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On the Jews and Their Lies (Von den Juden und ihren Lügen) is a treatise written in January 1543 by Martin Luther, the German theologian, in which he advocated harsh persecution of the Jewish people, including that their synagogues be burned, and their houses razed and destroyed. Four centuries later, the Nazis used quotations from this pamphlet, which was cited by the publisher of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer during the Nuremberg trials, to justify the Final Solution.

Lutheran pastor Russell Briese has said that "historians are at a loss to find a direct link between the anti-semitism of Luther's time and that of Hitler's campaign." British historian Paul Johnson has called On the Jews and their Lies the "first work of modern anti-Semitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust."

Impetus

Further information: Martin Luther and the Jews

It is said that earlier in his career, Martin Luther had sympathized with the Jewish resistance to the Catholic Church., especially regarding their travails under the Papacy, declaring that "he Jews are blood-relations of our Lord, the Jews belong more to Christ than we" in the hope of converting them to Christianity. However, Dr. Paul Halsall points out, "that Luther's hatred of Jews ... was present very early on," and "not some affectation of old age." He cites Luther's Letters to Spalatin written almost 30 years before On the Jews and Their Lies as evidence of Luther's early Jew hatred.] In On the Jews and Their Lies, published three years before his death in 1546, he expressed his fear that Jews were successfully converting Christians to Judaism and wished to be identified among those in opposition to these "miserable and accursed people":

I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them

Luther stated in his introductory remarks that he was writing in response to an anti-Christian pamphlet, unidentified by historians, written by an unidentified Jew or Jews, sent to him by Count Wolfgang Schlick of Falkenau. In this treatise Luther uncritically reproduces material that had been previously written by Nicholas of Lyra (Pulcherrimae quaestiones Iudaicam perfidam in catholicam fide improbantes), Paul of Burgos (Scrutinium Scripturarum), and Anthony Margaritha (Der gantz Jüdisch glaub) against the Jews.

Robert Michael, Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth argues that:

"Luther scholars who defend, censor, or try to tone down his views on the Jews, ignore the murderous implications of Luther's antisemitism. Like the Nazis, Luther mythologized the Jews as completely evil: they should not be treated as humans and should be cast out of Germany. They could be saved if they converted to Christianity, but their demonic hostility to Christian society makes this inconceivable.

Content

In the pamphlet, Luther wrote that Jews are "nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury." Their synagogues should be set on fire, prayerbooks destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes smashed, property and money confiscated, and these "poisonous envenomed worms" drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.

Impact of the work

Historian Robert Michael has argued that there a "strong parallel" between Luther's ideas about Jews and Judaism and the anti-Semitism of most German Lutherans throughout the Holocaust.

During the twenty-five years following Luther's death, Luther's polemics had very little effect on the treatment of Jews. In the 1570s, however, Pastor Georg Nigrinus published a book, Enemy Jew and a republication of the work by Nicolas Selnecker, one of the authors of the Formula of Concord. Neither appear to have influenced either princes or the general population.

Historian Johannes Wallmann concludes that "within German Protestantism of the 19th Century ... there is practically no Lutheran theologian or church leader of any improtance who referred to Luther to support an anti-Jewish position."

Julius Streicher, the Nazi publisher of the anti-Semitic Der Stürmer, cited On the Jews and Their Lies during the Nuremberg trials.

Witness, what aims did you pursue with your speeches and your articles in Der Stuermer?

STREICHER: The speeches and articles which I wrote were meant to inform the public on a question which appeared to me one of the most important questions. I did not intend to agitate or inflame but to enlighten.

DR. MARX: Apart from your weekly journal, and particularly after the Party came into power, were there any other publications in Germany which treated the Jewish question in an anti-Semitic way?

STREICHER: Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In the book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them...

Contemporary debate

The treatise is regarded by scholars of anti-Semitism as anti-Semitic, but by many scholars of Luther as anti-Judaic rather than anti-Semitic.

Dr. Paul Halsall argues, "In his Letters to Spalatin, we can already see that Luther's hatred of Jews, best seen in this 1543 letter On the Jews and Their Lies, was not some affectation of old age, but was present very early on. Luther expected Jews to convert to his purified Christianity. When they did not, he turned violently against them."

He goes on to say that " number of points must, however, be made. The most important concerns the language used. Luther used violent and vulgar language throughout his career: he was not a man to say "manure" when he meant "shit". We do not expect religious figures to use this sort of language in the modern world, but it was not uncommon in the early 16th century. Second, although Luther's comments seem to be proto-Nazi, they are better seen as part of tradition of Medieval Christian anti-semitism. While there is little doubt that Christian anti-Semitism laid the social and cultural basis for modern anti-Semitism, modern anti-Semitism does differ in being based on pseudo-scientific notions of race. The Nazis imprisoned and killed Jews who had converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed them."

