The Ecumenical Community and the Holocaust

In: The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 450, Issue 1, p. 140-152

Abstract

The ecumenical fellowship of the churches be came manifest in a special way in the work of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and its members, not only for the Christian non-Aryans, but for all persecuted Jews in Europe. In almost all of the churches there were small minorities who took up the fight for the rights of the persecuted and who tried to help the refugees. In some instances whole churches protested publicly, and thereby resisted Hitler's policy of ex termination by their word and deed. In the work for the perse cuted Jews, cooperation between Protestant member churches of the WCC and the Roman Catholic church began to be devel oped on the regional level. This work for the rescue of the Jews also led to Christian-Jewish cooperation on the national and the international level. To rescue Jewish people, Christians had to act illegally. The cooperation of the churches and the WCC with the resistance movements in the occupied countries of Europe and with national liberation movements was not born out of the theory of an abstract theology of revolution but out of the daily practicing of Christian love of one's fellowman. Finally, the persecution of the Jews stimulated among Chris tians a new and deeper understanding and a theological re- examination of the role of the people of Israel, of God's revela tion, and of the nature of the Church itself.