Some people and civil authorities in orthodox majority countries sided with the Nazis. Some sided with the communists. A very damned if you do damned if you don’t situation.
Of course we have to individual heroes such as her. I meant at a more national level the tides of communism and Nazism were basically the only options for what the civil government was going to become in 1940s Eastern Europe.
Not necessarily, that is a reductive view of the civil war. It was the KKE that were the only ones talking about a democratic vote on the future of Greece, although in a very different context than the one they would find themselves in 1949
It's a lot more complicated than that. Many many innocent Greeks who fought the Nazi's were killed in the aftermath. The country still hasn't recovered from the corruption and meddling that happened.
My Dad was born in Greece during WWII and left after his mandatory military service (which was during the time the coup happened), he's still amazed at the amount of misconceptions people have about Greece during those times.
My parents were a little bit older and were both children during the occupation and the civil war and I don't think people outside of Greece fully understand how bad it was in Greece for a long time after the Nazis left and how it colored Greek politics for generations.
Given the current state of Greece, I wouldn’t go as far as to say things worked out for them, but the alternative admittedly would’ve likely been worse.
Όχι day celebration in my church every year when I was a child. The day the Greeks said no! Nazis can’t come in. We all had to recite poems we learned in Greek school. No one ever told me what I was saying, but there was always applause. So I must have pronounced everything correctly.
"We" didn't do anything. Many individual Orthodox people including clergy supported the Nazis and many actively resisted and died fighting against the Nazis. The same is true of Catholics and certainly Protestants. The vast majority of the people on all sides are dead.
As Orthodox people living in the 21st century, we can and should condemn the Nazis without any hesitation or qualification.
No, Marxism is inherently atheistic. There is a long list of pre-Marxist and non-Marxist writers and thinkers who espoused an explicitly Christian socialist ethic.
Anarchism has absolutely nothing to do with any of that. I get that European "anarchists" tend to be violent assholes, but a communist by any other name is still a communist. The majority of anarchist thought is simply dictated by the notion that violating the NAP, which is essentially just a secular rephrasing of the Golden Rule, is never justified, and that wealthy and powerful people don't get special moral exemptions just because they call stealing "taxing".
Just like every country, there were more Nazi sympathizers and potential collaborators than anyone would care to admit, but many people also held fast to their conscience and defied the Nazi regime.
On individual levels, St. Alexander Schmorell helped write tracts for the White Rose movement in Munich. In many cases he appealed to Germany’s religious conscience, declaring Hitler an antichrist. St. Maria of Paris was canonized alongside her son Yuri Skobtsov, Fr. Dimitri Klepenin, and Ilya Fondaminsky for their heroic sheltering of Jews at their convent (including printing fake baptismal certificates and helping arrange for people to leave occupied Paris), leading to their martyrdom in concentration camps. And there are many other Orthodox heroes and saints who did similar things.
I know Greece was especially defiant against the Nazis. I imagine the former Soviet countries think more of their countries’ eventual participation with the allies. It is true that Romania was complicit due to a fascist government being in power at the time, though.
But it should be said that like many things we live very gray lives. Perhaps part of our fallen nature involves being products of our time and culture to some extent, where we allow those ideas to abrogate our God-given morality sometimes. It is a temptation not unique to any culture or religion, though Christ offers us a path out through repentance.
> On individual levels, St. Alexander Schmorell helped write tracts for the White Rose movement in Munich. In many cases he appealed to Germany’s religious conscience, declaring Hitler an antichrist.
This is interesting. I had not been aware that Schmorell was E..O. , but it further adds the impression I have had of White Rose being illustrative in that time that, under such duress, and in the face of such evil, the meaningful division in the faith was much less so between denominations/sects/churches as they had split along theological/political/cultural lines previously, but crosscutting these by those Christians willing to go along with evil, or ignore it, and those moved to stand against it. I'm glad to hear this included the E.O. as well as factions from devout Lutherans, Reformed (Confessing Church), and Catholic (Latin Church) adherents who might otherwise seen themselves as not having not much to talk about.
