in
almost every area), where the thrill with which the people of the
city of Sibiu so evidently welcomed the big Europe-wide Ecumenical
Assembly there a year and a bit ago now … ? I don’t doubt that
most of what these authors write about is factually ‘true’, but
there’s so much more to the life and faith of Romanians than the
things they write about, even if those deserve a lot more
exploration and deeper thinking than they mostly yet get.”

3) Dissertation abstract

Piia Latvala, Valoa itään? – Kansanlähetys ja Neuvostoliitto 1967–1973 Light to the East? – The Finnish Lutheran Mission and the Soviet Union 1967–1973.

Ms Piia Latvala, of the Theological Faculty of the University of Helsinki, Finland, recently successfully defended her doctoral thesis on the above topic. We congratulate her on her success.

The Cold War affected the lives of Christian churches, especially in Europe. Besides the official ecumenical relations between east and west, there existed unofficial activity from west to east, such as smuggling Bibles and distributing information about the severe condition of human rights in the USSR.

This study examines this kind of unofficial activity originating in Finland. It especially concentrates on the missionary work to the Soviet Union done by the Finnish Lutheran Mission (FLM, Suomen Evankelisluterilainen Kansanlähetys) founded in 1967. The work for Eastern Europe was organised through the Department for the Slavic Missions. FLM was founded within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, but it was not connected to the church on an organisational level. In addition to the strong emphasis on the Lutheran confession, FLM presented evangelical theology.

The fundamental work of the Department for the Slavic Missions was to organise the smuggling of Bibles and other Christian literature to the Soviet Union and other countries behind the Iron Curtain. No exact figures are available as to how many people supported or took part in these smuggling operations. Even today many of those involved in these operations are either reluctant or do not dare to reveal the extent of their exploits.. But already within a few years, the Department reported employing some two hundred reliable and trustworthy agents. The number of bibles these individuals took with them varied between a few dozen to fifteen hundred books at a time. They also financed several Christian radio programmes produced and aired mainly by the international Trans World Radio. The Department diversified its activity to humanitarian help by distributing material help such as clothes and shoes to the unregistered evangelical and Baptist groups, which were called the “underground churches”.

In Finland the Department focused on information services. It published its own magazine, Valoa idässä (Light in the East), 5 to 6 times per year. Through the magazine and by distributing samizdat material received from the unregistered Christian groups, it discussed and reported the violations of human rights in the Soviet Union, especially when the unregistered Christian groups were considered the victims. In the Department’s opinion, the legally registered churches and communities had lost something of their genuine Christian character. Their collaboration with the Soviet system of tyranny had perverted their true witness. They now needed to be given the unpolluted Gospel truth. This resistance against the Soviet Union was therefore not so much political as religious: the staff members of the Department were keenly motivated and revivalist young people who thought, for instance, that communism was in some way an apocalyptic world power revealed in the Bible. Consequently they unequivocally denounced the religious policies of the Soviet Union as being un-Christian and despotic, and criticized as cowardly the tactical silence of the Finnish church authorities.

Smuggling Bibles was discussed widely in the Finnish media and even in parliament and the Finnish Security Police (SUPO, Suojelupoliisi) – and in the Lutheran Church. From the church’s point of view, this kind of missionary work was understandable but bothersome. Through their ecumenical connections, the bishops knew the critical situation of churches behind the iron curtain very well, but wanted to act diplomatically and cautiously to prevent causing harm to ecumenical or political relations. As a result, the openly critical attitudes towards the Soviet Union proclaimed by these ardent missionaries caused some concern. This led the church leaders to declare that such activities were not part of the official missionary engagement of the Finnish Church.

The leftist media and members of parliament especially accused the work of the Department of being illegal and endangering relations between Finland and the Soviet Union. SUPO did not consider the work of the Department as illegal activity or as a threat to Finnish national security.

The pioneer phase of this mission ended in 1973 when its chief organizer Per-Olof Malk resigned, due mainly to internal quarrels regarding the use of the financial subsidies received. Malk was clearly a skilful propagandist in whose view this controversial mission was fully justified. The Bible’s command laid upon all Christians a duty to go forth and proclaim the truth of the Gospel to the unconverted nations.
Subsequently, the bible smuggling operations continued but were undertaken less spectacularly or flamboyantly. After 1989 they were no longer necessary.
Piia Latvala

4) Professor Nathan Stoltzfus of Florida State University writes to send us the following correction to a quote attributed to him in ‘The Rosenstrasse protest reconsidered’ (item 2b in the May, 2006 newsletter):

“A friend has brought to my attention a piece in this newsletter with a short reference to Antonia Leuger’s excellent essay (<http://aps.sulb.unisaarland.de/theologie.geschichte/inhalt/2006/11.html>http://aps.sulb.unisaarland.de/theologie.geschichte/inhalt/2006/11.html). It asserted that Wolf Gruner “takes issue with the basic contention, put forward for example by Nathan Stoltzfus, that ‘if only more people had behaved like the wives of the Rosenstrasse, the mass murder of the Jews would never have taken place’.

