Revisionist Lies

I recently told BreakPoint listeners the shocking story of the film being show at Washington's Holocaust Memorial Museum. It suggests, not so subtly, that Christianity was responsible for the Holocaust. Scholars, of course, often differ in their interpretation of history. But this isn't a matter of interpretation. What I've now learned leads me to believe that the filmmakers deliberately distorted the truth. Museum visitors are shown a film called Anti-Semitism, which rightly denounces some of the church's most shameful failures in the past. But then the film goes on to suggest that Hitler was acting as a Christian when he murdered six million Jews. It quotes Hitler as saying, "I am acting for the Lord. The only difference between me and the church is that I am finishing the job." Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute says the filmmaker uses this alleged quote to advance his thesis that Christianity was "a singularly central cause of Nazism and the Holocaust." But the facts prove otherwise—and they appear to have been deliberately distorted. First, Horowitz, who is a Jew, says the Hitler quote is actually spliced together from different sources. Second, there is no real evidence that Hitler even uttered the words: "I am finishing the job." Third, the quote stands in sharp contrast to the many attacks Hitler made on the Christian church. Hitler did actually say, "By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord." The quote can be found in his book, Mein Kampf. But a reading of Mein Kampf makes it very clear that Hitler was speaking, not of the God of the Bible, but of what the Vatican correctly calls "neo-paganism." The Holocaust Memorial Museum is not the only institution to accuse the church of Holocaust complicity: The New York Times has, as well. Pope John Paul II recently issued a document called "We Remember," in which he apologized for the church's failure to do more to help Holocaust victims. The Times responded by jumping all over the Vatican. It demanded that the Pope "fully accept" what the Times called the Vatican's "failure to stand squarely" against Hitler. The fact is the Catholic Church did stand against Hitler—something the Times acknowledged on its own editorial page 57 years ago. Even the very liberal Newsweek columnist Kenneth Woodward calls modern attacks on Pope Pius XII "monstrous": He points out in Newsweek that the Catholic Church saved some 700,000 Jews by issuing false baptismal certificates and hiding Jews in monasteries and convents. Now, why would a prominent museum and America's premiere newspaper go out of their way to suggest that Christians aided and abetted Hitler? I can only surmise that our secular elites view Christianity as the last barrier to the triumph of their own cultural agenda. We still believe in absolute truth and moral absolutes. In an age when elites have redefined tolerance to mean moral neutrality, Christians are a great affront to the world. We're the last holdouts against a debased form of tolerance that says: "You can do and believe anything. There are no moral distinctions." You and I have to be very discerning when we hear accusations against the church. We must learn the facts so that we can respond to false charges and give our kids the truth. It may be fashionable today to accuse Christians of complicity in the Holocaust. But we should expose these accusations for what they really are—nothing but revisionist lies.

04/3/98