I picked St. Alexander as my patron when I was baptized into the Orthodox Church precisely for his courage and his respect for his friends’ sincerity of faith, which helped align them on their convictions about the clear and present danger that Nazism posed to Christendom.
I know that other Christians in areas of duress like in the Middle East have a similar coming together and greater charity with each other since you need to band together when faced with persecution. We in far safer/freer locales would do well to emulate their Christlike charity to one another.
Mount Athos is complicated - most of the stories I've heard are basically externally appearing to play nice, especially in things where they had little choice, but behind the scenes doing their own things - I've heard plenty of reports of monks there hiding Jewish refugees.
Also Allied soldiers. When I get home, if I remember, I'll dig up the article I found about a New Zealand soldier returning to the Holy Mountain to thank the monks.
[Found it.](https://athosweblog.com/2017/11/24/1955/)
Not realizing the soldier wasn't British, the monks greeted him by saying "Greece must become a British colony!"
Mount Athos is a very interesting story. Yes, the appealed directly to Hitler to protect them (fearing annexation by the Atheistic Bulgarian government of the day), but managed to avoid the worst aspects of occupation, and used the freedom to provide refuge for Jews of all ages and genders, violating the usual norms of the enclave.
The church was caught in the middle of a massive war between two atheist, ideologically-motivated nations, neither of which gave much respect for the faith or worse, actively persecuted it.
https://ajps.org/2017/08/10/who-voted-and-didnt-for-hitler-and-why/
Referencing the source above, protestants in Germany overwhelmingly supported Hitler and the Roman Catholics in Germany did not. Protestants shouldn't be throwing that accusation around especially given that Martin Luther hated Jews and wrote some horrific things about Jews.
We also have to give an honest look at history. Most people outside of Germany were unaware of the concentration camps and what the Nazis were doing. Allied military members had no clue about concentration camps until they stumbled across these camps during the war. For some people, a bunch of "Germans" showed up and said fight with us against the Soviets. Understand at that time the Soviets were the immediate threat to millions of people.
And if we are going to be honest about history, we need to be honest about the fact that many people in "Orthodox" nations were perfectly willing and even happy to help the Einsatzgruppen to round up and murder Jews.
Alexander Schmorell, one of the founding members of The White Rose, was Russian Orthodox and was canonized an Orthodox saint for his martyrdom in opposition to the Nazi regime, so that should tell you something major about the Orthodox Church's overall view of Naziism.
I don't know any of the stories about Mt. Athos. I'm sure that, overall during that time, there were certain people in the Church who supported the Nazis, as well as the Communists. In the end, neither one did the Church very many favors. Just because certain people who lay claim to be within the Church give their support to an evil cause, does not mean that the Church as a whole supports that cause.
And by the way, there were many Protestants and atheists who supported the Nazis as well, so where do they get the right to point fingers at Orthodoxy as an entire group? Whether Orthodox, Protestant, or atheist, we should deem their support of Nazis as a reflection of their personal beliefs, not their entire group.
[Damaskinos of Athens](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damaskinos_of_Athens)
>The Greek Orthodox Church and the Academic World of Greek People Protest against the Persecution... The Greek people were... deeply grieved to learn that the German Occupation Authorities have already started to put into effect a program of gradual deportation of the Greek Jewish community... and that the first groups of deportees are already on their way to Poland...
According to the terms of the armistice, all Greek citizens, without distinction of race or religion, were to be treated equally by the Occupation Authorities. The Greek Jews have proven themselves... valuable contributors to the economic growth of the country [and] law-abiding citizens who fully understand their duties as Greeks. They have made sacrifices for the Greek country, and were always on the front lines of the struggle of the Greek nation to defend its inalienable historical rights...
In our national consciousness, all the children of Mother Greece are an inseparable unity: they are equal members of the national body irrespective of religion... Our holy religion does not recognize superior or inferior qualities based on race or religion, as it is stated: 'There is neither Jew nor Greek' and thus condemns any attempt to discriminate or create racial or religious differences. Our common fate both in days of glory and in periods of national misfortune forged inseparable bonds between all Greek citizens, without exemption, irrespective of race...
