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wnylib

(21,428 posts)
10. Please note that, in regard to slavery, Jackson, and Columbus,
Tue Jun 30, 2020, 06:47 PM
Jun 2020

I did not suggest removing them from history. I suggested removing them from places of honor and putting them in HISTORICAL museums, as part of our history.

Regarding Nazis being integral to German culture and history, nearly every step of their persecution of Jews has very long and deep roots in German history, as well as in the rest of Europe (where collaborators aided Nazis).

In Medieval Germany (and most of Europe), Jews wore identifying clothing by law. They were restricted on where they could live and what occupations they could pursue. Violations of these laws could be punished harshly. Jewish sections of cities were walled off from the rest of the city. Attacks (called pogroms) on Jewish villages and city sections resulted in looting, destruction of homes, businesses, and synogogues, and slaughters. Reasons for the attacks varied, from accusations of stealing Christian children for blood sacrifices, to riled up parishioners after Easter week sermons. Jews were accused of poisoning wells and causing the Plague. Thousands were slaughtered in Europe. In Germany, whole Jewish villages and city sections were destroyed and the entire populations slaughtered.

In the 16th century, the German monk, Martin Luther, said that Christian treatment of Jews was an obstacle to converting them. But when his own attempts to convert them failed, he said and wrote some of the most vile things about Jews that anyone had ever said. By the early 20th century, in the era of the Nazis, several Lutheran clergy had rejected Luther's anti Semitism and formed, along with Reformed clergy, the Confessing Church, in opposition to Nazis. They were attacked and imprisoned. Some died in concentration camps. But many others willingly joined the Nazi takeover of churches to form the German Christian Church.

So anti-Semitism, restrictions of clothing, movement, and occupations were a very longstanding part of German history and culture by the time of the Nazis. So was wholesale slaughter of Jews. Nazis modernized it with a cold, scientific approach. To gain power, they aroused the old anti-Semitism that lay deep in the German (and European) culture.

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