I have not put forth this contention and would not have made the above quote attributed to me. This mistake is reminiscent, however, of one Joachin Neander corrected in the December, 2005 issue of this newsletter (item 2). Neander refuted the charge, printed in the newsletter’s review of Antonia Leuger’s edited collection, Berlin Rosenstrasse 2-4, that the authors believed that the Rosenstrasse Protest “changed the course of history.” (<http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz/akz2512.htm>http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz/akz2512.htm)

Indeed, in a review of Gruner’s latest book, Widerstand in der Rosenstrasse, I have just corrected a similar charge. Gruner wrote that I “advocate” a thesis that more protests like those on Berlin’s Rosenstrasse would have “impeded” the Holocaust. As evidence for this assertion, Gruner cited a provocative question (an important tool of scholarship) that I had put forward, asking whether further protests might have “slowed or impeded” the annihilation. Gruner also made similar charges, including one that I claim the Nazi regime could not have quelled the protest with force, although I have always argued that the regime avoided using force in this case for tactical reasons (AHR Review 112/5, 1628,

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/112.5/br_145.html>www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/112.5/br_145.html).

In fact, I have regularly presented considerations that, had more Germans protested, the regime may well have responded more harshly. For example, in Resistance of the Heart (WW Norton, 1996, p. 260), I write: “It is possible to see the release of Jews at Rosenstrasse as a small, isolatable exception the regime made in order to move forward with its larger purposes. In this view, the Rosenstrasse protesters made an isolated, limited demand the regime could agree to, a calculable cost it could pay. The regime could count the protesters, and count their demands–about 1,700 Jews. It could be certain the Rosenstrasse Protest would end with the release of these Jews, and that the regime could then proceed with the enormous program of genocide elsewhere, where there were no protests. A more general protest against the Final Solution itself, that frustrated all of the regime’s will to genocide, would have pushed the regime into responding with brutal force, one might argue. Gutterer [Goebbels’ Under Secretary of Propaganda] implied that the result of the Rosenstrasse Protest did not necessarily indicate that larger protests would have led to further liberations of Jews.” Nathan Stoltzfus

List of books reviewed in 2008.

Anglicanism and Orthodoxy May
Austin, A., China’s Millions.The China Inland Mission and the late Qing Society April
Berdahl, D., Where the world ended. Re-unification in the German borderland September
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich: London 1933-1935 December
Boyd, R., The Witness of the Student Christian Movement April
Brinkmann, H., God’s Ambassadors. The Bruderhof in Nazi Germany November
Burleigh, M, Sacred Causes February
Damberg, W., and Liedhegener, A., Katholiken in der USA und Deutschland Jul/Aug
Daughrity, D., Bishop Stephen Neill October
Dembowski, P, Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto February
Dramm, S., Dietrich Bonhoeffer. An introduction to his thought May
V-Mann Gottes und der Abwehr? Dietrich Bonhoeffer und der Widerstand May
Faltin, L. and Wright, M., eds., The religious roots of contemporary European identity December
Gailus, M., ed., Elisabeth Schmitz November
Green, Lowell C., Lutherans against Hitler. The untold story June
Hughes, M., Conscience and conflict. Methodism, peace and war in the 20th century Jul/Aug
“Ihr ende schaut an” Evangelische Märtyrer des 20 Jahrhunderts December
Jantzen, Kyle, Faith and Fatherland. Parish politics in Hitler’s Germany June
Kammerer, G., Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienst November
Kunter, K., Erfüllte Hoffnungen und zerbrochene Träume October
Lehmann, T., Blues Music and Gospel Proclamation November
McLeod, H., Saarinen, R., and Lauha, A., North European Churches. From the Cold War to Globalization December
Paldiel, M., Churches and the Holocaust, Unholy teaching, good Samaritans and Reconciliation March
Plokhy,S. and Sysyn, F., Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine January
Ringshausen, G., Widerstand und christlicher Glaube Jul/Aug
Shuff, R .N., Searching for the true church. Brethren and Evangelicals in mid-twentieth century England Jul/Aug
Silomon, A, Der Ost-West Dialog der deutschen evangelischen Kirchen 1969-1991 October
Spicer, K. Ed., Antisemitism, Christian ambivalence and the Holocaust January
Stan, L., and Turcescu, L, Religion and Politics in post-communist Romania November
Tavard, G. H., Vatican II and the Ecumenical Way September
Webb, Pauline, World-Wide-Webb October
Wolf, H., Flammer T., and Schueler, B., eds Clemens August von Galen September
Zumholz, M. A., Volksfrömmigkeit und Katholisches Milieu April