Today we are... deeply concerned with the fate of 60,000 of our fellow citizens who are Jews... we have lived together in both slavery and freedom, and we have come to appreciate their feelings, their brotherly attitude, their economic activity, and most important, their indefectible patriotism...[4]
Part of a letter written in 1943 by Archbishop Damaskinos to the Greek Prime Minister and head of the German Nazi regime in Greece.
I just finished reading a book that discussed the ways various nations were willing collaborators in the Holocaust (I am teaching the book "Night" by Elie Weisel to my 10th grade English class and wanted to get more context), and the amount of *enthusiastic* collaboration with the mass-murder of Jews in the occupied nations of eastern Europe is disturbing.
Actually, it just so happens that a lot of jews did leave Romania during the communist era iIrc. We did have a genocide of the jewish people, I just don't think we joined the Axis's war for the purpose of it. Though I suppose we did have our very own far-right movement that Orthodox Christians associated with that wasn't so different from the Nazis, unfortunately.
Yes, this also happens to be a specific phenomenon in Romania: the communists there, continued the political repression, and anti-Semitic policies.
Also, in the interbelic period, important newspapers like Adevarul, periodically published smear campaigns against jews. I know there is this push in Romania to control a certain narative, that they didn't participate in the holocaust as much, but they forget that hating a minority is also unacceptable - it's a small step from there to genocide.
You’ve heard this from Protestants? Germany was the country which birthed Protestantism, no? Also it’s kindof bizarre to pin the political choices of people from other countries on us because we share the same faith in Christ our God. It would be like me accusing a Lutheran of being a nazi because Nazi’s came from a Lutheran dominant country.
New Martyr Gorazd of Prague was martyred for protecting Czech resistance fighters
[https://orthodoxwiki.org/Gorazd\_(Pavlik)\_of\_Prague](https://orthodoxwiki.org/Gorazd_(Pavlik)_of_Prague)
The Bulgarian Orthodox church actively participated in the saving of 30,000 Jews in Bulgaria. The church and parts of the government worked together and ultimately prevented all Jewish Bulgarian citizens from being deported to concentration camps. One important figure was the mitropolitan bishop Kiril who said that if the Jews are put on a train to Germany he will lie down on the railway in front of the train. So you have a clear example of how an Orthodox church, an official institution opposed the Nazis at the height of their power and showed them that they can't do whatever they want with human lives.
On the whole, no. The situation where it gets froggy is Romania and Bulgaria, but neither clergy nor laity were saliently pro-nazi in any other region -- rather, they were butchered by pro-nazi regimes and collaborators, as in Yugoslavia at the hands of Ustase fascists, or in the horrible slaughter of Operation Barbarossa. I'm not gonna engage in any kind of "actually, we suffered the most!" stuff, but the hatred the Nazis displayed for most orthodox people on an *ethnic* basis precludes any meaningful notion of "support" out the gate.
Orthodox Christians, like everyone else in Europe, included people and authorities who collaborated with the Nazis for a thousand different reasons. Ranging from inability or unwillingness to understand the nature of Nazi Germany, to real or imagined shared interests, to common enemies, to personal prejudices or ideological sympathy by persons and political parties, to simply making bad, wrong choices. You may take it as a general truism that nobody, including countless Nazis themselves, ever truly perceived the revolutionary nature of Nazism until the logical conclusion of its beliefs were perpetrated on them. Many countless thousands never perceived, or ever were willing to perceive, it even then. People prewar, and during the war, fit the Nazis into their own preconceived boxes, and only because the Nazis proceeded to do everything they did — only then did everyone have precedent to say, "You should've known! They're literally Nazis!"
This is not an excuse. An excuse justifies an act as permissible and good. This is only a reason. A reason simply describes why.
I am writing my Master Thesis-like paper on Greece during the Holocaust and the ever-lasting antisemitism. And yes, some clergy and officials did. But still more people sided with the resistance fighters (mainly because of the Nazi occupation of Greece), and some (a minority) even helped some Jews escape, or were sympathetic to the Jews at least.
