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"Many Jewish writers have said, quite simply that the Nazis chose the Jews as the target of their hate because two thousand years of Christian teaching had accustomed the world to do so. Few Christian historians and theologians have been sufficiently open to the painful truth to accept this explanation without considerable qualification. Nevertheless, it is correct." -- William Nicholls
Christian scholar William Nicholls was one of the early founders of Vancouver's Annual Holocaust Symposium in 1976 as well as one of its first featured speakers. He was an activist and defender of Israel who worked to free Jonathan Pollard [the U.S. intelligence analyst who was convicted in 1987 for providing top-secret, classified information to Israel, sentenced to life imprisonment, and finally was released and welcomed as a hero in Israel in 2020]. Nicholls also persistently fought against Holocaust denial. He was a minister in the Anglican Church and founder of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia in 1964. He came to UBC in 1961, retired in 1984 and died on November 10, 2014.
"From the Holocaust experience there is a message of hope," he said, in 1984, "that it is possible to triumph only when we dare confront the worst." He was speaking at UBC in support of a new book by Irving Abella, author of None is Too Many, who observed, "Although most Canadians believe that Canada is a country with a long history of accepting refugees and contain little European bigotry, Canada's attitude towards the Jews during the Holocaust punctuates a hole in that myth."
Later, Nicholls most significantly wrote Christian Anti-Semitism - A History of Hate (London: Jason Aronson Inc 1993), a 499-page, scholarly book dedicated "To the survivors of the Holocaust, and in particular to those who have undertaken the task of bearing witness to a new generation." According to reviewer Ron Dart in Clarion, Nicholls meticulously traced the long and negative attitude that can be found in Christianity towards the Jews.
"The large book is divided into three parts: Part I ('Before the Myth') goes straight to the origins of the problem. 'Jesus the Jew: Founder of Christianity?', 'Jesus the Jew: Rejected by his People?' and 'Jesus the Jew: Crucified Messiah?' raises all sorts of troubling questions about how the early Christians interpreted Jesus. Nicholls argues, though, that an interpretive form emerged in the early church that stripped Jesus of his distinctive Jewishness and set the stage for an antisemitic ethos. There is no doubt that Nicholls is raising some important and often ignored points, but there is also the danger that he is overstating his argument to justify his agenda and thesis.
"Part II ('The Growth of the Myth') begins with the Biblical phase but lingers much longer on the Christian attitude towards the Jews up to and including the Reformation. 'Paul and the Beginning of Christianity', 'The True Israel: Battle for the Bible', 'Jews in a Christian World', 'Popular Paranoia' and 'Inquisition and Reformation: The Turning of the Tide?' build up the argument, in a exegetical, theological and historic manner, about the ongoing negative attitude that Christendom took towards the Jews. Again, Nicholls does a superb job of bringing to the fore a litany of woes, in thought, word and deed, of Christian justifications of treating the Jews in a less than charitable manner. The evidence is piled higher and higher and the conclusions cannot be missed. A thoughtful student of history might agree with the facts brought forward by Nicholls, but was such a tradition only a history of hate, or is there more evidence within Christianity that reflects a more positive attitude towards the Jews? Obviously, there is, but Nicholls' commitment to the Christian anti-Semitic argument brooks no opposition.
"Part III ('The Myth Secularized') treks ever on from the Reformation period of the 16th century to the 20th century. 'The Napoleonic Bargain: Frenchman of the Mosaic Persuasion', 'Secular Antisemitism', 'The Churches in the Twentieth Century', 'Antisemitisms Old and New’ and ‘Ending Antisemitism?' continues to tell the gruesome tale that is pressed in on the reader more each page. An Appendix, 'The Three Accounts of Peter's Acclamation of Jesus as the Messiah' brings the book to a controversial conclusion."
In the Jerusalem Post in 2011, David Turner wrote, "Dr. Nicholls' book is unrelentingly honest and powerful, a carefully constructed and well-written indictment of a religion that sees itself as embodying the high ideals of 'Love, Charity and Forgiveness.' Wherever else these ideals refer to, as Dr. Nicholls describes in this volume, clearly they do not apply to the Jews."
According to Turner, Nicholls describes Augustine's rationale providing for Jewish survival in Christendom as punishment for their crimes: from the fifth through the 16th centuries Jews were property of the church or princes and with few exceptions lived in poverty and despair. Their purpose in Christian society was to provide a warning against Judaizing or unbelief. But Nicholls' reserves his harshest criticism for Martin Luther, a father of his own reformed church.
"In the early years of his conflict with the Church," Nicholls writes, "Luther assumed that, freed of the whip of Church anti-Judaism and the thousand year-long persecution it inspired the Jews would abandon Judaism and enthusiastically accept conversion to his reformist Christianity. When the Jews failed to fulfill his expectations Luther's venom towards them was perhaps unmatched until four hundred years later when Hitler sought to fulfill Luther's instructions to the princes before his death.
"At his trial in Nuremberg after the Second World War Julius Streicher, the notorious Nazi propagandist, editor of the scurrilous antisemitic weekly, Der Sturmer, argued that if he should be standing there arraigned on such charges, so should Martin Luther (Nichols, 1993, pps.270-271)."
