Book in Focus
Teaching the Shoah"/>
  • "Controversies in Medicine and Neuroscience: Through the Prism of History, Neurobiology, and Bioethics (2023) is well worth reading and studying. It should be standard on all doctor’s bookshelves and among the interested laymen."

    - Russell L. Blaylock, President of Theoretical Neuroscience Research

05th April 2023

Book in Focus
Teaching the Shoah

Mandate and Momentum

Edited by Zev Garber and Kenneth L. Hanson


Antisemitism, Anti-Judaism

Eli Wiesel once expressed concern that within a single generation the tragic events of the Shoah/Holocaust might no longer be remembered. He was wrong. Today, there is arguably more interest in the unparalleled destruction unleashed by the Nazi terror than ever before. In the media, in film and in print, the Holocaust remains a central memory, perhaps the most salient memory of the twentieth century. Understandably, teaching the Shoah is especially relevant in the twenty-first century, with Holocaust education being particularly germane when it comes to combating the scourge of contemporary antisemitism.

To be sure, while the Shoah continues to be memorialized, the phenomenon of antisemitism shows no signs of abatement. There is no shortage of anti-Jewish rhetoric in public discourse, which makes teaching the Shoah all the more consequential. When it comes to students, many if not most assume that antisemitism is proverbially “as old as the hills.” It must be explained, to the contrary, that this is not the case. In fact, it is not strictly correct to speak of antisemitism, or more correctly anti-Judaism, before the birth of Christianity. For many students of sincere Christian faith, this is a difficult reality to convey, and equally difficult to accept.

Moreover, one could not properly call anti-Jewish incidents in the Greco-Roman world antisemitism. Indeed, the ancient world was, by and large, a fairly tolerant place. While there was occasional hostility against Jews in Greco-Roman society, there was also a degree of admiration for Jews that took root in the ancient classical world, with many choosing conversion to the Jewish faith. With the birth of Christianity, however, new and sinister currents of anti-Jewish bombast began to emerge, as the crucifixion of Jesus came to be blamed on the Jewish people.

In Christian preaching and teaching on the Jews, Catholic Saints (including Augustine, John Chrysostom, and Thomas Aquinas) and Protestant Reformers (such as John Calvin and Martin Luther) appear united in their teaching of contempt for the Jewish way, contrasting it with God’s grace and love. It was the venerable St. Augustine who declared: “Judaism, since Christ, is a corruption; indeed, Judas is the image of the Jewish people: their understanding of Scripture is carnal; they bear the guilt for the death of the Savior.” He also wrote: “Throughout all nations there have been scattered abroad the Jews, witnesses of their own iniquity and our truth.” Sadly, such words were matched with action, resulting in the systematic exclusion of Jews from Christian society across Europe. The late Christian theologian Franklin Littell stated: “I think that Christian antisemitism laid foundations, a ‘bottom layer’ if you will, not only in Germany but in all of Christendom, so-called, on which cultural stereotypes and prejudices were then built as a second layer.”

Antisemitism, which began as anti-Judaism, was of course religious in nature. However, after centuries of anti-Jewish agitation in Christian Europe, motivated by the charge that the Jews are “Christ killers,” the phenomenon shifted in the nineteenth century from religious to racial. Jewishness had to be defined as something in the blood, for which no Christian conversion could atone. Secular European culture inherited its antisemitism from its religious past, but it was now reframed in Darwinian terms, as a kind of survival of the fittest. This was pointed out by Richard Weikart, a history professor at Cal State University, in his book: From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany.

The so-called father of modern antisemitism was a disillusioned democratic German revolutionary named Wilhelm Marr. According to Marr, antisemitism must focus on the racial, not the religious characteristics of Jews. In 1879 his book, The Victory of Judaism over Germandom, was published. Contrary to many other antisemitic tracts, Marr’s analysis of the “Jewish Question” posits “the world-historical triumph of Jewry” and announces “the news of a lost battle.” His text concludes with the resounding words, “Finis Germaniae!” (“Germany’s end!”). But for antisemitism it was only the beginning.

What Franklin Littell called “cultural stereotypes and prejudices” were perpetuated by the most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times, called The Protocols of Elders of Zion. It was purported to consist of conversations among a secretive cabal of Jewish financial moguls, intent on dominating the world. Not long after the Russian Revolution of 1917, The Protocols surfaced across Europe, having been carried by anti-Bolshevik émigrés. It also appeared in the United States, South America, and Japan, along with an Arabic translation in the 1920s. At the same time, automobile magnet Henry Ford published a series of articles based on The Protocols in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. A book that included these articles, called The International Jew, was highly praised by none other than Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels.

