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Six Million Crucifixions: How Christian Teachings About Jews Paved the Road to the Holocaust

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"Six Million Crucifixions" is an unfortunate example of working backward into history to justify a presumptive and simplistic conclusion. And maybe the most unfortunate part of it is that it gathers in one place a terrible collection of antisemitic imagery and verbiage. Wilensky's "Last Thoughts, beginning on page 307, conclude with the "would have" results of the attack on "The Church" by unidentified civil and ecclesiastical "authorities" that Wilensky, who is neither a historian nor a writer, believes could have set things right. He offers no actual practical steps that we might take, in the absence of such proceedings, to create a better atmosphere today.

Six Million Crucifixions is a scholarly work written for a lay audience--in particular a Christian audience. Wilensky promises to inform his readers why Christians are responsible for the Holocaust. Wilensky promises to name prominent Christians who could have opposed the plight of the Jews and acted to assist the Jews, but who failed to take action. Wilensky promises to name prominent Christians who acted to the detriment of the Jews. Wilensky promises to reveal the theological and systemic Christian doctrines and traditions that created the mindset of the Nazis and their collaborators.

Through out the book Wilensky makes bold assertions and allegations that many Christians may initially find offensive. Wilensky's controversial position that the early Christians got it wrong, that Jesus was not the Messiah foretold in Scripture, that Jesus was not resurrected, and that the grief stricken followers of Jesus forced prophesies to fit Jesus' life, will undoubtedly cause an uproar in the Christian community providing his detractors with a thesis to concentrate their attacks on.

However, Wilensky supports his main thesis through the presentation and analysis of primary sources: contemporary Church traditions, records from various Church Councils, the various Christian Creeds, treaties, illustrations, photographs, newspaper reports, official government documents, speeches, correspondence, sermons, judicial transcripts, radio broadcasts, and interviews. Notably missing from Wilensky's analysis are the Vatican papers from the WWII years.

Wilensky's historical analysis begins with the first Christians or the Jews who followed Jesus who he credits as the creators of Anti-Semitism. Wilensky examines the acts, laws, treaties, catechisms, theology, philosophies and motivations of men in government and the clergy as they made decisions to act or refrain from acting in ways that affected the welfare of the Jews around them.

Wilensky makes good on his promises. He names high ranking Church officials both Catholic and Protestant who propagated Anti-Semitic theology, tradition and rumor through their sermons, writings, speeches, and teachings. Among the many named are St. Jerome, Origen, Martin Luther, St. Augustine, St. Paul, Constantine, Godfrey of Bouillon, Pope Innocent III, Pope Clement VI, Pope Gregory IX, James of Aragon, Pope Paul III, Pope Innocent IV; Voltaire, Karl Marx, Pope Pius IX after the French revolution, Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII, Bishop Hudal, Walter Rauff, Father Krunoslav Draganovic, Monsignor Karl Bayer. Wilensky enumerates their acts or omissions that shaped Anti-Semitism over the centuries.

Wilensky also acknowledges the political leaders and members of the Church who stand out because they attempted and sometimes succeeded in protecting the Jews in their community. Among such clergymen and political leaders as Pope Nicholas III, King Phillip of Spain, Napoleon, Pope Pius IX before the French Revolution, Dutch Catholic Society of the Friends of Israel, Pope Alexander VI, Pope Callixtus II, Cardinal Augstyn Hlond, Bishop Clement August von Galen, Norwegian Protestant Church, Danish Lutheran Church, Greek Orthodox Bishop of Athens, Orthodox Bulgarian Synod of Bishops, German Bishop Konrad von Preysing, Bernhard Lichtenberg Provost of St.Hedwig Cathedral, Vatican legate Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Bishop of Montaubon Monsignor F.W. Theas, Archbishop of Toulouse Jules-Gerard Saliege, Cardinal Tisserant, Bishop Joseph P Hurley, The 1942Archbishop of York, the 1942 Archbishop of Canterbury.

