Gabriel Wilensky The Church & The Holocaust

I do a lot of shows in this area. Why? it is because the Holocaust represents the worst man has ever been to man. The systematic industrialized extermination of human beings had never been seen before; much less by a so called western civilization as Germany. Companies bid on providing the furnaces for the disposal of bodies in the millions. Canada faired badly by having an immigration policy towards Jews fleeing extermination by boasting "none is too many". How about the Church? Did it fair better? My guest today Gabriel Wilensky has done profound research with the attempt to answer that question. And why? Why today should we even bother to answer that question? Because it is only by understanding the origins of The Holocaust can we ever hope to slay the beast from ever raising its ugly head again. Be warned, it is rising once again right now.

Antisemitism is on the rise again. Never since the end of the Holocaust have there been so many antisemitic incidents worldwide. The world suffers from amnesia and disregarding the lessons from the past looks the other way. Film director Mel Gibson releases The Passion of the Christ, a passion play watched by more people than all the previous passion play productions put together, and equally if not more damning of the Jewish people. A senior Vatican cardinal compares the Gaza Strip with a big concentration camp. A Swedish newspaper updates the old Christian Ritual Murder canard  and accuses the Israeli Defense Forces—as a proxy for “The Jew”— of killing young Palestinians to harvest their organs. Holocaust denial has become more common, and no amount of lawsuits and debunking seem to make it disappear. Even a shunned, excommunicated Catholic bishop who Pope Benedict XVI brought back into the Catholic fold continues to openly deny the extent of the Holocaust. A pope who believes Pope Pius XII “spared no effort in intervening in their [the Jews’] favour either directly or through instructions given to other individuals or to institutions of the Catholic Church” during the war. And this is the same pope who seems to be interested in eroding the progress made by the Second Vatican Council and reverting to a more traditional version of Catholicism, a version that taught for almost two millennia that Jews were Christ-killers and the enemies of Christianity.

Six Million Crucifixions provides an overview of the historical background of key events in the history of antisemitism spanning the time between the death of Jesus up to the end of the Holocaust and beyond. The second part of the book focuses on various specific aspects of Christian Antisemitism, followed by the role of the Catholic and Protestant Churches during the Nazi era and its aftermath. The fourth part provides an overview of the criminal activities that individual clergy as well as the Churches as such may be guilty of and makes a legal study of what a potential indictment may have looked like.

Clearly, most if not all the people involved in the crimes discussed in Six Million Crucifixions are now dead so an indictment and trial as discussed in the book could not happen today. This fact only makes the injustice even worse, as the clergy who were part of the crimes committed back then got away with impunity. What we are seeing now are the consequences of what happens when crimes go unpunished and the record is not properly established the objective of this book is to present the historical background to explain how the Holocaust could have happened, and raise awareness of where antisemitism comes from and why it has not disappeared yet. Ultimately, it is up to courageous and good-hearted Christians to take a hard look at the past of their religion—as unsavory as it may be—and take what will surely be painful measures to redress the wrongs from the past.


Brent Holland Show Gabriel Wilinsky Six Million... by BrentHolland

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