With every good wish
John Conway

November 2008 Newsletter

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

November 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 11

Dear Friends,

This month marks the seventieth anniversary of the scandalous Nazi atrocity against the Jewish people, commonly known as the Crystal Night pogrom, during which the churches‚ failure to stand by the persecuted victims was notable, and is today seen as a symptom of their larger failure to oppose the whole Nazi system of ideological fanaticism and political oppression. But a few lone voices did protest. It is therefore perhaps fitting that this month’s reviews should be about the few courageous individuals who stood against the main stream, such as Elisabeth Schmitz, Eberhard Arnold and Pastor Paul Schneider.. Also that we should draw your attention to a new book about the striking movement in the German Evangelical Church after the war, which explicitly saw its Christian mission to bring reconciliation and repentance from Germany to the victims.

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) ed. M. Gailus, Elisabeth Schmitz
b) H. Brinkmann, God’s Ambassador. The Bruderhof in Nazi Germany
c) R. Wentorf, Paul Schneider
d) G. Kammerer, Aktion Sühnezeichen. Friedensdienst

2) Memorial Tribute to Bishop Bell by Bishop Huber of Berlin

3) Book notes,

a) Blues Music and the Gospel Proclamation
b) Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania

4) Journal issue: Religion, State and Society

1a) Ed. M .Gailus, Elisabeth Schmitz und ihre Denkschrift gegen die Judenverfolgung. Konturen einer vergessenen Biographie (1893-1977). Berlin: Wichern Verlag 2008 ISBN 978-3-88981-213-8. 230 Pp.

Heroines are seldom found in the story of the Protestant Church Struggle against National Socialism. Very probably, this is because the history was written entirely by men. But now, recognition is being given to one woman, Dr Elisabeth Schmitz, for a small but striking contribution, which was alas! ignored at the time and forgotten ever since. In 1935 she had the courage to challenge the members of her Confessing Church, led by such men as Martin Niemöller and Karl Barth, to face up the Nazis‚ increasingly violent persecution of Germany’s Jews. The Memorandum she produced for the 1935 Synod was a model of clarity and foresight, which accurately predicted the likely fate of the Jewish minority in Germany. At the same time, she called on the Church to stand by its responsibility to defend the most threatened members of society, and to protest against the criminal discrimination being practised by the Nazi government.

Such a stance was highly unpopular. Only a few colleagues in the Confessing Church shared Dr Schmitz’s views. The fact that the Memorandum was put forward by a lay woman, who held no office in the Church, cannot have enhanced her cause. It was a sign of how far Nazi propaganda had already affected church ministers that, even in 1935, the majority of the responsible pastors were averse to giving any support to Jews, or at least reluctant to show any hostility to the now increasingly popular Nazi government.

Who was Elisabeth Schmitz? These essays, written for a 2007 conference, (briefly described in a German report in our Newsletter for September 2007) provide a succinct account of her career as a school mistress, trained under such distinguished scholars as Adolf von Harnack and Friedrich Meinecke. Since women were not allowed to be ordained at that time in the Evangelical Church, she went on to teach both religion and history to senior girls in high school. Her disposition was reserved, conscientious and highly upright in the German Protestant tradition. When convinced of the correctness of her views, she could be inflexible and determined. She refused to allow her independence of mind to be compromised for the sake of personal or political advantage. With such high intellectual and moral standards, she was naturally appalled by the fanatical tone of the Nazis‚ anti-Semitic tirades, as displayed in the press, the radio and party rallies. These contradicted her sense of order, truthfulness and human compassion. These propaganda attacks and attendant violence were totally antithetical to the values she tried to teach her students. She was inspired to make her early protest particularly by the fact that a close friend of Jewish origins had been dismissed from her medical practice. Elisabeth Schmitz offered her help and hospitality, and was subsequently denounced to the Gestapo for sharing her living quarters with as member of the despised race. This accumulated poisonous atmosphere, culminating in the Crystal Night pogrom of November 1938, led to Elisabeth Schmitz’s determination to give up her teaching position, since she could no longer in conscience teach as the Nazis ordered. Fortunately she was allowed to take early retirement, and returned to teaching after the war was over.

