ABSTRACT
The overwhelming majority of German church people had enthusiastically welcomed the Nazi rise to power, seeing in Adolf Hitler the protector of Germany's national interests and their savior against Bolshevism. But many more years were to elapse before church people began to realize that what was required was much farther-reaching than merely an acknowledgment of the deficiencies of their humanitarian feelings. In the years immediately after 1945, despite the accumulating evidence of the atrocities inflicted on the Jewish people, there was virtually no reflection by Christian theologians on the contribution of Christian negative stereotypes about Judaism, which had so much assisted, or at least failed to prevent, the Nazi agitation and propaganda. In the nearly forty years since the overthrow of Nazism, possibly the most significant development in the Christian churches has been the recognition that the events of the Holocaust, and in Israel since 1945, are of concern not just to the Jewish people but to Christians as well.