Luther historian Roland Bainton replies:

One could wish that Luther had died before ever this tract was written. Yet one must be clear as to what he was recommending and why. His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial. The supreme sin for him was the persistent rejection of God's revelation of himself in Christ. The centuries of Jewish suffering were themselves a mark of the divine displeasure. The territorial principle should be applied to the Jews. They should be compelled to leave and go to a land of their own. This was a program of enforced Zionism. But if it were not feasible, then Luther would recommend that the Jews be compelled to live from the soil. He was unwittingly proposing a return to the condition of the early Middle Ages, when the Jews had been in agriculture. Forced off the land, they had gone into commerce and, having been expelled from commerce, into money lending. Luther wished to reverse the process and thereby inadvertently would accord the Jews a more secure position than they enjoyed in his day.

In opposition to this view Dr. A.G. Myers, Professor of Religious Studies, Texas A&M University, writes, "On the Jews and Their Lies goes beyond theological anti-Judaism; it calls for state-sponsored violence against the Jews; and therefore it contributed to a historical climate of German opinion in which genocide was conceivable."

Professor Robert Michael has argued that the parallels between Luther's program and Hitler's are clear. "No one can rationally deny the parallels between Luther's program for the Jews and Hitler's. Many have denied that Luther advocated death for Jews. These people have not read The Jews and Their Lies.

Dr. Martin Bertram, the 20th Century Lutheran scholar who translated the treatise in Luther's Works notes:

"It is impossible to publish Luther's treatise today, however, without noting how similar to his proposals were the actions of the National Socialist regime in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. On the night of November 9-10, 1938, the so-called Kristallnacht, for example, 119 synagogues in all parts of Germany, together with many Jewish homes and shops, were burned to the ground."

Excerpts from On the Jews and Their Lies

• I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is the god of the world, and wherever God's word is absent he has aneasy task, not only with the weak but also with the strong. May God help us. Amen.

• He did not call them Abraham's children, but a "brood of vipers" . Oh, that was too insulting for the noble blood and race of Israel, and they declared, "He has a demon' . Our Lord also calls them a "brood of vipers"; furthermore in John 8 he states: "If you were Abraham's children ye would do what Abraham did.... You are of your father the devil. It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the devil's children, nor can they bear to hear this today.

• Therefore the blind Jews are truly stupid fools...

• Now just behold these miserable, blind, and senseless people.

• ...their blindness and arrogance are as solid as an iron mountain.

• Learn from this, dear Christian, what you are doing if you permit the blind Jews to mislead you. Then the saying will truly apply, "When a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into the pit" . You cannot learn anything from them except how to misunderstand the divine commandments...

• Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them.

• Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security.

• However, they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it. But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example of God's wrath.

• If I had to refute all the other articles of the Jewish faith, I should be obliged to write against them as much and for as long a time as they have used for inventing their lies-- that is, longer than two thousand years.

• ...Christ and his word can hardly be recognized because of the great vermin of human ordinances. However, let this suffice for the time being on their lies against doctrine or faith.

• Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such a noble, precious jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?

• Alas, it cannot be anything but the terrible wrath of God which permits anyone to sink into such abysmal, devilish, hellish, insane baseness, envy, and arrogance. If I were to avenge myself on the devil himself I should be unable to wish him such evil and misfortune as God's wrath inflicts on the Jews, compelling them to lie and to blaspheme so monstrously, in violation of their own conscience. Anyway, they have their reward for constantly giving God the lie.

• No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.

• ...but then eject them forever from this country. For, as we have heard, God's anger with them is so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!

• Over and above that we let them get rich on our sweat and blood, while we remain poor and they suck the marrow from our bones.

• I brief, dear princes and lords, those of you who have Jews under your rule-- if my counsel does not please your, find better advice, so that you and we all can be rid of the unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews, lest we become guilty sharers before God in the lies, blasphemy, the defamation, and the curses which the mad Jews indulge in so freely and wantonly against the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, this dear mother, all christians, all authority, and ourselves. Do not grant them protection, safe-conduct, or communion with us.... .With this faithful counsel and warning I wish to cleanse and exonerate my conscience.

• Let the government deal with them in this respect, as I have suggested. But whether the government acts or not, let everyone at least be guided by his own conscience and form for himself a definition or image of a Jew.

• However, we must avoid confirming them in their wanton lying, slandering, cursing, and defaming. Nor dare we make ourselves partners in their devilish ranting and raving by shielding and protecting them, by giving them food, drink, and shelter, or by other neighborly acts.