In Yugoslavia the Orthodox Serbs sided with the Allies and fought against the Nazis whereas the Croats and Muslims supported the Nazis. The pro Nazi Croats committed genocide against the Serbs by murdering 800,000 for refusing to convert to Catholicism.
Greece fought against the Nazis. There are four Greek bishops Archbishop Damaskinos, Joachim of Volos, Chrysostom of Zakynthos, and Gennadios of Thessaloniki who are recognized by the yad vashem in Jerusalem as righteous among the nations for protecting Greek Jews.
While Bulgaria was a German ally, the Bulgarian Church succeeded in protecting Bulgarian Jews.
Metropolitan Stefan of Bulgaria is among the righteous among the nations in the Yad Vashem.
The Russians were anti Nazi as well and the Russian Church took a patriotic position against the Nazi invasion.
Mother Maria skoptskova and Fr Dimitri Klepinan died in Nazi death camps for helping French Jews.
Bishop Gorad of Prague was executed by the Nazis for protecting check patriots implicated in the killing of the mass murderer Reinhard Heydrick. All three are Orthodox saints.
The Russians recently glorified the layman Alexander Schmorell who was part of the anti Nazi white rose during the war.
Also, according to kyriakos Markides in his book Mountain of Silence Mount Athos monks permitted Jewish women and children to hide on the holy mountain during the occupation of Greece.
There is a memorial to an outright Nazi collaborator at the ROCOR monastery in NY.
The Iron Guard in Romania counted many Orthodox among their members and were open about being "clerical fascists" and gladly worked with the Nazis.
There were Orthodox Nazi collaborators. There were also Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, and atheist Nazi collaborators.
Because the Nazi plan involved a genocide of Slavic peoples, most of whom are historically Orthodox, Orthodox Christians suffered under the Nazi regime, though not specifically because they were Orthodox.
Many people of all religious communities were happy to help with persecution of Jews, and unfortunately, some Orthodox clergy and laity took the wrong side in this.
Many people also thought Nazism was more similar to earlier nationalist movements than it turned out to be, and underestimated the danger that it posed, seeing it as preferable to communism, which many thought of as a more immediate threat because of the Bolsheviks' actions.
Seeing as there were Protestants and atheists who supported the Nazis, that is very rich and you should ignore them. That aside, were there Orthodox Christians who did so? Sure. Were there also Orthodox Christians who opposed them? Also sure. This is not unique to Orthodoxy.
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https://youtu.be/jhfybumwBUo?si=_IGIaefJ53TrV9sp
Here is a very good movie that describes whats was hapening in thèse years if you don’t speak russian you can activate subtitels in english
St Matej and St Bogolyub of Chisholm are both martyrs who got murdered by the nazis in Yugoslavia. St Teofan of Chisholm got martyred by the communists in Yugoslavia. All from my area in Minnesota.
The ustase were puppets of the Nazis. They had concentration camps built for exterminating Jews and other ethnic groups like Serbs and the Romani. They also deported a lot of Jews to Nazi Germany.
Yes. Ustase croats who's nation and political party were under the control of Nazi Germany. Don't try to act like the Nazis didn't have anything to do with this. The ustase even had German troops in their ranks.
>The persecution of Serbs was an Ustase project, maybe the Germans helped
The Germans had concentration camps: [Banjica concentration camp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjica_concentration_camp), [Crveni Krst concentration camp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crveni_Krst_concentration_camp) and [Topovske Supe concentration camp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topovske_%C5%A0upe_concentration_camp). They even implemented a policy whereby for every soldier killed, 100 Serbians would be murdered, while a wounded soldier would result in 50 Serbians being killed. Both were brutal.
Being hyper zealous in pursuing a guerilla war is a different type of horror than the ethnic and anti-Orthodox violence metted out by the Ustase against Serbs in Croatia. Again, the point stands, the saints were killed by the Ustase.
I'm from Greece and I know our Church and a lot of people hid Jews from nazis.