At the time she prepared her Memorandum on behalf of the Jews in the summer of 1935, the situation of the Protestant churches, and the Confessing Church in particular, was acutely critical. The Nazis had just appointed a new Minister for Church Affairs, and threatened to seize control of church administrations. Invective and propaganda attacks against the churches, as agents of World Jewry, were increasingly common and virulent, especially in the pages of Der Stürmer, the radical newspaper distributed nation-wide by the Nazi party agencies.

Most of the conservative clergy, especially the church leaders, while deploring the extremism of Der Stürmer, sought to prove their national loyalty. None wanted an open conflict with the state, particularly not on such a unpopular and touchy subject as the treatment of the Jews. It was therefore hardly surprising that Elisabeth Schmitz’s Memorandum was not debated at the 1935 Synod meeting. Only a half-hearted resolution was passed, affirming the universal duty of the Church to offer baptism to all, regardless of race. By ignoring the wider issue of the human rights of the Jews in Germany, the Confessing Church was able to avoid the possibility of being suppressed by the Gestapo. It was a Pyrrhic victory.

Three years later, at the time of the November 1938 pogrom, Schmitz repeated her challenge. She wrote a strong letter to Pastor Helmut Gollwitzer, who was in charge of Berlin’s most prominent church in Dahlem, after the arrest and imprisonment of Pastor Martin Niemöller. In this letter she called for the mobilization of church opinion to protest against the wanton violence against the Jews, suggested that church space be made available for the orphaned or burnt-out Jewish congregations, and urged that monetary collections be taken up to alleviate Jewish suffering. None of this happened.

The text of Schmitz’s Memorandum is here printed in full, along with a postscript written some months later. Since most of the information came from the public press, it does not reveal anything new about the Nazis‚ anti-Semitic campaign. Rather, its value today consists in showing how much an engaged witness could know about the extent of the violence, hatred, intimidation and discrimination practised against the Jewish minority, and about the dire consequences being felt by these victims. It is imbued with a strong sense of indignation at the injustices being inflicted, and an equal sense of frustration that the churches failed to take timely action to put a spoke in the wheel of such outrageous activities.

This collection of essays, ably edited by Professor Manfred Gailus, is a heart-warming, if belated, tribute. But it hardly explains why Schmitz’s contribution was for so long forgotten, or even incorrectly attributed to others. Gailus suggests some of the relevant factors, but the mystery remains. It is possibly all part of that painful and reluctant process of coming to terms with the past on the part of the German Protestant Church. It is also part of the process of trying to forge a new and better relationship between the Church and the Jewish people. It is therefore good that we can now hear the pioneering but lonely voice of this courageous lay woman, Elisabeth Schmitz.

It is equally welcome news that an American filmmaker, Steven Martin, has now compiled a documentary DVD film, entitled Elisabeth of Berlin, which will shortly become available for distribution. This 60-minute English-language documentary, fills in the background of Schmitz‚ protests. Archival footage of the Crystal Night is linked to the feelings of outrage shared by such people as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Helmut Gollwitzer. The English commentary is excellently supplied by Professor David Gushee, Martin Greschat and Andreas Pangritz. An eye-witness from those days, Rudolf Weckerling, now in his 90s, makes forthrightly apt comments, and the documentary is knit together by Bishop Wolfgang Huber of Berlin. Steve Martin tells me that he is now available to show this film to interested groups or churches. Contact Vital Visions, 171a Mitchell Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830, USA.

JSC

1b) Hugo Brinkmann, God’s Ambassadors. The Bruderhof in Nazi Germany. Farmington, Pennsylvania, Robertsbridge, Sussex, England: Plough Publishing House. 2001.

Five hundred years ago, Jakob Hutter, a German Anabaptist, called on his disciples to follow the pattern of communal life described in the Acts of the Apostles, renouncing both violence and private property. These Hutterites were persecuted for their pious nonconformity and exiled. Eventually and much later, a few managed to establish colonies in remote rural areas of the United States and Canada, where they still survive.

In Germany, after the disastrous defeats of 1918, a lone but courageous and charismatic preacher, Eberhard Arnold, decided to revitalize Hutter’s ideas. He managed to establish a community, or Bruderhof, on a piece of run-down farmland in the hilly area of central Germany, near Fulda. His inspiring evangelical leadership attracted young idealists, longing to escape from the sinful world of war and capitalism, and including a number of young pacifists from Switzerland, Holland and Sweden. They eked out a living by looking after children in need, referred to them by the local authorities, or by peddling their handicrafts.

Arnold was well aware that such a ministry was both daunting and even dangerous. As he said: “To be an ambassador is something tremendous. It seems that we are nothing at all except what the King of God’s Kingdom would have us do. When we take this service upon us, we enter into mortal danger”.

