Luther the Father of the Natzis

Anti-Semite. The word rests in a conversation like a foul stench and with it comes unbidden images and accusations. Today in many circles this word alone is possibly the most horrendous name to place on a person. Maybe though, not because of what it means, but because of what it brings to mind. Automatically and unwanted, pictures come to our mind of goose stepping Nazis and concentration camps, bodies piled high and what we think …

…Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther's antisemitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht's orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the foreword to the volume, he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: 'On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.' The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words 'of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.'"