What is the story you heard about Mount Athos? The only thing I know is that a monk wrote to Hitler and asked him to respect Mount Athos, which he did. And that a Saint from Mount Athos was gathering food every way he could to help people starving. (Greece had a hard time during the war, everyone was starting as my grandparents were explaining.)
Did you expect of the monks on Mount Athos to self-immolate? The Church has survived many tryants before the little corporal and will survive many more in the future.
Many people sided with nazis but in short NO. The Croatian ustashe killed 300k serbs (orthodox christians) and forcefully converted many to catholicism and martyred some priests. Also I'm pretty sure there is a story about a orthodox priest somewhere in east Europe who saved allot of jews something about the nazis wanting a list of the jews and the priest wrote his name on it and was killed.
Some areas did. As an American convert and Romanian Orthodox Christian in the US, the Romanian Church has a tragic history of brutal antisemitism, including collaboration with the Nazis. I have even heard antisemitic things be spoken in my parish by a couple of individuals. We need to acknowledge these things and combat them.
General Patton said we should have fought with the Nazis against the communists, not with the communists against the Nazis. He was 100% correct. Watch Europa the Last Battle for more info on this.
Not really. That said, the Germans were often viewed as liberators when they occupied communist territory. Here's an excerpt someone posted from the memoirs of a German soldier:
“As divisional adjutant, I found time and opportunity to make contact with local people, in the course of which, my knowledge of Russian came in useful. I was astonished to detect no hatred among them. Women often came out of their houses with an icon held before their breast, crying, ‘We are still Christians. Free us from Stalin who destroyed our churches.’ Many of them offered an egg and a piece of dry bread as a welcome. We gradually had the feeling that we really were being regarded as liberators...
Destruction in the industrial quarters and of the bridges over the Dnieper was immense. In the midst of the ruins, Smolensk cathedral pointed to the sky. It appeared largely unharmed. I followed the women and the old men and as I entered the cathedral, was deeply impressed by its beauty. It looked intact. The altar was adomed; burning candles and many icons richly embellished with gold bathed the interior in a festive light. As I went up to the altar with my companions, an old man, poorly dressed and with a flowing beard, spoke to me in broken German. “Gospodin officer, I am a priest who used to preach here before the Lenin-Stalin era; I have been in hiding now for many years, scraping a living as a shoemaker. Now you have liberated our city. May I say a first mass in this cathedral?”...“I gave the priest permission to celebrate mass the next day, for which he wanted to bring in an additional priest.
The following day, I went to Smolensk again, having informed the divisional commander in the meantime; as a precaution, I took along an armored patrol.
The sight that met our eyes when we arrived was breathtaking.
The square in front of the cathedral was full of people moving slowly toward the entrance. With my orderly officer, I jostled my way forward. Already, there was not a corner left in the cathedral in which people were not standing, sitting, or kneeling. We remained standing to one side to avoid disturbing the service by our presence. I was not familiar with the Russian Orthodox ritual, but the ceremony that now began drew me more and more under its spell.
Invisible behind the altar, one of the two priests began with a monotone chant, which was answered by a choir of eight voices standing in front of the altar. The chanting of the precentor and the choir filled the vast space of the church. The acoustics gave the impression that the chanting came from above, from heaven. The people fell on their knees and prayed. All had tears in their eyes. For them, it was the first mass for more than twenty years. My companion and I were greatly moved.
How deep must the faith have been of these poor, oppressed people; no ideology, no compulsion or terror had been able to take it from them. It was an experience I shall never forget.”
Excerpt From:
Panzer Commander: The Memoirs of Colonel Hans Von Luck
Nazism as an ideology is fundamentally atheistic, but there were supporters of the Nazi parties who were Orthodox, as the political beliefs vary compared to ideology. Different Nazis had different beliefs (not all were anti-Semitic, for example), but nobody Orthodox could have thought like Hitler or Himmler. Their beliefs were staunchly un-Christian.
However, it’s important to point out that beliefs of the Orthodox Church are now considered ‘anti-Semitic’ by many groups, so you may want to think about if you are willing to be thought of as an anti-Semite by a great number of people.