This prediction was soon enough fulfilled after the Nazis took power in 1933. The Bruderhof aroused suspicion that it was a communist cell, and its declared pacifism antagonised its neighbours. Arnold’s open refusal to support the Nazis’ rearmament programme, and his declared opposition to the hate-filled antisemitism of the new regime, only led to open hostility. In November 1933, when he refused to endorse the national plebiscite requiring undying loyalty to Adolf Hitler, the result was predictable. A gang of Nazi thugs descended on the Bruderhof, searching everywhere for seditious literature or hidden armaments. By 1934 their school was forcibly closed, the foster-children’s support was cut off, their charitable status was revoked, and their assistance to homeless vagrants declared to be a menace to public order. Their economy was throttled. They were forced to evacuate their children to an Alpine refuge in Lichtenstein lest they be forcibly placed in a Nazified school.

Arnold’s apocalyptic theology had always led him to expect persecution, although he maintained a loyal attitude towards the state and its rulers. But he and his followers would not compromise on their basic beliefs. So inevitably tension rose steadily. Luckily he managed to preserve many of his sermons, addresses and letters to his supporters. These form the basis of this account, written by Hugo Brinkmann, of the Bruderhof’s sufferings at the hands of the Nazis. They have been excellently translated and published in a very small edition for an English audience by his American followers, Art and Mary Wiser, of Ulster Park, New York.

As the Nazis’ pressure on the churches to conform increased, the pastors and congregations were more and more caught in a clash of loyalties between their faith and their nation. For his part, Arnold fully shared Luther’s view of the two kingdoms: the state existed to control evil, if necessary by force; but the Church is within the sphere of absolute love. It must proclaim the spirit of unity and purity, but could have no truck with heathen Nazism.

This incompatibility became even clearer in March 1935 when Adolf Hitler reintroduced compulsory military service for all young men. In the Bruderhof, the memory of the earlier Hutterites’ sufferings for the cause of peace was evoked vividly. All the affected youth left at once for Lichtenstein, and were replaced by foreign nationals. But the Bruderhof’s prophetic witness to the power of Christian love and the need for non-violence and social justice was overwhelmed by the Nazis’ militaristic propaganda and preparations for a future war. The subsequent proclamation of the Nuremberg racial laws only increased Arnold’s sense of impending doom and disaster. And the community’s future was also imperilled by the lack of funds, the blatant hostility of the local authorities and its neighbours, and even by the failure of some of its members to live up to Arnold’s spiritual expectations.

In November 1935, Eberhard Arnold died in hospital after a botched operation to mend a broken legbone. A few months later Arnold’s successors decided to move the Bruderhof from both Germany and Lichtenstein to England. Although penniless, they were able to rent a farm property in the Cotswolds, and start all over again. Luckily the British authorities granted them refugee status and the Quakers came to their financial rescue. However, even in England, resentment and hostility against this tiny band of God’s ambassadors was evident. As the threatening clouds of war gathered, this group of Germans, pacifists and exiles was often isolated or at least cold-shouldered.

In Germany, in April 1937, by order of the Gestapo, the Bruderhof’s farm was compulsorily confiscated and the community dissolved. The few remaining members were expelled under guard, apart from three men detained in prison for alleged fraud. They were finally, after several months, released and packed off to Britain. The story of their escape to freedom makes a fitting close to this lively account of Hutterite obedience to the faith they had received and the sufferings they endured as a consequence.

JSC

1c) Rudolf Wentorf, Paul Schneider, Witness of Buchenwald, translated by Daniel Bloesch. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing 2008. 401 Pp. ISBN 978-1-57383-417-9.

Pastor Paul Schneider was murdered by the guards in Buchenwald concentration camp in July 1939. Subsequently he became commemorated as the first martyr of the German Evangelical Church to die at the hands of the Nazis. After the war his widow published a moving and widely read memoir, Der Prediger von Buchenwald, translated into English in an abbreviated version by Edwin Robertson in 1956. Luckily a much fuller biography was later published in Germany by Rudolf Wentorf, which included an almost day-to -day account of Schneider’s valiant and persistent defiance of the Gestapo and other Nazi agencies. Thanks to his assiduous research in police, state and church archives, Wentorf is able to reproduce contemporary documents which outline the Nazi tactics to get rid of this unwanted challenger to their supremacy. Schneider was a simple Rhineland pastor, who early on raised the flag of alarm at the readiness of his colleagues and parishioners to compromise with the ideological heresies of Nazism. From 1933 onwards Schneider’s steadfastness in defence of the Gospel, and his refusal to accept any deviance, was taken as a dangerous political protest by the local Nazi authorities. In fact, Schneider belonged to the wing of the Confessing Church which was largely apolitical, but staunchly dedicated to the truth upheld in the Church’s tradition. By 1937 his controversial stance, and the denunciation of some of his parishioners, had led the Gestapo to order his eviction from his parish. But he refused to leave, and, even when expelled forcibly, returned to his pastoral charge in order to fulfil his God-given responsibilities. The result was that in November 1937 he was sent to Buchenwald and placed in solitary confinement. But he there maintained his faithful witness by shouting out his prayers and sermons to any who could hear, and thus earned the description of the Pastor of Buchenwald.