BOOKS:
Christian Anti-Semitism - A History of Hate (London: Jason Aronson Inc 1993)
[BCBW 2021] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
Christian scholar William Nicholls was one of the early founders of Vancouver's Annual Holocaust Symposium in 1976 as well as one of its first featured speakers. He was an activist and defender of Israel who worked to free Jonathan Pollard [the U.S. intelligence analyst who was convicted in 1987 for providing top-secret, classified information to Israel, sentenced to life imprisonment, and finally was released and welcomed as a hero in Israel in 2020]. Nicholls also persistently fought against Holocaust denial. He was a minister in the Anglican Church and founder of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia in 1964. He came to UBC in 1961, retired in 1984 and died on November 10, 2014.
"From the Holocaust experience there is a message of hope," he said, in 1984, "that it is possible to triumph only when we dare confront the worst." He was speaking at UBC in support of a new book by Irving Abella, author of None is Too Many, who observed, "Although most Canadians believe that Canada is a country with a long history of accepting refugees and contain little European bigotry, Canada's attitude towards the Jews during the Holocaust punctuates a hole in that myth."
Later, Nicholls most significantly wrote Christian Anti-Semitism - A History of Hate (London: Jason Aronson Inc 1993), a 499-page, scholarly book dedicated "To the survivors of the Holocaust, and in particular to those who have undertaken the task of bearing witness to a new generation." According to reviewer Ron Dart in Clarion, Nicholls meticulously traced the long and negative attitude that can be found in Christianity towards the Jews.
"The large book is divided into three parts: Part I ('Before the Myth') goes straight to the origins of the problem. 'Jesus the Jew: Founder of Christianity?', 'Jesus the Jew: Rejected by his People?' and 'Jesus the Jew: Crucified Messiah?' raises all sorts of troubling questions about how the early Christians interpreted Jesus. Nicholls argues, though, that an interpretive form emerged in the early church that stripped Jesus of his distinctive Jewishness and set the stage for an antisemitic ethos. There is no doubt that Nicholls is raising some important and often ignored points, but there is also the danger that he is overstating his argument to justify his agenda and thesis.
"Part II ('The Growth of the Myth') begins with the Biblical phase but lingers much longer on the Christian attitude towards the Jews up to and including the Reformation. 'Paul and the Beginning of Christianity', 'The True Israel: Battle for the Bible', 'Jews in a Christian World', 'Popular Paranoia' and 'Inquisition and Reformation: The Turning of the Tide?' build up the argument, in a exegetical, theological and historic manner, about the ongoing negative attitude that Christendom took towards the Jews. Again, Nicholls does a superb job of bringing to the fore a litany of woes, in thought, word and deed, of Christian justifications of treating the Jews in a less than charitable manner. The evidence is piled higher and higher and the conclusions cannot be missed. A thoughtful student of history might agree with the facts brought forward by Nicholls, but was such a tradition only a history of hate, or is there more evidence within Christianity that reflects a more positive attitude towards the Jews? Obviously, there is, but Nicholls' commitment to the Christian anti-Semitic argument brooks no opposition.
"Part III ('The Myth Secularized') treks ever on from the Reformation period of the 16th century to the 20th century. 'The Napoleonic Bargain: Frenchman of the Mosaic Persuasion', 'Secular Antisemitism', 'The Churches in the Twentieth Century', 'Antisemitisms Old and New’ and ‘Ending Antisemitism?' continues to tell the gruesome tale that is pressed in on the reader more each page. An Appendix, 'The Three Accounts of Peter's Acclamation of Jesus as the Messiah' brings the book to a controversial conclusion."
In the Jerusalem Post in 2011, David Turner wrote, "Dr. Nicholls' book is unrelentingly honest and powerful, a carefully constructed and well-written indictment of a religion that sees itself as embodying the high ideals of 'Love, Charity and Forgiveness.' Wherever else these ideals refer to, as Dr. Nicholls describes in this volume, clearly they do not apply to the Jews."
According to Turner, Nicholls describes Augustine's rationale providing for Jewish survival in Christendom as punishment for their crimes: from the fifth through the 16th centuries Jews were property of the church or princes and with few exceptions lived in poverty and despair. Their purpose in Christian society was to provide a warning against Judaizing or unbelief. But Nicholls' reserves his harshest criticism for Martin Luther, a father of his own reformed church.
"In the early years of his conflict with the Church," Nicholls writes, "Luther assumed that, freed of the whip of Church anti-Judaism and the thousand year-long persecution it inspired the Jews would abandon Judaism and enthusiastically accept conversion to his reformist Christianity. When the Jews failed to fulfill his expectations Luther's venom towards them was perhaps unmatched until four hundred years later when Hitler sought to fulfill Luther's instructions to the princes before his death.
"At his trial in Nuremberg after the Second World War Julius Streicher, the notorious Nazi propagandist, editor of the scurrilous antisemitic weekly, Der Sturmer, argued that if he should be standing there arraigned on such charges, so should Martin Luther (Nichols, 1993, pps.270-271)."
BOOKS:
Christian Anti-Semitism - A History of Hate (London: Jason Aronson Inc 1993)
[BCBW 2021] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
