5.4. Christians and Jews

The relationship between Christians and Jews is one of the areas requiring a special examination of conscience.⁸¹ “The Church’s relationship to the Jewish people is unlike the one she shares with any other religion.”⁸² Nevertheless, “the history of the relations between Jews and Christians is a tormented one... In effect, the balance of these relations over two thousand years has been quite negative.”⁸³ The hostility or diffidence of numerous Christians toward Jews in the course of time is a sad historical fact and is the cause of profound remorse for Christians aware of the fact that “Jesus was a descendent of David; that the Virgin Mary and the Apostles belonged to the Jewish people; that the Church draws sustenance from the root of that good olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild olive branches of the Gentiles (cf. Rom 11:17-24); that the Jews are our dearly beloved brothers, indeed in a certain sense they are ‘our elder brothers.’”⁸⁴

The Shoah was certainly the result of the pagan ideology that was Nazism, animated by a merciless anti-Semitism that not only despised the faith of the Jewish people, but also denied their very human dignity. Nevertheless, “it may be asked whether the Nazi persecution of the Jews was not made easier by the anti-Jewish prejudices imbedded in some Christian minds and hearts... Did Christians give every possible assistance to those being persecuted, and in particular to the persecuted Jews?”⁸⁵ There is no doubt that there were many Christians who risked their lives to save and to help their Jewish neighbors. It seems, however, also true that “alongside such courageous men and women, the spiritual resistance and concrete action of other Christians was not that which might have been expected from Christ’s followers.”⁸⁶ This fact constitutes a call to the consciences of all Christians today, so as to require “an act of repentance (teshuva),”⁸⁷ and to be a stimulus to increase efforts to be “transformed by renewal of your mind” (Rom 12:2), as well as to keep a “moral and religious memory” of the injury inflicted on the Jews. In this area, much has already been done, but this should be confirmed and deepened.