Who wrote these words?

“Now what are we going to do with these rejected, condemned, Jewish people?”
“… put fire to the Jew schools and houses”
“… refuse to let them own houses among us”
“… take away from them all of their prayer books and Talmuds”
“… prohibit their Rabbis to teach”
“… protection for Jews on highways be revoked. For they have no right to be in the
land”
“… take away all the currency and silver and gold and put it away for safekeeping”
On the Jews and their Lies, Martin Luther (1543)
 Who wrote these words?
“Now what are we going to do with these rejected, condemned, Jewish people?”
“… put fire to the Jew schools and houses”
“… refuse to let them own houses among us”
“… take away from them all of their prayer books and Talmuds”
“… prohibit their Rabbis to teach”
“… protection for Jews on highways be revoked. For they have no right to be in the
land”
“… take away all the currency and silver and gold and put it away for safekeeping”
On the Jews and their Lies, Martin Luther (1543)
 Other quotes from luther’s works
“And so, dear Christian, beware of the Jews . . . you can see how God’s wrath has
consigned them to the Devil, who has robbed them not only of a proper
understanding of the Scriptures, but also of common human reason, modesty
and sense. . . . Thus, when you see a real Jew you may with a good conscience
cross yourself, and boldly say, ‘There goes the Devil incarnate.’”
“Verily, a hopeless, wicked, venomous and devilish thing is the existence of these
Jews who for fourteen hundred years have been, and still are, our torment and
misfortune… Know, Christian, that next to the devil, thou has no enemy more
cruel, more venomous and violent than a true Jew”.
Martin Luther, “On the Jews and Their Lies” (1543)
“I do not write to convert the Jews, for that is about as possible as converting the
Devil…In sum they are Devil’s children damned to hell. If there is anything human
left in them, for that one this treatise might be useful. One can hope for the
whole bunch but I have no hope.”
Martin Luther, “On the Ineffable Name and
on The Lineage of Christ” (March 1543)
Luther and Nazi Germany
 Der Stürmer - Nazi propaganda newspaper

On the
Jews and
their Lies
D.M.Luth.

Der Stürmer, March 1937

“The reformer and fighter against
the Jewish spirit in the Christian
the Jews are our misfortune! church. Dr Luther is one of the
greatest anti-semites of German
Der Stürmer, August 1935 history”.
 Der Stürmer editor’s defense at Nuremberg

“I did not intend to agitate or inflame but to

enlighten. Anti-Semitic publications have existed in
Germany for centuries. . . . In the book The Jews and
Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are
a serpent’s brood and one should burn down their
synagogues and destroy them. Dr. Martin Luther
would very probably sit in my place in the
defendants’ dock today, if this book had been taken
into consideration by the Prosecution.”
Julius Streicher, April 26,1946
 Kristallnacht - Nov. 9-10, 1938
their synagogues [should] be burned down, and that all who are able toss sulphur and
pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire... (Martin Luther)
"On November 10, 1938, on Luther's
birthday, the synagogues are burning in
Germany. The German people will
definitively break the power of the Jews
in the economic sphere in the new
Germany, crowning the leader's God-
blessed struggle for the complete
liberation of our people. In this hour, the
voice of the man who began as the
German prophet in the 16th century,
once as a friend of the Jews, driven by his
conscience, driven by the experiences
and reality, has become the greatest anti-
Semite of his time, must be heard Warner
of his people against the Jews. "

1,668 synagogues ransacked, 267 synagogues set on fire ,7,500 businesses Martin Luther and the Jews:
destroyed, and 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. Away with Them! (Bishop
Luther’s attitude toward the Jews in 1523
“… I hope that if one deals in a kindly way with the Jews and
instructs them carefully from Holy Scripture, many of them will
become genuine Christians and turn again to the faith of their
fathers, the prophets and patriarchs. They will only be
frightened further away from it if their Judaism is so utterly
Jesus Christ rejected that nothing is allowed to remain, and they are treated
was born a only with arrogance and scorn.”
Jew
Doctor Martin “Since they [the Jews] dealt with us Gentiles in such brotherly
Luther fashion, we in our turn ought to treat the Jews in a brotherly
manner in order that we might convert some of them. For even
we ourselves are not yet all very far along, not to speak of
having arrived.”
Attempts to explain luther’s attitude towards the jews

• Luther was in his last years at this time. He was in bad health, used
up, disillusioned, cranky.
• Luther attacked everyone with equal fury, including Jews, Muslims,
Catholics, and fellow Protestants.
• When Jews would not convert, Luther concluded the Church replaced
Israel in God’s redemptive plan.
• At the time, everyone was anti-Jewish, from Erasmus to Shakespeare.
• Luther was not anti-Semitic in the racial sense; instead, Luther was
anti-Judaic in a theological sense.
human capacity for both good and evil

Perhaps instead of trying to assign Luther either to the good books or the trashcan, we should
soberly note the human capacity – even among believers – for both good and evil. It is God who will
have to sort through all this at the end of time, not you or I. It is hard to say that Luther was “not a
real Christian”. He was. Yet he was deeply flawed. We all are. From the story of Luther, we can see
the profound effect one life can make, for good or for bad. We can see how our words carry power
and influence that may go way beyond what we could ever imagine. I wonder what Luther himself
would make of the outworkings of history, if he could trace the impact his words had had on the
church, on the people of Israel, and on the world.

By ONE FOR ISRAEL (Messianic Jews In Israel)

Honor but don’t celebrate
… it seems to me Luther is a man we should honor but not celebrate. Let’s honor him for
confronting the hollow deceptiveness of the Roman Catholicism of his time. Let’s honor him
for translating the Bible into the language of ordinary people, so they could read for
themselves the words of eternal life. Let’s honor him for releasing countless monks and
nuns across Europe from lives of cloistered ritual and mandated celibacy. Luther was a
mighty instrument of awakening, deserving honor in this anniversary year. But this honor
shouldn’t rise to the level of celebration. Our memory of Luther must be tempered with
sadness because of his sin and its consequences.

Bernard N. Howard is a Jewish believer in Jesus