It is therefore very welcome that Wentorf’s biography has now been republished for the first time in English by Regent College Publications, Vancouver, in an excellent translation by Daniel Bloesch. This makes available to a wider audience the story of Schneider’s resistance to the subtle and relentless pressure to conform imposed by the Nazis, as well as the horrendous stages of persecution which eventually led to his death. Though not as well known as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Schneider’s faithfulness will remain highly significant for all those who seek to learn from the lessons of Nazi Germany for the life and witness of the Church.

JSC

1d) Gabriele Kammerer, Aktion Sühnezeichen. Friedensdienst. Aber man kann es einfach machen. Göttingen: Lamuv Verlag 2008. 371 Pp. ISBN 978-3-88977-684-6

In 1945 only a handful of Germans was prepared to come to terms with the atrocities, violence and mass murders committed by their Nazi rulers in the preceding years, or to face up to their own collaboration and complicity. One of them was Pastor Martin Niemöller, newly released from eight years in concentration camps, who called his colleagues and parishioners to a mission of repentance. He became highly unpopular. And the 1945 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, of which he was a principal author, likewise aroused negative feelings among many churchmen. The vast majority of Germans took refuge in a blanket amnesia, looked for convenient alibis, and concealed their own participation in Nazi crimes.

It was therefore many years before the full extent of the German criminal activities, especially in Eastern Europe, became known, or the consequences recognized. Only then could more positive measures begin, seeking to restore Germany’s moral reputation. One of those most actively involved was Lothar Kreyssig, whose Christian motivation led him to seek reparation for the victims of German warfare and bloodshed. He was a Saxon provincial judge, and very active in church work. By the 1950s he had been elected as President of the German Evangelical Church’s National Synod, and was thus an influential member of the church hierarchy.

In 1958 he introduced a resolution calling on the Synod to support a programme whereby young Germans would spend a year in restoration work on behalf of the Nazis‚ victims, especially in Poland, the Soviet Union and the newly-established State of Israel. For Kreyssig, this was far more than a gesture of humanitarian goodwill. Rather it was to be a dedicated mission of reparation and reconciliation by which at least some practical measures of Christian solidarity could be expressed, especially across international borders. Too often after 1945 Germans had focussed attention on their own sufferings, and had ignored those they had inflicted on foreigners. Kreyssig was determined to put this right. He was particularly concerned to attack the self-righteousness of many Germans who had turned a blind eye to the Nazis‚ crimes. Even those who now claimed they had opposed Nazism all along should remember that they had not done enough to prevent these disasters in the first place.

This moral urge for reconciliation led Kreyssig to launch his idealistic scheme and to recruit a small band of self-conscious Christians to undertake works of practical service for the survivors in the victims‚ homelands. Only such concrete activist experiences could carry credibility, and also avoid any pretence at self-congratulation. Only thus could Germany’s moral reputation be restored, and the past crimes finally be atoned for.

Naturally such an endeavour met with bureaucratic difficulties, particularly from the communist countries, including Kreyssig’s own East German authorities, who suspected the intentions of such an explicitly Christian group. A more favourable response came from ecumenical partners in both Holland and Norway. The first group of volunteers went in August 1959 to northern Norway to construct a home for the mentally and physically handicapped. These first ventures were spontaneous but ill-prepared. Not enough care had been taken to ensure that the projects were feasible, or could be executed by well-meaning but ill-trained German youth. Too little contact had been established with the local authorities, both secular and church. There were the usual language difficulties, and personality clashes. But above all, these young people only partially caught on to Kreyssig’s vision of making them ambassadors of expiation, bearing the burden of Germany’s guilt. Many of these young people were not too enamoured of the explicit piety, with morning devotions, bible study, and evening worship, which were built into the programme. And as the years went by, it was increasingly difficult for these youngsters to feel a sense of remorse for crimes committed before they were born, and for which they felt no responsibility. Many, in fact, would cheerfully have undertaken the same kind of relief work if under secular auspices. In the long run Kreyssig’s hopes for a reinvigoration of dedicated churchmanship had to be laid aside. As Ms Kammerer notes, this German venture came to resemble other similar youth programmes such as the American Peace Corps or the British Voluntary Service Overseas, whereby the motive of reparation was replaced by reconstruction.

