Replies

“Martin Luther views on the Jews are described as racial or religious anti-Semitism, [1] or as anti-Judaism. [2] In his treatise Von den Juden und ihren Lügen (On the Jews and their Lies), published in 1543, he wrote that Jews’ synagogues should be set on fire, prayerbooks destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes “smashed and destroyed,” property seized, money confiscated, and that these “poisonous envenomed worms” be drafted into forced labor or expelled “for all time.” [3] He also appeared to sanction their murder: [4] “Jerusalem was destroyed over 1400 years ago, and at that time we Christians were harassed and persecuted by the Jews throughout the world ... So we are even at fault for not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord and of the Christians which they shed for 300 years after the destruction of Jerusalem ... We are at fault in not slaying them.” [5]

British historian Paul Johnson has called On the Jews and their Lies the “first work of modern anti-Semitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust.” [6] Four centuries after it was written, the Nazis cited Luther’s treatise to justify the Final Solution.”http://www.answers.com/topic/martin-luther-and-the-jews

Ouch. When I come to think of it, I’d have been one of those rounded up as “impure blood.” Eek! Ein Juden!