indyvidual,

Eli Wiesel was 15 years old when he and his family
were deported in May 1944 by the Hungarian gendarmerie
and the German SS and police to Auschwitz. His mother and
younger sister perished. His two older sisters survived.
The horrors stayed with him all of his life. He wrote
the book "Night," which is worth a read.

"Never shall I forget that night - the first night in camp
that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the
small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed
into smoke under a silent sky" .

There is one thing we need to know about biases. We all have
them. When we read about things in the news - it's usually
in connection with a terrible injustice - like people being
targeted because of their religion, gender, race, or ethnicity.

We tend to think of people who behave in biased ways as bad
people who take extreme actions to exclude or harm others and
none of us wants to admit to being biased.

Many biases are often, at least partly, unconscious. We're
all influenced by our own back rounds, education, experiences,
by the media, by family, friends, and even politics, and powerful
lobby groups. And they all tend to impact the way we inter-act
with the world and tend to perpetrate much of the inequality that
exists in our society.

Dear David,

Thank You for the book reference.

Paul,

Yes, the antisemitic Greens are racist.

The Jews should not feel isolated, our band of Far Right Forum Haters, hate anyone whose not like them, a white Anglo-Saxon male, over 80 conservative. Jews are just one of many on the Far Right hate list, Aboriginals, gays, women, Muslims, progressives and a recent addition Palestinians.

Hi Foxy,

Booked tickets for "Cirque Mother Africa" at QPAC Brisbane, next month, should be a great show, they're touring all over Australia for about 3 months. This will be the 3rd African show we have been to over the years, the other two in Sydney were fantastic.

Colin Barnes was on a tour promoting his book described below when Marie met him,

Jewish Christian Studies - They Conspire Against Your People (kingsdivinity.org)

“This book explores the extent to which the European churches and their theology contributed to a mindset that permitted the genocide of six million Jews during the Holocaust. Were the Catholic and Protestant churches of Europe rescuers, bystanders or facilitators?
What emerges in this historical study is a commonality of word and deed, with the evidence indicating that Christianity in Europe was surprisingly united across time, space and sectarian divides in its view of the Jewish people. The Holocaust was a progression of increasingly lethal measures: vilification, boycotts, deportation, ghettoization, and finally, mass murder.
With the exception of the latter, these stages repeated the pattern of the European churches’ own Jewish policy in the centuries and years leading up to the Holocaust. This pre-existing pattern, based on the theological view of punitive supersessionism (that God had punished the Jews and replaced them with Christianity as his new people), proved decisive in determining the European churches' responses to the unfolding Nazi programme.

Especially important is this study's treatment of Protestant perceptions of the Jewish people. To the absolute extent of church precedent, Nazi policy was supported by both Catholics and Protestants. There was some discontinuity, centring on questions of definition (were Jews defined by race or religion) and final solutions, conversion or genocide.”

I exchanged emails with him. I was impressed that here was a Christian who recognized the role that the Christian churches played in the Holocaust. Although there were heroic Christians like Dietrich Bonheoffer and Franz Jägerstätter who gave their lives opposing Nazism most Christians and Christian churches went along with the Nazi program. Bonheoffer was a Lutheran theologian who wrote The Cost of Discipleship and was hanged by the Nazis in the closing days of WW2 in Europe.

continued

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Wikipedia
Jägerstätter was a lay Catholic and a reserve sergeant in the Austrian army who refused to serve Hitler and was beheaded.

In Solitary Witness - Wikipedia tells of his sacrifice.
Unlike some other conscientious objectors, Jägerstätter “came from a social background that one would ordinarily not associate with such an overtly rebellious act." Jägerstätter was a peasant living and working in the small upper Austrian village of St. Radegund. A farmer struggling to survive in a village of farmers struggling to survive, when Jägerstätter was “presented with his orders to serve in a war he considered unjust—a war, moreover, which he felt would serve the evil purposes of an intrinsically immoral political regime—refused to comply, and in his refusal accepted the death he knew would follow.”

It was a shock to me to realize as I corresponded with Barnes that although he condemned the version of supersessionism that supported the Nazi genocide he had his own version of supersessionism. Barnes sees Judaism not as a religion in itself but a precursor and preparation for Christianity. Barnes sees Christ as the messiah that Jews have been waiting for and is a missionary to the Jews. Barnes would see Judaism disappear by Jews adopting Christianity.

Although Barnes opposes Nazism it is my opinion that his version of supersessionism is a precursor of the Nazi genocide. I believe that no human is all good or all bad. However, I also believe human beings often have a sense of self-righteousness when they are doing evil. In my opinion Barnes has that sense of self-righteousness.