When it became clear to Luther that the Jews were not convinced, he turned on these ‘poisonous envenomed worms’ in his viciously anti-Semitic work, ‘On the Jews and Their Lies’, written in 1543.
‘We are at fault in not slaying them,’ he wrote. ‘[They are] full of the devil’s faeces… which they wallow in like swine.’
Luther urged Christians to set fire to synagogues and Jewish schools, destroy their houses, confiscate their holy books, forbid rabbis to teach, abolish safe conduct for Jews on the highways since they had no business to be in the countryside, deprive them of all their gold and silver and prohibit usury or expel them from the country.
All this was ‘to be done in honour of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians’.
Four hundred years later the Nazi party displayed Luther’s pamphlet ‘On the Jews and Their Lies’ during Nuremberg rallies. Hitler called Luther a great warrior, true statesman, and reformer. Himmler was also an admirer.
Selina O’Grady
Taken from: Mano Chil
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