After tying together the actions, creeds, treaties, theology, traditions, and myths directed against the Jews and perpetuated by the Christian Church over the centuries: Wilensky paints a picture of a hostile and intolerant Anti-Jewish environment through out the world wide Christian community. Since it is not Wilensky's purpose to identify the purveyors of Anti-Semitism for the purpose of casting blame, he offers advice on stemming Anti-Semitism and preventing future Holocausts. Wilensky advocates that the Vatican can break diplomatic ties with a nation that commits grave human rights violations. Wilensky suggests that the Vatican excommunicate Catholics who commit grievous human rights violations. Wilensky recommends that in the future the Vatican speak out against heinous human rights violations in clear and unambiguous language identifying the victim and those responsible for human rights violations. Wilensky proposes the revision of Christian theology so that ". . . every doctrinal and theological statement and teaching medium that deals with Jewish matter should declare in the plainest and most direct language that the Jews are not responsible for the death of Jesus, who was killed by the Roman authorities of Judea." It is Wilensky's hope that the adoption of this proposal will remove future stigmatism of the Jewish community as Christ killers.

. Wilensky presents sufficient extant historical evidence to support many of his allegations concerning the historical role of the Christian Church as purveyors of Anti-Semitism through out many centuries. Wilensky acknowledges that with the future release of the Vatican papers covering the Holocaust years, that some of his analysis may be subject to revision. Wilensky's interpretation of Scripture remains interpretation in the absence of contemporaneous documentary evidence provided by those who knew, fellowshipped with, interacted with, or otherwise had the opportunity to observe and report on the actions, words, and thoughts of the earliest Christians.

I highly recommend Six Million Crucifixions for those interested in Jewish studies in general and the Holocaust era in particular.

on this "hit piece," which presents no new scholarship. It is unfortunate that the writer chose polemics over bridge building, but I suppose he will profit more by his selected approach.

If you want to get past the anger and understand the truth about Pius XII, a far better book is "Hitler, the War, and the Pope" by Ronald J. Rychlak.

"Let those who doubt but read Rychlak, follow his exquisitely organized courtroom-like arguments. What Professor Rychlak brings to the forum are facts, not rhetoric; dates, not conjecture; evidence, not slander.... The world owes Ronald Rychlak a debt for bringing the truth to light." -- Rabbi Eric A. Silver

"I have read many books on Pius XII, and this [by Rychlak] is by far the most dispassionate in laying out the context, relevant facts, accusations, and evidence pro and con. The book is highly engaging because it is filled with so many little-known facts. The research has been prodigious. Yet the presentation is as down-to-earth as it would have to be in a courtroom.... This is a wonderfully realistic book." -- Michael Novak, George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy, American Enterprise Institute

Thankfully, Gabriel Wilensky has helped take the next step forward in establishing the larger culpability for the Holocaust that has for too long gone unreferenced. Indeed, as Wilensky makes clear it isn't some "unique" catholic failing that makes xtianity culpable, but the false doctrine itself.

Necessity has led to many bit tongues in the decades following the Holocaust. As the need to soothe guilty goyish consciences diminishes the true and proper indictment can more and more be delivered. The final truth is that beyond merely the cult adherents, all gentile humanity took part in the attempted murder of the Jewish people. Works like this give comfort that soon that true record will be established.

As soon as you read the title, you know that this book was written with an agenda. And when you read the author's statement "Also, when referring to "the Church" I mean both the Catholic and Protestant churches unless one of them is specifically identified" his scatter-shot approach to the subject is revealed early on.

This book is a collection of horrible acts done by evil people who may have professed to be Christians. However, the fact that one of Christianity's main teachings is that we are to love one another does not seem to be important here - it does not fit the author's agenda.

I just finished Gabriel Wilensky's book Six Million Crucifixions. I found it to be excellent, very well written, very clear and beautifully done research. I knew a lot of what he wrote, because I am a Holocaust Survivor but did not know the details. Especially thedetails about the Christian Churches. I had no idea they behaved as badly as they did, though I knew that they hadn't said anything andcertainly hadn't done anything to save Jews. I also knew about the escape of the perpetratos after the war with the help of the Vatican but again I knew no details. The book is clear, easy to understand and very informative. I did not find it difficult or too full of information, rather the contrary. I found it fascinating and had trouble putting it down. I only put it down when I really couldn't take any more. I loved the translations - right there - from whatever other languages were used (German, Latin, etc.). Most authors don't do that except maybe in a glossary at the back. Plus, theforeign languages were correct - which is even rarer in books today. Most authors apparently don't know the languages they use and don't check. Wilensky either knew or checked and that made it so much easier to read. I loved the pictures, especially those where past and present were presented together. It shows, or rather: they show, that nothing really has changed today. It was a great pleasure to read the book and I will keep it as one of the treasures in my library.

