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Theodor Lessing was a German-Jewish philosopher, Zionist, Communist and member of the Prager Kreis. He wrote psychological studies of Judaism and influenced with his main philosophical works Geschichte als Sinngebung des Sinnlosen (1919) and Europa und Asien (1918, and 1924) the German speaking scholars and contemporaries in Germany and elsewhere. He was killed by the Nazis in 1933 as one of the first victims of National Socialism.
Vergiftetes Kulturerbe
(2020)
Medieval sculptures of so-called, Jew-Sows" inside and outside famous Church buildings, especially in the German-speaking countries, have a disastrous tradition and a poisoning impact until today. There are sharp controversies now on how to deal with these "unappetizing" sculptures, visible for example at the City church of Wittenberg, the town where protestant reformer Martin Luther had lived and worked. But the problem goes deeper. Obscene and perfidious representations of Jews, as they were usual in Christian-dominated Europe over centuries, have also penetrated the thought world and language use until today. Swearwords like "Jew-Sow" and "Jew-Pig" are used in order to attack and discredit Jews, non-Jews and disliked coevals. New strategies of combatting this "poisoning traditions" are needed. This article also refers to the roots of early Christian Jew-hatred and recommends an impartial critical discussion on relevant anti-Jewish passages in the Christian Bible.
A particularly dark chapter in the history of European-Jewish relations during the "Third Reich" involves the cooperation of individual Jewish Community leaders and functionaries with Nazi authorities, in particular the cooperation between a few single Jewish Community leaders and the Gestapo. This "cooperation" was partially born of the overall coercion, but in some cases was also marked by denunciation and betrayal. In order to avoid being deported themselves and to save their own skins, there were isolated cases of Jewish men and women who agreed to track down other Jews and hand them over to the authorities, knowing full well what they were doing.