The Grey Book / A collection of protests against anti-semitism and the persecution of Jews issued by non-Roman Catholic churches and church leaders during Hitlers rule

Copyright (C) 1969 Johan M. Snoek.
Produced by the nephew of the author.
Van Gorcum & Comp. N.V. dr. H.J. Prakke & H.M.G. Prakke—Assen, 1969
INTRODUCTION (by Uriel Tal)
INTRODUCTION (by Uriel Tal)
The protests of the non-Roman Catholic Churches against the persecution and extermination of the Jews during the Nazi period, carefully compiled and amply documented in this volume, possess a significance that is not confined to the history of Christian-Jewish relations. They constitute an important chapter in the history of Christianity itself in that they reveal the deeper aspects of the Church's antagonism to the anti-religious and hence anti-Christian character of Nazi anti-semitism. The well-attested facts presented to us in this volume are a clear confirmation of the Church's reputation of Nazi doctrines, not only when these doctrines were directed against the Jews but, first and foremost, when they threatened the very existence of the Church itself, both as a system of theological doctrines and beliefs and as an historical institution. The Church regarded freedom, freedom of man as well as its own, as an inalienable right rooted in the nature of man as a rational being created in God's image. Hence, when the Church was deprived at the right of self-determination, it felt its very existence endangered, and it was then that it recognized the full symbolic import of Jewish persecution. This view was plainly set forth at the beginning of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazi-regime in Holland, by D. J. Slotemaker de Bruine, Protestant pastor and Minister of State, who declared:
Towards the end of the period that is dealt with in the sources collected in this volume, in the year 1943, we also meet with a clear expression of the Church's opposition to this pseudo-religious and pseudo-messianic character of Nazism in the Pastoral concerning National Socialist Philosophy that was sent in Holland:
… to parochial church councillors to give them the necessary basis for their opposition in the struggle against National Socialist ideology, and especially against the intangible, but all the more dangerous religious ideas and expressions of National Socialism which will exercise an influence even after the war.