President Joel N. Lohr on Recognizing the Holocaust as a Christian Phenomenon

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“Can you believe that in Holland almost 25 percent of people under 40 think the Holocaust was a myth?”

The question was asked of President Joel N. Lohr by his father, during a recent telephone call. The conversation was sparked by a new study that was published about views on the Holocaust in the Netherlands. President Lohr’s father and mother were both born in Holland, and he holds Dutch citizenship. The conversation was especially significant for him since members of President Lohr’s family helped to hide Jews during World War II in Holland, including his grandmother. 

On Sunday, Jan. 29, President Lohr was the keynote speaker at Emanuel Synagogue of West Hartford to commemorate the 13th Annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day, organized by Voices of Hope, a non-profit educational organization created by descendants of Holocaust survivors from across Connecticut. His talk was a reflection on antisemitism. In it, he noted his above conversation with his father. 

President Lohr also highlighted several other results of the recent survey, including the finding that “22 percent of Dutch respondents under 40 feel it is acceptable for an individual to support neo-Nazi views," he said. “Lord, have mercy. These numbers are tragic. They are appalling.”

President Lohr was recently involved in a project to tell the story of a Holocaust survivor named Mitka Kalinski. It was published as a book titled Mitka’s Secret: A True Story of Child Slavery and Surviving the Holocaust (Eerdmans, 2021). Though it has sold several thousand copies through online retailers, Christian bookstores have not necessarily embraced it. 

“I don’t see many books about the Holocaust when I’m in Christian bookstores.” He said, “But there is more. Through my research, and through my experiences as a Christian growing up in the church, I have come to see the ways in which my history, my Christian history, is ugly with antisemitism.” 

In his speech, he recalled reading Edward Kessler’s Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations and being so ashamed. He came to realize more fully just how few positive historical moments there have been in the relationship between Christians and Jews through the centuries. “Christians have not only allowed antisemitism to go unchecked but have fostered it,” he said. 

“Probably the most moving book I’ve encountered on whether the Nazis understood themselves to be Christians was actually not a book on that topic. It was a book about guilt and denial among Nazis, called The Mark of Cain: Guilt and Denial in the Post-War Lives of Nazi Perpetrators by Katharina von Kellenbach,” President Lohr said. “In it, the author sifts through countless prison chaplain files with testimonies from the Nazi perpetrators who were executed at Nuremberg and elsewhere. Almost without exception, these mass killers thought that their actions — the atrocities of the Holocaust — were justified by God.” 

President Lohr said education is key to making headway in Holocaust education among Christians. “It is also essential if we want to make sure the words 'never again' are true. If I may be blunt, let me say this: As Christians, we should be ashamed.”

President Lohr discussed the duty Christians have to remember the Holocaust, and to understand its connection to Christianity. He concluded, “So few of us stop to recognize Holocaust Remembrance Day, which we commemorate today, as well as Yom HaShoah, which we mark each spring. Should not these days of remembrance be even more important to Christians than Jews?"

President Joel N. Lohr's speech may be viewed on YouTube at this link (at the 4:10 minute mark).