“Although the Crusades were directed against the Muslims in the East,” says The Encyclopedia of Religion, “the zeal of the Crusaders was exercised on the Jews who lived in the lands from which the Crusaders were recruited, that is, in Europe. A popular motif among the Crusaders was vengeance for the
death of Jesus, and the Jews became the first victims. Persecution of the Jews occurred in Rouen in 1096, followed quickly by massacres in Worms, Mainz, and Cologne.” This was but a forerunner of the anti-Semitic spirit of the Holocaust days of Nazi Germany.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church presented itself as the true religion. However, the Jewish people had never relinquished their claim to being the chosen people of God. The inability of the church to convince the Jews of the need to convert led to frustration and frequently to violence and persecution. During the Crusades tens of thousands of Jews were massacred or burned at the stake when given the choice between baptism or death. In many lands church-inspired anti-Semitism was the order of the day.
A different spirit, though, prevailed in Catholic Spain of the 12th and 13th centuries. Jews were allowed religious liberty—as long as they did not attack the Christian faith—and were even given important positions within the king’s court. But after about a century of such favor, Dominican priests took steps to lessen the Jewish influence in society and to convert the Jews to Catholicism. -- " "Nahmanides--Did He Refute Christianity", in 4/15/1997 Watchtower
While intolerance is invariably associated with feelings of superiority, these, more likely than not, are only superficial; underneath lies a feeling of insecurity, of inferiority; in fact, a fear because of weakness. Thus the campaign of anti-Semitism of the Nazis was so successful for the reason that so many German “Aryans” feared the Jews because of their achievements in the fields of finance, science and the arts. The same may even be said of the current world-wide racial intolerance; it is coupled with fear of harm. Not, in this instance, because of achievements but because of the numerical superiority of these other races." -- "Intolerance Is A Sign of Weakness", in 6/01/59 Watchtower magazine
# Hitler hated ANYONE whom he PERCEIVED as a threat ...
in any Way, Shape, or Form!
"History reveals that at the outset of Hitler’s persecution of German Jews, Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich preached sermons in which he defended the Jews. Other heroic clerics condemned outright the Nazi laws which forbade intermarriage between “Aryans” and Jews. After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Hitler closed Catholic schools, suppressed the Catholic press, and, in Poland, closed all convents, monasteries, and seminaries ..."
From what I understand, Hitler actually made a deal with the Catholic church --(He was baptized in said church During WW2)-- that it would become the state religion when Germany 'won the war' ...
The Enciclopedia del Novecento, edited by the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia, discusses tensions between Hitler’s Nazi regime and the Roman Catholic Church under the heading “National Socialism.” This authority states: “But since the episcopacy, after agreeing to an unusually obliging concordat [with the Nazis], was hesitant to go openly against the regime, and since Secretary of State cardinal Pacelli (later pope Pius XII) looked favorably on the anti-Bolshevik aspect of the Third Reich . . . the tension never exploded into a formal rupture. . . . Nevertheless relations between the regime and the churches, who avoided absolutely uttering a word against the persecution of Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses, were in a state of suspension, since Hitler, against Bormann’s view, forbade actions clearly anticlerical until the war would be over. . . . The majority of the clergy of the two creeds, [Lutheran and Catholic] maintained behavior that was outwardly loyal to the regime . . . In foreign politics the conciliatory attitude of the Vatican was of valid support to the regime, especially during the stage of its rise to power.”--Volume IV, page 519.
DURING the pope’s visit to Germany last May, he referred to “the hardships the Church faced in the Nazi era.” The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported this, then added: “He failed to mention that some leading Catholic clergymen were lacking in courage, preaching sermons in support of denominational schools, but not against persecution of the Jews.” (1987 news)
"Catholic Church Seeks Forgiveness" -- (4/22/98 wtw news)
The Roman Catholic Church in France has issued a formal “Declaration of Repentance,” asking God and the Jewish people for forgiveness for the “indifference” the Catholic Church showed toward the persecution of Jews under France’s wartime Vichy government. From 1940 to 1944, more than 75,000 Jews were arrested and deported from France to Nazi death camps. In a statement read by Archbishop Olivier de Berranger, the church admitted that it had allowed its own interests “to obscure the biblical imperative of respect for every human being created in the image of God,” reports the French newspaper Le Monde. Although a handful of French clergy spoke out in favor of the Jews, the majority supported the Vichy government and its policies. The declaration stated in part: “The church must recognize that in regard to the persecution of the Jews, and especially in regard to manifold anti-Semitic measures decreed by the Vichy authorities, indifference by far prevailed over indignation. Silence was the rule, and words in favor of the victims the exception. . . . Today, we confess that this silence was a mistake. We also recognize that the church in France failed in its mission as the educator of people’s consciences.”
"Scriptures show that there is such a thing as community responsibility. Thus in ancient Israel the older men of a city had to take certain action to absolve their city from bloodguilt in the case of an unsolved murder, for the entire city was held responsible. (Deut. 21:1-9) For the same reason the entire tribe of Benjamin was adjudged guilty for refusing to surrender the good-for-nothing men of Gibeah who had abused to the death a certain Levite’s concubine. (Judg. 20:8-48) In fact, such responsibility is recognized even in modern times; an example being the way West Germany, --though now democratic-- has voluntarily chosen to indemnify the Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution."
Simultaneous with bitter persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, hostility against Jehovah’s witnesses flared up.
