Grim wrote: The Christian Church had strong laws against Usury for about 1500 years; during which time anyone who wanted to borrow money had to go to a Jewish money lender; from Christian Kings and landlords down.

Dear Grim,

That is not quite accurate. In 1123 at the Lateran Council the Catholic bishops decided that Christians could not lend each other money. They had done so previously. Slightly earlier the medieval guilds arose excluding Jews so there were no more Jewish goldsmiths, silversmiths and glass-blowers which were Jewish trades up to that time. Jews were also excluded by the Lateran Councils from owning land, holding office, and from being doctors and lawyers.

The money lenders were the support of the Jewish community which was impoverished by its exclusion from other trades. At that time Jews became the only money lenders in Christian Europe. The bishops knew that you have to charge interest to have banking, and you had to have banking to have economic development, otherwise there is no growth and your economy stagnates. Someone had to lend money. That someone, the bishops decided, would be the Jews.

What happened next is that Jews were not allowed to live in various cities in Europe, unless they supplied a certain number of money-lenders. If the local nobleman or bishop decided not to pay the Jew back he'd accuse the Jew of doing something terrible -- like killing a Christian baby. That way he could renege on his loans, confiscate all Jewish property, and then expel or even kill the Jews. That is how Jews were expelled from England in 1290.

Some have claimed that it was Jewish money-lending practices that engendered such actions and, indeed, were responsible for a great deal of anti-Semitism. This is myth. Jews charged an average interest rate of between 33% and 43% on loans. This is high by today's standards, but the Lombards, the Christian Italian bankers living under the nose of the Vatican, charged rates as high as 250%. The Jewish money lending monopoly was a consequence rather than a cause of Christian Jew hatred.

Philo,

Thank you for taking the time to give such a comprehensive and well articulated reply. I will reflect on what you have said.

I am fairly certain that it was claimed on an History channel documentary that the Jews have Arab ancestors.

My comment on the "Son of the Most High" also alluded to the "Son of God" and particularly Jesus, as the same. Are such "Sons" divine or in a special relationship with the divine? I guess that was ebated in the early centuries of the common era.

Dear George,

I had missed reading David f's post about the
atrocities he described in Lithuania - I
only just now read that particular post.
Painful, as it was - and shocking too. You
see, I am of Lithuanian ancestry - and my
family suffered greatly under the Soviet
occupation. My father's brother was massacred
brutally - the doctor who kept the young
man alive - so that his heart would continue to
beat as he was being tortured - was a Jew.
I won't go into the details here - suffice to
say that my uncle's fifteen year old sister
had a complete mental breakdown when she had
to identify her brother's body.
She was sent to Siberia - because of this family
connection.

Anyway, as we know, World War II produced tens of
millions of victims. Some were combatants, some
civilian casualties of the war. Others were victims
of genocide planned by the warring powers. Both
the Nazis and the Communists had committed unheard of
cruelties. Concentration camps -- on both sides of
the front - operated at a high pitch prior to and
during the war years.

The NKVD (KGB) and the Gestapo - both used the same
inhumane methods in their operations. The NKVD and
Gestapo used informers, collaborators and assistants
from among the very people they set out to enslave
or destroy. Some assisted voluntarily, while others
collaborated because of fear or weakness.

There were also, of course, numerous courageous men
and women who refused to participate in the
subjugation and destruction of the targeted groups
and individuals.

There were Jews who interceded with their lives to
save persecuted Christians, there were Christians
who died in their attempts to save Jews. They died,
some along with their entire families, or accepted
their fates in concentration camps rather than
betray their fellow men. Some are known, but most
perished and are known only to God. These heroes
embody nobility in its highest form and stand as
beacons in the otherwise bleak history of World War II.

cont'd ...

cont'd...

Among those who, out of greed or cowardice, chose to
collaborate with the evil minions of the NKVD and
the Gestapo were Christians and Jews, Germans and
Russians, members of all nations caught in the
merciless war. No faith, no nationality, no race was
free of cowards or collaborators.

Some of the villains perished, some were captured
and punished, for the most part shortly after the
conclusion of the war. Others escaped retribution,
dying, as did Stalin and Hitler -- the evil architects
themselves -- without having been brought to justice.

While half of the criminals, the Nazis, have been
pursued all over the world for their crimes, the other
half, the communist criminals, were allowed to go free.

They were in effect, given tacit permission to continue
the operation of their concentration camps, to expand
their draconian systems to include psychiatric wards,
thereby raising torture, suppression, and murder to a
science. The fact that the process persisted was vividly
disclosed to the free world by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The subject of the Holocaust in Lithuania exemplifies
the arguments of those who insist that there is no such
thing as "objective history."

In discussing the Holocaust, as in any murder case,
one camp may call for uncompromising indictment of all
deemed guilty, while another, if not denying the guilt
of the "defendant," may argue extenuating circumstances,
ranging from temporary insanity through provocation.
The moment any historian begins to look critically at
motivation, circumstances, context, or any other such
considerations, the product becomes unacceptable for
one or another camp of readers.

Survivors and victims' relatives are usually more
interested in condemnation and punishment than in
explanation. Explanations seem tantamount to
sympathizing and excusing. The determination to write
indictments in mass killings, however, all too easily
leads onto the questionable practice of stereotyping
nations. In 1941 Jews died as the victims of the
stereotypes that cast them as Communists, and Jewish
survivors of the Holocaust carried stereotypes of their
oppressors with them.

Continued stereotyping of any nation, however, can
encourage "counter-stereotyping" and the result is
usually a complete breakdown in communication.

Dear Foxy,

If we go back far enough all Jews have non-Jewish ancestors, all Christians have non-Christian ancestors and all Muslims have non-Muslim ancestors. Probably the same ancestors and we do horrible things to each other.

In the "Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956" Solzhenitsyn said:

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

Dear David f,

I think it was Golda Meir who said,

"Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it."

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn told us that -

"One can rid the world of atrocities only by
refusing to take part in them."

He also wrote about an old Russian proverb that says:

"No, don't! Don't dig up the past!
Dwell on the past and you'll lose an eye."

But the proverb goes on to say:

"Forget the past and you'll lose both eyes!"