The Protocols continue to circulate around the world today. It should come as no surprise when Kanye West (who now goes by Ye) essentially declared open season on Jews, tweeting that he would go “death con 3 on Jewish people.” DEFCON (not “death con”) is an abbreviation of the term Defense Readiness Condition, used to measure safety alerts, with five levels in total. DEFCON 1 is the most serious, signaling nuclear war. The Anti-Defamation League said his remarks use “age-old anti-Semitic myths about Jewish greed and power and control of the entertainment industry.”

Antisemitism today finds a political home on both the right and the left. In February 2019, Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Congresswoman known for her left-leaning views, tweeted that US support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins” (a reference to the $100 bill, adorned by Benjamin Franklin’s face). In another tweet, Omar named the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, saying that it was funding Republican support for Israel. There was bipartisan backlash, and Omar was widely accused of anti-Semitic speech.

After World War II, antisemitism is not the same as earlier expressions of anti-Jewish hatred, but arguably it is not different either. Not the same because it has spread across radicalized portions of the Arab/ Islamic world, rather than being headquartered in old Europe. Not different because it has been imported back into Europe, being found in ever more virulent forms among the continent’s Muslim population, and fanning out to non-Muslim communities as well. As Phyllis Chesler points out in her 2005 book The New Anti-Semitism, this old-fashioned hatred has become newly fashionable, even politically correct, threatening the Jews of the world, America and Western civilization. Today, lethal activism against the Jews often takes the form of anti-Zionism.

Some say that antisemitism is back with a vengeance. By the same token, however, it never actually abated. Multiple disturbing events witnessed around the world today certainly echo the Nazi reign of terror and all the more beg for Shoah education. Synagogues have been torched or shot up with worshippers inside; Jewish cemeteries have been defaced; Jews have been attacked on the streets. No, this is not Germany in the 1930s. It is continental Europe and the United States, and it is happening today. Welcome to the twenty-first century.

Christianity and Christendom

The subject of the Shoah, which is to say the destruction of the Jews of Europe, when linked to the attempts by the state of Nazi Germany to destroy the Europeans during World War II, is one of great moral significance in the history of human civilization. A major objective in compiling Teaching the Shoah may be explained thusly: tribalism, racism, and revisionist extremism are on the rise, and the importance of the Shoah is, therefore, descending before the general public. This book aims to offer a plethora of teaching suggestions and topical recommendations to stabilize and perpetuate Shoah education. Take the Shoah and papal symbology, for example.  

In the year 1095 Pope Urban II proclaimed a military expedition against the Muslims to recover Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher. The following year, in the spring of 1096, bands of burghers, adventurers, run-away serfs, and criminals, led by zealous monks and soldiers, ravaged the historic Jewish communities of Speyer, Worms, Trier, and Cologne on their way to Jerusalem. The murderous mob was fed on the slogan, “kill a Jew, and save your soul.” Nazi Germany tapped into theological antisemitism and applied this hatred to the murder of Jews. In a post-Auschwitz age, however, the Roman Catholic Church confronted and fully rejected Christian imperialism, which validated and intensified Christian antisemitism, through the advocacy of reconciliation and fraternity with the Jewish People. The Second Vatican Council's 1965 declaration, "Nostra Aetate," was the first document in this church's history that takes seriously the Jews as God's ongoing covenantal people, and whom the Holy See, in its understanding of God's Word in Scripture and tradition, is morally bound to defend and support. Indeed, ever since 1965, Catholic efforts to combat worldwide antisemitism, teach the Shoah and its lessons, and to reconcile the Vatican with the State of Israel are impressive.[1]                                                                                                                                        

Many apologetica and polemica found in centuries of Vatican supersessionist teaching are now corrected. Jews are not seen as "ancient" Israel; the Hebrew Bible is not referred to as the “Old” Covenant; and antisemitism is soundly condemned. Still, not all facets of the replacement theology are properly focused upon nor criticized in a scholarly fashion. For example, at the beatification ceremony of Edith Stein (Carmelite nun, Sister Teresa), on May 1, 1987, Pope John Paul II invoked, "Salvation is from the Jews," but in the Johanine context this is limited by salvation in the spirit and in truth, that is to say, in Christ.[2] Or his comments following a Jewish incident at the Carmelite convent built in the vicinity of Auschwitz that suggest Jews have failed in their divinely charged mission.[3] Also, why the heavens did not darken over the heart of Christendom during the Shoah is explained in Christ-like image; that is to say, God's presence in suffering. Alas, from my Jewish perspective, this proclamation is understandable but not accepted.  