Inevitably Aktion Sühnezeichen was caught up in the polemics and politics of the Cold War. Kreyssig’s aim was to have his young helpers, recruited from both east and west, make a common witness for peace and reconciliation across the Iron Curtain. This hope was thwarted by the politicians. The East German teams were refused exit visas even to neighbouring Poland. Likewise the deep-rooted antagonisms between Germans and Poles, even in the churches, were not easily surmounted. The first Sühnezeichen group to undertake work in Auschwitz had to travel there individually and unobtrusively by bicycle. Their work of reconciliation in this camp was a small contribution towards changing the poisoned atmosphere in both church and politics. But it was still many years before similar resentments at home in Germany were overcome. Too often these small acts of Christian witness were attacked as “befouling their own nest” or “capitulating to the communists”. And the fact that Kreyssig and his staff were based in East Berlin, and hence, after 1961, unable to visit the projects undertaken by his West German supporters, only made for unavoidable tensions. In 1968 the first work-camp in the notorious Czech fortress of Theresientstadt was cut short by the invading Soviet troops. The message of reconciliation and peace seemed threatened by overwhelming political forces, even though now more than ever necessary.

The 1970s were a period of sobering reassessment. In East Germany Aktion Sühnezeichen was hobbled by the communist authorities, and its activities increasingly watched by the Stasi. Emphasis was placed on local work on behalf of the mentally or physically handicapped, on repair of Jewish cemeteries, or on pilgrimages to former concentration camps. In the western half of the country, greater freedom existed to promote the Aktion’s peace work. But it still aroused opposition from conservative circles. Only in the 1980s did the international consensus move towards support for peace through disarmament. But criticism also came from the Aktion’s own participants. Why did so many of these social action projects seemingly prop up the status quo, instead of radically altering the corrupting social structure? Why were the founder’s pious ideals not turned into prophetic political witness? Too often, it seemed Realpolitik guided the organization.

But the call of peace through reconciliation was too important to be abandoned. And in the 1980s new horizons opened up. In West Germany, Aktion joined with other peace groups to oppose NATO’s military policies; in East Germany, many Aktion participants were to be found in the peace groups which sprang up in local Protestant churches, and which eventually grew to be a significant political force. The overthrow of the communist regime in 1989 broke all previous patterns. After the 1990 reunification of the whole country, Aktion’s call for reconciliation was much needed, especially in the controversial union of the agency’s east and west branches. Its overseas projects were to be expanded into thirteen different countries, usually with the support of local governments and churches. But Christian solidarity with the victims of war and violence is still the group’s hallmark.

Gabriele Kammerer’s well-researched and incisively written account of the organization’s fifty years is amplified by a number of well-chosen photographs, identifying the individuals and projects involved. It is much to be hoped that an English translation could be produced, since the story of this courageous German agency for reconciliation and peace deserves to be widely known as an example for others.

JSC

2) Memorial Tribute to Bishop Bell

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Bishop George Bell of Chichester, the following tribute was written by the German Evangelical Church’s Presiding Bishop, Wolfgang Huber of Berlin:

“Your work will never be forgotten in the history of the German Church”. This was the view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer writing to his friend George Bell, the Anglican bishop of Chichester in England in 1937. He had good reasons for such praise. No other foreign church leader had shown such a friendly and intensive, yet at times critical interest in the fate of the churches and of the Christians in Germany as had George Bell. He was a valiant campaigner for peace and truth, and did not hesitate to lend the authority of his office and personality to his convictions, including matters in the political sphere. He died on October 3rd fifty years ago – a very proper cause for remembrance.

George K.A. Bell was born on February 4th 1883, the son of a clergyman. After studying theology, he served for three years as a curate in the slums of Leeds. Then came several years as Chaplain and Tutor in Oxford until 1914 when he became the private secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was given the special responsibility for international and inter-church relations. During the first world war he was much engaged in interdenominational action on behalf of the war orphans, and then – together with Archbishop Nathan Soderblom of Uppsala, Sweden – was active in organising the exchange of prisoners-of-war. These experiences led Bell, after the war, to become a champion of collaboration with the Lutheran churches, a strong advocate of the nascent ecumenical movement, and an organiser of international theological exchanges. In 1929 he was appointed Bishop of Chichester, and also from 1932 to 1934 he was President of “Life and Work”, one of the main branches of the new ecumenical movement.