Gabriele Silten

"Six Million Crucifixions" begins with the gospels, which repeatedly portray Jews and Jewish leaders as "hypocrites" at best and as children of "your father the devil" at worst.
John K. Roth, in his foreword to the book, says: "Absent Christianity, no Holocaust would have taken place. Christianity alone did not cause the Holocaust, but the Christian tradition's centuries-long hostility toward Judaism and Jews was a necessary condition--the nitroglycerin in the dynamite, as Wilensky puts it--for the genocide that Nazi Germany perpetrated against the European Jews."

The charts and illustrations are stunning. The indictment seems to me successful, especially when he shows the collaboration with Nazism of the Catholic and Lutheran Churches on the ground, and of Pope Pius XII in the Vatican. Their proclamations and practices participated in perpetrating the slaughter of Jews who might otherwise have escaped. This harsh indictment is heavily supported by various illustratins, especially of Nazi posters depicting "the Jew" as demonic Christ-killer, and of photographs of priests giving Nazi salutes and otherwise endorsing Nazism.

Wilensky demonstrates that, while there were individual courageous and good Catholics and Protestants, as well as individual churches, ministers, priests, and nuns, who successfully hid or rescued hundreds or even thousands of Jews, they did so on their own initiative, from their own conscientious awareness that Jews are human, and they did so despite a complete lack of incentive from the Vatican. (Pope Pius XII, after watching silently from the Vatican windows while the thousand or so Jews of his ghetto were brought to the trains to be transported to concentration camps, where they were killed within two days, may have helped preserve the remaining Jews of Italy.)
Wilensky also makes recommendations to Christian doctrine--an amazing and daring act. Is there any chance that the church will alter its doctrine on the advice of a Jew, merely because that doctrine has resulted, over the centuries, in repeated pogroms and mass murders of Jewish communities in Europe, culminating in the Holocaust? Perhaps that depends on the response of Christians to the facts unearthed and clearly displayed in the book.

The book is carefully and thoroughly researched. The Vatican records from World War II, however, have yet to be made available.

I am compelled instead to point out, up front, the list of papal bulls charted near the end of the book. Every one of the Nazi actions and edicts is a replica of one or another papal bull, and the charts make this startlingly easy to see.

The book starts with a brief overview of key events from Jesus to World War II, and this review presents these below.
The book then chronicles specific aspects of classic historic anti-Jewish behavior of the church and of faithful Christians.
It next offers details on the Catholic and Protestant Churches during and after the Nazi era. This review abstains from telling these grim details; you will find them in the book, which then offers a section indicting actual criminal activities of clergymen and of the churches themselves.
The Epilogue tells what has happened from the end of World War II until the time the book was completed.

Wilensky uses the word "antisemitism" throughout. He begins with his difficulty in imagining how anyone can hate any group so much. How could men stand to drag groups of people to a mass grave; to shoot them at close range such that blood and bits of brain spattered on the shooter; and to continue to do this with group afer group after group, all day long? This book is the answer to that question.

He begins with the Christian feeling that the mere existence of Jesus' own people, the Jews, challenged the truth of Christianity. The Christians said that "the Jews" must be blind, or evil or both, and certainly "other". This Jewish continuance led, in the second century, to the charge of deicide, first appearing in a sermon of Bishop Saint Melito of Sardis. The real threat to Jews came with Constantine's making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and his Nicene Council and Nicene Creed, placing the crucifixion, rather than the resurrection, at the center of Christian faith and escalating the liberous blaming of the crucifixioin on "the Jews" rather than on Romans. The related hate-filled sermons incited mobs to attack synagogues during services, and produced laws excluding Jews from normal life, and expelling Jews from this or that area.

