Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 by Saul Friedländer Page B

Christ’s revelation: “The daughters of Zion received their bill of divorce and from that time forth, Ahasuerus wanders, forever restless, over the face of the earth.” Faulhaber’s second theme now followed:
    “We must distinguish between the Scriptures of the Old Testament on the one hand and the Talmudic writings of post-Christian Judaism on the other…. The Talmudic writings are the work of man; they were not prompted by the spirit of God. It is only the sacred writings of pre-Christian Judaism, not the Talmud, that the Church of the New Testament has accepted as her inheritance.
    “Thirdly, we must distinguish in the Old Testament Bible itself between what had only transitory value and what had permanent value…. For the purpose of our subject, we are concerned only with those religious, ethical and social values of the Old Testament which remain as values also for Christianity.” 27
    Cardinal Faulhaber himself later stressed that, in his Advent sermons, he had wished only to defend the Old Testament and not to comment on contemporary aspects of the Jewish issue. 28 In fact, in the sermons he was using some of the most common clichés of traditional religious anti-Semitism. Ironically enough, a report of the security service of the SS interpreted the sermons as an intervention in favor of the Jews, quoting both foreign newspaper comments and the Jewish Central Association’s newspaper, in which Rabbi Leo Baerwald of Munich had written: “We take modest pride that it is through us that revelation was given to the world.” 29
    Discussion of the Concordat with the Vatican was item 17 on the agenda of the July 14 cabinet meeting. According to the minutes, the Reich chancellor dismissed any debate about the details of the agreement. “He expressed the opinion that one should only consider it as a great achievement. The Concordat gave Germany an opportunity and created an area of trust which was particularly significant in the developing struggle against international Jewry.” 30
    This remark can hardly be interpreted as merely a political ploy aimed at convincing the other members of the government of the necessity of accepting the Concordat without debate, as the fight against world Jewry was certainly not a priority on the conservative ministers’ agenda. Thus a chance remark opens an unusual vista on Hitler’s thoughts, again pointing toward the trail of his obsession: the “developing struggle” against a global danger—world Jewry. Hitler, moreover, did indeed consider the alliance with the Vatican as being of special significance in this battle. Is it not possible that the Nazi leader believed that the traditional anti-Jewish stance of the Christian churches would also allow for a tacit alliance against the common enemy, or at least offer Nazism the advantage of an “area of trust” in the “developing struggle”? Did Hitler not in fact say as much to Bishop Berning? For a brief instant there appears to be an ominous linkage between the standard procedures of politics and the compulsions of myth.
    II
    The questionnaire addressed to university professors (in Germany they were civil servants) reached Hermann Kantorowicz, professor of the philosophy and history of law at the University of Kiel, on April 23, 1933. To the question about the racial origins of his grandparents, he replied: “Since there is no time to inquire as to which sense of the term ‘race’ is being utilized, I shall limit myself to the following declaration: as all four of my grandparents died a long time ago and the necessary measurements, etc., were never made, I am unable to ascertain scientifically (anthropologically) what racial group they belonged to. Understood in its common significance, their race was German, as they all spoke German as their mother tongue, which means that it was Indo-European or Aryan. Their race in the sense of the first supplementary decree to the Law of April 7, 1933, section 2, paragraph 1,