The Bishop of Chichester took an active interest in the German Church Struggle from the beginning. In April 1933 he expressed publicly the ecumenical movement’s concern about the early stages of the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany. In September he circulated a strong resolution against the introduction of the so-called Aryan Paragraph, discriminating against Jews, and its adoption by sections of the German Evangelical Church. He first met Dietrich Bonhoeffer at a conference in 1931, and when Bonhoeffer became Pastor for the German Churches in London in 1933, the two men developed a strong and trusting relationship. Bonhoeffer was in fact Bell’s principal source of information about events developing in Germany. For his part, Bell was assiduous in bringing this information to a wider British public, particularly through his frequent letters to the main newspaper The Times. In contrast to some sections of British public opinion and also some leading members of the Church of England, Bell took a strong stand from 1933 onwards in support of the Confessing Church in its struggle, and against all forms of fascism.

Early on, he began to organize measures to assist refugees from Germany. After he became a member of the House of Lords in 1937, he continually urged the British Government to give increased support for such persecuted people. It is possible to suppose that his timely reporting to the British public about the arrest and trial of Martin Niemöller prevented the latter’s murder in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

When the second world war broke out, Bell threw himself into activities designed to help the refugees fleeing the continent, and also the resident Germans interned in England, as well as for British conscientious objectors. Bell was no pacifist, but he decisively and publicly repudiated the tactic of area bombing of German towns, through his passionate speeches in the House of Lords. These speeches were a direct challenge to the British Government and to large sections of public opinion. It was a sign of Bell’s courage and moral determination that he was not deterred to state his opinions and take such an unpopular stand.

George Bell was one of the decisive figures in the post-1945 world who enabled the German churches to return to the ecumenical family. He was one of the first to go back to Germany in 1945 to show his friendship for those “true” Germans who had survived. He gave a most moving sermon in a church service in the heavily bombed Marienkirche in Berlin, and was clearly deeply moved to see the conditions of the refugees crowding the platforms of the Lehrter Station in Berlin. Only two months after the war’s end, he organized a Thanksgiving Service in memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Holy Trinity Church, London. On this occasion he recounted to the congregation Bonhoeffer’s last message to his English friend: “Tell the Bishop that this is for me the end, but also the beginning of a new life. I believe with him in our universal Christian brotherhood which rises above all national interests”.

3a) Book note

Dick Pierard draws attention to a new book which he, together with Edwin Arnold at Clemson University, South Carolina, has translated and edited: Theo Lehmann, Blues Music and Gospel Proclamation. The Extraordinary Life of a Courageous East German Pastor, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2008. Born in 1934 and son of a distinguished German missiologist, Lehmann studied theology, was ordained and served as a pastor in a congregation in Chemnitz (then Karl-Marx-Stadt) of the Landeskirche of Saxony. An unabashed confessionalist, he also became a youth evangelist and incurred the constant wrath and surveillance of the State. Since reunification, he continues to work as an evangelist throughout Germany. His great interest in life is actually American black music – Negro spirituals, blues and jazz, and he published several things in the GDR on this topic, including a doctoral dissertation at Halle, “Negro Spirituals: Geschichte und Theologie,” which was then reprinted after reunification. His memoir, Freiheit wird dann sein: Aus meinem Leben, has sold widely in Germany. He is not shy of controversy and may not suit all opinions. But well worth reading.

CharRichP@aol.com

3b) L Stan and L.Turcescu, Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania, Oxford 2007. This husband and wife team of Romanian scholars, now both teaching in Canada, provides a useful survey of events in the religious sphere in Romania since the fall of its despotic, manic dictatorship in 1989. Romanians have been obliged to rethink and reshape all their public institutions so the churches have been engaged in what has proved to be a difficult struggle for self-identification and definition. The plurality of church life has been a barrier in the way of the Romanian Orthodox Church’s attempt to reclaim its position as the “national” or established church, and the legacy of its former subservience to the Communist regime still poisons relationships. Disputes over the property of other church bodies such as the long-forbidden Greek Catholics, have only made Romanian church life more complex and unsettled. Doubts remain about the Orthodox Church’s support for a democratic political society, as with its strong opposition to Romania’s joining the European Union, and its tactics in matters of education and morality give rise for concern.

JSC

4) Journal Issue: Religion, State and Society, Vol. 36, no. 3, September 2008 is devoted to six articles on the relations between religion and law in various settings, viz. The European Court of Human Rights, Bulgaria, Post-Communist Russia and Hungary, Spain, Australia and the Middle East. These papers deal with the constitutional and legal problems arising between various denominations as factors in the secular states in which they interact. The authors describe a range of models from strict separation to the established and historic church-state relationship still existing in certain countries.

With every best wish to you all,
John S.Conway