• Therefore we Christians, in turn, are obliged not to tolerate their wanton and conscious blasphemy.

• Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death.

• What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blaspemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengeance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:

• First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly - and I myself was unaware of it - will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.

• Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.

• Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them...

• Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses (Deuteronomy 17 ) in which he commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: "what they teach you in accord with the law of the Lord." Those villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people's obedience contrary to the law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison, cursing, and blasphemy. In the same way the Pope also held us captive with the declaration in Matthew 16 , "You are Peter," etc., inducing us to believe all the lies and deceptions that issued from his devilish mind. He did not teach in accord with the word of God, and therefore he forfeited the right to teach.

• Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let they stay at home...

• Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. The reason for such a measure is that, as said above, they have no other means of earning a livelihood than usury, and by it they have stolen and robbed from us all they possess. Such money should now be used in no other way than the following: Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred florins, as personal circumstances may suggest. With this he could set himself up in some occupation for the support of his poor wife and children, and the maintenance of the old or feeble. For such evil gains are cursed if they are not put to use with God's blessing in a good and worthy cause.

• Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3}. For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.

• But what will happen even if we do burn down the Jews' synagogues and forbid them publicly to praise God, to pray, to teach, to utter God's name? They will still keep doing it in secret. If we know that they are doing this in secret, it is the same as if they were doing it publicly. For our knowledge of their secret doings and our toleration of them implies that they are not secret after all and thus our conscience is encumbered with it before God.

• Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is:

• First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire. That would demonstrate to God our serious resolve and be evidence to all the world that it was in ignorance that we tolerated such houses, in which the Jews have reviled God, our dear Creator and Father, and his Son most shamefully up till now but that we have now given them their due reward.

• I wish and I ask that our rulers who have Jewish subjects exercise a sharp mercy toward these wretched people, as suggested above, to see whether this might not help (though it is doubtful). They must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in, proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying three thousand lest the whole people perish. They surely do not know what they are doing; moreover, as people possessed, they do not wish to know it, hear it, or learn it. There it would be wrong to be merciful and confirm them in their conduct. If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs, so that we do not become partakers of their abominable blasphemy and all their other vices and thus merit God's wrath and be damned with them. I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his. I am exonerated."

• My essay, I hope, will furnish a Christian (who in any case has no desire to become a Jew) with enough material not only to defend himself against the blind, venomous Jews, but also to become the foe of the Jews' malice, lying, and cursing, and to understand not only that their belief is false but that they are surely possessed by all devils. May Christ, our dear Lord, convert them mercifully and preserve us steadfastly and immovably in the knowledge of him, which is eternal life.

Notes

1. ^ Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Vol. 12, p. 318, Avalon Project, Yale Law School, April 19, 1946)
2. Briese, Russell. "Martin Luther and the Jews," Lutheran Forum 34 (2000) no. 2:30.
3. Johnson, Paul. A History of the Jews, 1987. p.242.
4. Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil (New York: Image Books, 1989), p.293.
5. Martin Luther, "That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew," Trans. Walter I. Brandt, in Luther's Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1962), 200-201, 229.
6. Pelikan, Jaroslav & Lehmann, Helmut (eds). Luther's Works. Vol. 47: "The Christian in Society" IV, Sherman, Franklin (ed) (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 121-306, especially, 130-31, 137-38.
7. ^ Michael, Robert. "Luther, Luther Scholars and the Jews." Encounter 46 (1985) no. 4:339-356 in Annotated Bibliography of Antisemitism, The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, SYSNO0016087.
8. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971)
9. Johannes Wallmann, "The Reception of Luther's Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th Century." Lutheran Quarterly ns 1(1987)No. 1:72-78.
10. Johannes Wallmann, 89.
11. Rappaport, S. "Martin Luther and the Jews," Jewish Affairs 39 (Jan 1984) 1:19-23.
12. Bainton, Roland. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville:Abingdon Press, 1978), 299.
13. ^ Halsall, Paul. "Internet Medieval Sourcebook" (Retrieved January 4 2005).
14. Bainton, 299.
15. Michael, Robert. Internet discussion log entry: "Luther's murderous program for the Jews", H-Antisemitism, February 24, 1998.
16. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 47:268, note 173.
17. Medieval Sourcebook: Martin Luther (1483-1546): The Jews and Their Lies, excerpts (1543) excerpted From Luther's Works, Volume 47: The Christian in Society IV, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). pp 268-293

English-language translations

• Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies (1543). Translated by Martin H. Bertram. Luther's Works Volume 47: The Christian in Society IV. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971.
• ___________. The Jews and Their Lies, Liberty Bell Publications, 2004. ISBN 1593640242

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• Anti-Semitism