In his book entitled “The Nazi State,” Professor Ebenstein of Princeton University wrote concerning Jehovah’s witnesses: “When the witnesses did not give up the struggle for their religious convictions, a campaign of terror was launched against them which surpassed anything perpetrated against other victims of Nazism in Germany. . . . The sufferings of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the camps were even worse than those meted out to Jews, pacifists or Communists. Small as the sect is, each member seems to be a fortress which can be destroyed but never taken.” Also regarding persecution of Jehovah’s witnesses, Richard Mathison states in his book God Is a Millionaire: “All this persecution has worn well. . . . And, perhaps, the sternly conventional have a lesson to learn from the unyielding courage of this persecuted minority. During the Korean War, the products of easy Protestantism, of our military schools and our better colleges cracked by the score under the stress and blandishments of Communist brainwashing. A Pentagon study of the problem brought forth a red-faced conclusion: Those few Jehovah’s Witnesses who ended up as prisoners of war . . . withstood to a man the scientific, psychological efforts to convert them to Communism--better than a number of patriotic West Pointers.”
In 1933, there were about 25,000 of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany. Thousands of them were among the first people to be thrown into Nazi camps and prisons. They declared their neutrality as Christians toward all kinds of political and military activity. They did not heil Hitler. They refused to accept the Nazi racist ideology and to share in Hitler’s war machine. About 2,000 died, more than 250 of them by execution.
Furthermore, Witness prisoners helped fellow prisoners to endure --including Jews and others-- by instilling Bible-based hope in them and by sharing whatever they had with sick and weak ones, often offering some of their last piece of bread. During the early years of Nazi persecution, they also smuggled out information about the existence of concentration camps and about what was going on in them. Since then, in their globally circulated magazines, The Watchtower and Awake!, they have published numerous articles dealing with Nazi atrocities as well as survivors’ life stories.
A church magazine in Germany charged that the Witnesses and the Jews were coconspirators in revolutionary movements. In response, the April 15, 1930, German edition of The Golden Age (forerunner of Awake!) stated: "We have no reason to regard this false accusation as an insult—as we are convinced that the Jew is at least as valuable a person as a nominal Christian; but we reject the above untruth of the church tabloid because it is aimed at deprecating our work, as if it were being done not for the sake of the Gospel but for the Jews."
Thus, professor of history John Weiss wrote: "The Witnesses were free of German racial nationalism and had not brooded for centuries over the failure of the Jews to convert.
# Jews were persecuted for their race, whereas JWs were persecuted for their chosen course in life. JWs were the only ones persecuted who could have signed themselves out of their 'persecuted circumstances'.
It was claimed that the Jews & JWs were collaborating against the government, but that was never the case.
It was claimed that JWs had a particular interest in the Jews, but that was not the case, either.
In our own time, anti-Semitism in Christendom culminated in the Nazi Holocaust. Though many factors were involved, religious hatred cannot be ignored as one of the main ones. And if some in Christendom would deny this, the fact that “Christians,” both Catholics and Protestants, were among the ones that did the killing or condoned it is undeniable. Elie Wiesel sums up the Jewish view in his book A Jew Today: “How is one to explain that neither Hitler nor Himmler was ever excommunicated by the church? That Pius XII never thought it necessary, not to say indispensable, to condemn Auschwitz and Treblinka? That among the S.S. a large proportion were believers who remained faithful to their Christian ties to the end? That there were killers who went to confession between massacres? And that they all came from Christian families and had received a Christian education?” Therefore, just how much faith could Jewish people be expected to demonstrate in someone whose name was for centuries connected with every humiliation and blow that they received?
Between 1980 and 1996, John Paul II ‘recognized the Church’s historic faults or asked forgiveness’ at least 94 times, says Vatican commentator Luigi Accattoli in his book Quando il papa chiede perdono (When the Pope Asks Forgiveness). According to Accattoli, “in the Catholic Church, only the pope can rightly make a mea culpa.” And this he has done, referring to the most controversial pages of Catholic history---the Crusades, wars, support of dictatorships, division in the churches, anti-Semitism, the Inquisitions, the Mafia, and racism. In a memorandum sent in 1994 to the cardinals (which is considered by some to be the most important document of the pontificate), John Paul II proposed “a general and millennial confession of sins.”
Several prelates have followed the pope’s example. In December 1994 the Italian newspaper Il Giornale reported: “Many American bishops appeared on television and publicly asked forgiveness.” For what? For underestimating the problem of pedophile priests, to the detriment of many young victims. In January 1995 the newspaper La Repubblica reported on “a gesture unprecedented in the history of contemporary Catholicism”—the problem of Pope Pius XII’s silence in connection with the Holocaust was addressed. In January 1995 the same newspaper reported that the German episcopate asked forgiveness for the “many faults” of Roman Catholics who supported the crimes of the Nazis.
--"The Churches Confess", in 3/01/98 Watchtower magazine
# The above are a few excerpts of what I found on the subject. Clearly, the Catholic church played a large part in anti-semitism.
Below are links to a few of the online articles that apply to your question:
Christendom Has Betrayed God and the Bible :
... Unbiblical Doctrines + Ungodly Actions = Not Christian http://www.watchtower.org/library/pr/article_04.htm
Whose Century Was It? http://www.watchtower.org/e/20030115/article_01.htm
Who Really Rules the World ... ?
http://www.watchtower.org/library/t22/who_rules.htm
Advanced On-site Search
(For more info, or, when a link becomes modified.) http://www.watchtower.org/search/search_e.htm