Sixty-seven essays edited by Rittner (Holocaust studies, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey) confront Christian antisemitism, and various churches' responses during and after the Holocaust.

How culpable is the Christian Church for its anti Jewish dogma. Have ideas and beliefs changed since they accepted blame for this terrible tragedy for humankind.

"In 1930, about 750,000 Jews called Romania home. At the end of World War II, approximately half of them survived. Only recently, after the fall of Communism, have details of the history of the Holocaust in Romania come to light. Ion Popa explores this history by scrutinizing the role of the Romanian Orthodox Church from 1938 to the present day. Popa unveils and questions whitewashing myths that concealed the Church's role in supporting official antisemitic policies of the Romanian government. He analyzes the Church's relationship with the Jewish community in Romania and Judaism in general, as well as with the state of Israel, and discusses the extent to which the Church recognizes its part in the persecution and destruction of Romanian Jews. Popa's highly original analysis illuminates how the Church responded to accusations regarding its involvement in the Holocaust, the part it played in buttressing the wall of Holocaust denial, and how Holocaust memory has been shaped in Romania today"--back cover.

During the period from 1933-1945 Jewish people throughoutEurope were persecuted by the Nazi regime in Germany, andsome six million were murdered. About half of those murderedwere from Poland.What is not so well known is that there were tens of thousandsof Jewish people in Europe who were associated with the Churchin one form or another. These Jewish or Hebrew Christians(officially 'non-Aryan Christians') suffered like all other Jewishpeople due to the Nazi race laws.The Jocz family from Poland fell into that category.This narrative follows the lives of Bazyli and Anna Jocz fromwhen they were born in 1880. Bazyli was murdered in 1944 andAnna was severely injured and suffered for the remainder of herlife. It also follows the lives of their sons, and in particular Jakoband Pawel.Considerable background information is provided in orderto better understand the historical and geographical contextin which the family lived, as well as the various phases of theHolocaust.What happened to the Jocz family was quite typical of whathappened to many of the Jewish or Hebrew Christians ofPoland and Europe. Many were murdered by the Nazi's and theirallies, while some survived. This book is an attempt to tell the collectivestory of this sub-group of Jewish victims of the Holocaust."Kelvin has a reputation for rigorous research and leaves no stone unturned. He uncovers another dimension to the Holocaust and one that many have missed. The Nazi fury unleashed against non Aryan Christians." (Marquess of Reading).

A groundbreaking reexamination of the Holocaust and how Germans understood their genocidal project: “Insightful [and] chilling.” —Kirkus Reviews Why exactly did the Nazis burn the Hebrew Bible everywhere in Germany on November 9, 1938? The perplexing event has not been adequately accounted for by historians in their large-scale assessments of how and why the Holocaust occurred. In this gripping new analysis, Alon Confino draws on an array of archives across three continents to propose a penetrating new assessment of one of the central moral problems of the twentieth century. To a surprising extent, Confino demonstrates, the mass murder of Jews during the war years was powerfully anticipated in the culture of the prewar years. The author shifts his focus away from the debates over what the Germans did or did not know about the Holocaust and explores instead how Germans came to conceive of the idea of a Germany without Jews. He traces the stories the Nazis told themselves—where they came from and where they were heading—and how those stories led to the conclusion that Jews must be eradicated in order for the new Nazi civilization to arise. The creation of this new empire required that Jews and Judaism be erased from Christian history, and this was the inspiration—and justification—for Kristallnacht. As Germans entertained the idea of a future world without Jews, the unimaginable became imaginable, and the unthinkable became real. “At once so disturbing and so hypnotic to read . . . Deserves the widest possible audience.” —Open Letters Monthly

How Jewish is Christianity? The question of how Jesus' followers relate to Judaism has been a matter of debate since Jesus first sparred with the Pharisees. The controversy has not abated, taking many forms over the centuries. In the decades following the Holocaust, scholars and theologians reconsidered the Jewish origins and character of Christianity, finding points of continuity. Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity advances this discussion by freshly reassessing the issues. Did Jesus intend to form a new religion? Did Paul abrogate the Jewish law? Does the New Testament condemn Judaism? How and when did Christianity split from Judaism? How should Jewish believers in Jesus relate to a largely gentile church? What meaning do the Jewish origins of Christianity have for theology and practice today? In this volume, a variety of leading scholars and theologians explore the relationship of Judaism and Christianity through biblical, historical, theological, and ecclesiological angles. This cutting-edge scholarship will enrich readers' understanding of this centuries-old debate.