Nonetheless, Pope John Paul II was a confessing Christian, committed to and engaged in teshuvah (repentance, return). Most memorably, in his powerful talk at Yad Vashem, he said that “we wish to remember (the Shoah) to ensure that never again will evil prevail, as it did for millions of innocent victims of Nazism.” His profound identification with Jewish suffering at Christian hands was also in the note he left at the Western Wall (March 26, 2000): “God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer and, asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”   

Confronting the legacy of religious anti-Judaism and racial/ethnic antisemitism is a requisite for the Church’s reconciliation with the Jewish People. In this context, when Pope Benedict XVI, the first German pope in 500 years, was in Germany for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Youth Day (August 18-21, 2005), he visited the synagogue in Cologne that was destroyed by the Nazis. On this occasion, he joined the congregation in Hebrew prayer. In his address, he recalled the words of his predecessor for the liberation of Auschwitz (15 January 2005) and remembered the crime committed against seven thousand named Cologne individuals during the Nazi era; in the words of Nostra Aetate, he deplored “feelings of hatred, persecutions and demonstrations of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at whatever time and by whomsoever” (No.4). He also affirmed that the Nazi’s racist ideology derived from neo-paganism, which did not recognize the holiness of God, and “consequently contempt was shown for the sacredness of human life,” created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26).

Arguably, deep-rooted antisemitism is the matrix around which the crooked cross of the Kingdom of the Night is spun. But deep-seeded Christian “teaching of contempt” contributed immeasurably to the Endlösung. Disturbingly, in his visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau (May 28, 2006), Pope Benedict XVI failed to condemn the participatory role of Catholic and Protestant leadership (religious and secular), which included German and Polish bishops in carrying forth des Führers Wunsch. In his public meditation at Jewry’s greatest death field, he said that “the rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people,” but failed to see this in racist terms. Instead, he Christianized the Shoah. He began with a Jewish thought (“Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How can you tolerate all this?”), and proceeded to condemn a ruthless state policy, guided by “spurious and godless reason,” which “used and abused” the German nation, which ultimately was an attack of the Christian faith. Not a proclamation of conscious malice, but a misguided spiritual soliloquy slightly tinged with historical revisionism.

On Rosh Chodesh Sivan 5766 (May 28, 2006), in remembering the Event, the German Pope made an errant mistake.[4] Similarly, misdirected meaning may be understood in Pope Francis’s delivered statement during his visit to Auschwitz (July 29, 2016): “Lord, have pity on your people. Lord, forgive so much cruelty.” Still we ought not to condemn but teach and correct.

[1] Relevant documents include We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (1998); The Pontifical Biblical Commission Statement on the Jewish People and its Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible (2002); and the Reflections on Covenant and Mission issued by the Consultation of the National Council of Synagogues and the Bishops Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs (August 12, 2002). See Zev Garber, "Religious Intolerance and Prejudice: What's Love Got To Do With It?" in James Moore, ed., Post-Shoah Dialogues: Re-thinking Our Texts Together (Lanham, MD: 2004) 181-193.

[2] See Chapter 5 in Zev Garber, Shoah: The Paradigmatic Genocide (Lanham, MD: UPA 1994), and discussed in William Cardinal Keeler's "Advisory on the Implications for Catholic-Jewish relations of the Canonization of St. Edith Stein" (September, 1998). 

[3] See “The Furor Over the Auschwitz Convent: The Inside and Outside of the Language of Bias,” in Z. Garber and B. Zuckerman, Double Takes: Thinking and Rethinking Issues of Modern Judaism in Ancient Contexts (Lanham, MD: 2004) 57-78.

[4] Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022) passed on December 31, 2022 at 9:30 AM at his residency, Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, located in the Vatican. His reported last words, “Lord, I love you,” mirror his Christian belief and Church commitment.


Zev Garber is Emeritus Professor and Chair of Jewish Studies and Philosophy at Los Angeles Valley College. He has served as Rosenthal Professor of Judaic Studies at Case Western Reserve University, USA, and as President of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew. He has authored hundreds of articles and reviews, and his publications include 16 scholarly books, including Judaism and Jesus (2020) and The Annotated Passover Haggadah (2021).

Kenneth L. Hanson is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the University of Central Florida Judaic Studies Program. He earned a PhD in Hebrew Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, in 1991. His many scholarly articles, his monograph, Hebraic Luke, and his co-written Judaism and Jesus focus on the Second Jewish Commonwealth, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the historical Jesus and Jewish Christianity. He has also published several books of popular scholarship, including Dead Sea Scrolls: The Untold Story and Secrets from the Lost Bible.


Teaching the Shoah: Mandate and Momentum is available now at a 25% discount. Enter code PROMO25 to redeem.

Read Extract