The Crusades, however, formed the terrible turning point. The mobs following Peter the Hermit in 1096, eager to avenge the death of Christ, took a murderous way along the Rhine River, murdering eleven hunded in Mainz alone, and about as many other peaceful citizens, vintners, weavers, craftsmen, in each of the other Jewish communities of Cologne, Worms, and Speyer. In the minds of tis mob, they were not attacking men, women, and children; they were attacking an imaginary entity, "the Jew," the mythological demon consistently presented to them in church sermons by their priests. They outnumbered the Jews by over ten to one, offering the choice of baptism or death. When the Jews refused baptism, the Christian mobs failed to see that their victims were merely being faithful to Gd's commandment at Sinai to be true to God alone. Instead they saw the Jewish martyrdom as "hatred" for Jesus, and shortly thereafter invented the infamous blood libel. (If you have not heard of the blood libel, you won't learn it from me, but Wilensky relates the first instance, in Norwich, England, in 1144, in all is gruesome detail, followed by the dates and places of other instances.) When the Plague hit both Christians and Jews the Jews were accused of having poisoned the wells; the well-poisoning charge was repeated in France in 1321 and "many Jews were burned at the stake" (illustrated in a medieval drawing on page 37). The Fourth Lateran Council drew up regulations against Jews such as were imitated by the Nazis. A pair of images on page 38 shows a 16th-century Jew wearing a Jew-badge and a 1943 Nazi poster showing an "evil" Jew wearing the yellow star.

Such outrages remained commonplace in Europe from then on, always fed by church sermons from the priests. Wilensky provides the occasions also when the Pope and other Christian authorities would try to protect the Jews from the violence which they had themselves stirred up with their constant accusations of Jewish "evil". Wilensky lists the book-burnings and the Inquisition. He quotes passages from the Talmud to demonstrate that it is very different from "what these Christian zealots portrayed it to be" (page 43). He lists the expulsions of Jews from England and elsewhere.

Then came Martin Luther and his tract, "The Jews and their lies," and the resultant Protestant Jew-hatred in German-speaking lands--while the Catholic Church blamed the Jews for the Protestant revolt. Wilensky shows that every element in Luther's proposed anti-Jewish program was carried out by the Nazis. The Nazis were free of any need to invent their anti-Jewish diatribes; they merely repeated what had been said from German Protestant pulpits since its publication in 1543. It is excerpted on page 52.

Wilensky includes a section on the Roman ghetto, an expression of papal power established in 1555 by grand inquisitor Gian Piero Caraffa. The ghetto, too, would be imitated by the Nazis.

When Napoleon ruled Europe, he emancipated the Jews from the ghettos, under the condition that they exist only as individuals. Amazingly, Voltaire created a way to hate Jews without Christian trappings. Wilensky gives a catalogue of Jewish poets, composers, philosophers, and Novel Prize winners which resulted from this integration of Jews into European intellectual life. Seeking even greater integration, some Jews--more than ever before--were baptized. When Napoleon fell, the forces of the old aristocracy and of the churches scapegoated the Jews for the excesses of the revolutionary era and sought to restore the Jews to their "proper" fallen condition. Thus arose the image of "the Jews" as revolutionaries. Pope Pius IX restored the Roman ghetto and rebuilt its walls.

Enough. The main section covers the Nazi era and after, replete with examples, names, dates, places, incidents. I will not list the church officials or their activities, but Wilensky list their words and their acts, and he supports all this with photos and with Nazi posters with Christian messages. He indicts the perpetrators. It is sickening that men could behave this way in the 20th century.

Finally, he suggests a remedy, a change in church doctrine, a cessation of demonization. Is this possible?

To a degree, it has already occurred in the Catholic Church with Vatican II.

And in the United States, the fundamentalist doctrine of premillinarian dispensationalism differs radically from the theology that supported the Holocaust. Christians of this persuasian are what some would call good Christians in the best sense of the word: fine decent believers whose ability to love their neighbor extends to Jews who believe in Torah (the Hebrew Bible) as well as to fellow-Christians. May their tribe increase, for if they do, future holocausts will be unthinkable and unspeakable--a thing of the past. Bless them!

Is the indictment of pre-2945 theology convincing? You decide. Read the book. Just read the book: "Six Million Crucifixions" by Gabriel Wilensky.