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church helped the Bulgarian Jews to be saved from the nazis. Many metropolitans and priests were doing their best to tell the government that it is bad to kill innocent people. Many of the people also were against killing the Jews and in fact insisted that Bulgaria will not send its Jews to the camps. The Tsar and the government did listen to the Church and did not send them, sadly we couldn't save the Jews in Macedonia because it was ruled by the German soldiers. But some of our officials were pro-German and I think the prime minister dared to say to Excarch Stephan that he should look at His church work and let the government do its job. But Excarch Stephan and The Holy Synod continued to fight against sending the Jews. So the Orthodox Church is against any tyrannical, godless type of government and ideology. It is important to know that Christ came to establish His Kingdom in Heaven not on Earth. Every ideology that we see is a result of man's fallen nature and his way of thinking to establish Heaven on earth. But this thing always ends by the worst way by making the things devastating, destroying the civilisation. Look at communism, look at nazism, look at the so called "democracy" of today. All of them lead us to nowhere and are focused always on man, on his pride, his power, his ideas distracting us from our real purpose of life to fight our passions, to be better persons, to be holy and to be like Christ - Theosis. We Orthodox Christians should be patriotic in sense of loving our nation and people by trying to make it a better place, to be beautiful and glorify God. I personally think that the better form of government that we as fallen humans can achieve is Orthodox monarchy. In a similar way like the Russian empire, Eastern Roman Empire - Byzantium and every orthodox nation was ruled before by Symphony between Church and State. Now of course saying the best that we can achieve because it is not perfect, the monarch can of course make mistakes and we should not focus on earthly things but still this type of monarchy offered in a sense a more ordered way of life in the nation and society. Sadly nowadays the times are really difficult because of all of the evil that is in the world but our hope is Christ! May the Lord by the prayers of his Holy Mother and all the saints helps all! ❤️☦️
I mean, one could argue that [Hitler was a Protestant himself](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler), but I digress.
I'm Greek-American. My great-grandmother died in 1945 due to Nazi occupation disrupting trade to the islands of Greece, causing her to starve to death so her children could eat and then live. Her sacrifice is one reason, a major reason potentially, of why I am here on this Earth along with the 100+ descendants from her, aka my father, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Also there was the [122nd Infantry Battalion of the U.S. Army](https://www.athensinsider.com/the-forgotten-history-of-the-122nd-infantry-battalion/), which was composed of Greek-Americans that volunteered to fight for the U.S. Army in Greece.
There are evil people in all walks of life.
In addition to the history directly concerning the Nazis, you can also examine the larger context. For instance, I think the Eastern Roman Empire was more tolerant of the Jews than the governments installed by the crusaders. Judaism was officially recognized by the Eastern Roman empire and it was illegal to destroy synagogues, or prevent them from worshipping. I’m not saying bad things didn’t happen, just that the explicit laws and suppression became worse when Roman Catholics gained control of what used to be Orthodox governments during the crusades.
Also, note that the most destructive force in Russia tended to not be race-based, but class/ideology-based (Stalin just killed everyone, although perhaps he singled out the Ukrainians for especial persecution).
America has been better towards some groups, however, it is interesting to note that shortly before the rise of Nazisism, Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed that Germany’s “Jewish question” was nothing compared to how America treated black people.
This isn’t an argument to say Orthodox countries are these idyllic places, just things to point out to folks who are comfortable in their ideas.
Interesting, I would like to read more about this; where did you hear about it? But I wasn’t attempting to white-wash anything. Just to point out a general trend that things didn’t get better when the Protestants or Catholics were in charge if we are simply judging things by the tolerance level.
Honestly a lot of my perspective is simply coming from this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Byzantine_Empire
Again, not trying to “whitewash” just giving some thoughts that might make Protestants and Catholics think twice about themselves as more “tolerant”.
So we can also agree that that anti German pogroms after WW2 were wrong. We can also agree the mass executions of Cossacks and their families after WW2 by the Soviets were wrong.
In what time frame? I had the general impression that Europeans during the medieval time, especially during the crusades, were the worst.