I cannot even begin to express my horror as I read through this well researched and documented exposition of the silent complicity--and often active betrayal and participation--of Christians in the centuries-old persecution of Jewish people.
I knew that some Christians considered that Jews were cursed because they supposedly killed Christ, and that they have scapegoated them throughout history, but I was not aware of the extent of these atrocities long before World War II. I didn't realize that the mentality of the Holocaust was not a byproduct of Hitler and the Nazis, but a long simmering fear and hatred that needed only the "right "leader at the "right" time to set it off blazing.
Having been raised a Catholic, I was deeply disturbed and ashamed when I read of the Vatican's refusal to take a stand against the horrendous injustices visited upon these people--even more so on learning that the Vatican aided Nazi war criminals in escaping after the end of the war.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is, like I was, oblivious of the extent of the wrongs that these people have suffered for the last two thousand years. I believe that only by examining and talking about the underlying beliefs and prejudices that allowed the Holocaust to occur can we even hope to ensure that such an inhuman tragedy is not repeated.

Wilensky writes like a lawyer in court, delivering exhibit after exhibit of painful evidence. He shows the direct relation of traditional Christian teaching to modern antisemitism, and the case is overwhelming. The documentation is clear, and it is well illustrated. The pictures of traditional Christian imagery posted side-by-side with Nazi propaganda demonstrate a connection which was obvious to most Christian Fascists.

Of course other writers have explored the roots and effects of Christian antisemitism. But Wilensky makes a focused presentation, demonstrating the depth and duration of anti-Jewish teaching, the incitement of hate crimes by leading Christians, their silence in the face of mass murder, and their active assistance to war criminals fleeing justice.

In his review of history, Wilensky focuses more on theological than political causes for the transformation of early Christianity--from a Jewish reform movement into a Gentile church which taught hostility to Jesus' religion. The points Wilensky chooses to make are the ones most relevant to the Holocaust: Jesus was killed by the Roman rulers of Judah, not the occupied Jewish people. The Jews of future generations did not collectively inherit guilt from somebody else's crime. The Jews of the Middle Ages were not in league with the Devil to destroy Christendom. They did not hatch the modern movements for democracy or socialism as plots to destroy church power. The Communists were not servants of a Jewish world conspiracy against Christian civilization. In promoting all these falsehoods, the Fascist leaders built on traditional Christian scapegoating of Jews for whatever was wrong.

In the view of Wilensky and many others, the war crimes trials after WWII stopped short of investigating all sectors of culprits. A small minority of military and political perpetrators were charged with crimes against humanity, but not the business or religious leaders. Wilensky details the crimes of religious leaders in terms of international law. He feels it is important for the future of religion, and the future of humanity. And he's right.

--author of Correcting Jesus

"The Christian background of persecution, discrimination, demonization, segregation, vilification and victimizations of Jews and Judaism constitute a crime against humanity," writes Gabriel Wilensky in his compelling new book Six Million Crucifixions. While this might seem a bit much for some to accept, Wilensky sets about proving it in this well written book.

He takes the reader on a journey from the death of Jesus Christ, through the early teachings of the Christian Church, through medieval superstitions, and finally to the Holocaust and the complacency of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Church in the destruction of over six million Jews by the Nazis and their helpers.

If the reader had ever doubted the attitude of the Christian Church toward the Jews, Wilensky dispels it in this well researched and well documented volume. He writes about the Christians' use of the Jews as a scapegoat down through the ages and their depiction as the "killers of Christ" and the deniers of the "Messiah." To the ignorant, persecuted, and superstitious people of the Rome of Jesus Christ, the message resonated. As the reader follows Wilensky's descriptions of what the Church did for two millennia in the name of salvation, the reader can not help but be amazed. It is even more amazing that the original portrays of the Jew still resonate today with supposedly educated people. The Nazi regime took full advantage of the position of the Christian Churches towards the Jews and turned the Church's acquisitions into the Holocaust. If we can not learn from books like Six Million Crucifixions, what fate is in store for the Jew tomorrow?

I recommend Six Million Crucifixions to anyone who is willing to put aside their religious convictions for a moment to discover the truth.