Of course, I’m not saying the Russians were good at prosecuting the instigators of the pogroms.
Also, I edited the comment to just refer to the Byzantines. Although I understand they also were not great at times.
We live in the information era. The Orthodox Church of the 20th Century did not. People did not understand what was going on. The Greeks, Russians, and Serbs were all persecuted by the Nazis
I was just checking my great grandfather's papers from a concentration camp. His sons mostly fell fighting against those people (except the one that survived his injuries). I doubt that *we* were supporting our killing.
Its a good thing Jesus doesn’t side with either - Jesus wouldn’t have sided with hitler or orthodox Christian’s who were cowards like the Germans - but Jesus doesn’t side with the current regimes that rule and reign with force and violence given any empire, creed or religious group using him as their source.
Some people and civil authorities in orthodox majority countries sided with the Nazis. Some sided with the communists. A very damned if you do damned if you don’t situation.
Some fought against both
True. A hopeless battle, unfortunately, given the circumstances.
Why hopless? Lol. We have Maria Skobțova
Of course we have to individual heroes such as her. I meant at a more national level the tides of communism and Nazism were basically the only options for what the civil government was going to become in 1940s Eastern Europe.
What do you mean? Both the Nazis and the Communists lost in the end.
True. Idk what I’d do if I were in that situation
Greece chose the allies, lost the battle, but came out in a better situation in the long term.
Though note Churchill basically rewarded the collaborators and chucked the resistance after the war because of a fear of communism....
The civil war destroyed entire swathes of Greece, all to keep a failed monarchy in power, truly devastating so many people
And our Triune God,saw that Eastern Uroupeans picked up the peices,and rebuilt the nation.
The option was between that failed monarchy, and later democracy vs the Iron Curtain. Really wasn't a good time for Ellada.
Not necessarily, that is a reductive view of the civil war. It was the KKE that were the only ones talking about a democratic vote on the future of Greece, although in a very different context than the one they would find themselves in 1949
It's a lot more complicated than that. Many many innocent Greeks who fought the Nazi's were killed in the aftermath. The country still hasn't recovered from the corruption and meddling that happened. My Dad was born in Greece during WWII and left after his mandatory military service (which was during the time the coup happened), he's still amazed at the amount of misconceptions people have about Greece during those times.
My parents were a little bit older and were both children during the occupation and the civil war and I don't think people outside of Greece fully understand how bad it was in Greece for a long time after the Nazis left and how it colored Greek politics for generations.
Given the current state of Greece, I wouldn’t go as far as to say things worked out for them, but the alternative admittedly would’ve likely been worse.
damned if you do, damned if you don’t is poignantly relevant for a globe spanning years long war.
Όχι day celebration in my church every year when I was a child. The day the Greeks said no! Nazis can’t come in. We all had to recite poems we learned in Greek school. No one ever told me what I was saying, but there was always applause. So I must have pronounced everything correctly.
"We" didn't do anything. Many individual Orthodox people including clergy supported the Nazis and many actively resisted and died fighting against the Nazis. The same is true of Catholics and certainly Protestants. The vast majority of the people on all sides are dead. As Orthodox people living in the 21st century, we can and should condemn the Nazis without any hesitation or qualification.
True. Same for the communist and any other genocidal-atehistic regime
Communism is a failed ideology that in all cases has lead to oppression and mass murder.
That's what I said! Every maniacal, genocidal, etc. ideology is bad, communism, national socialism, anarchism,
Christ truly is The Way, brothers. God bless you
Absolutely. I was agreeing with you.
Anarchism?
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They mean Hitler's NAZIonalsocialismus
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No, Marxism is inherently atheistic. There is a long list of pre-Marxist and non-Marxist writers and thinkers who espoused an explicitly Christian socialist ethic.
Anarchism has absolutely nothing to do with any of that. I get that European "anarchists" tend to be violent assholes, but a communist by any other name is still a communist. The majority of anarchist thought is simply dictated by the notion that violating the NAP, which is essentially just a secular rephrasing of the Golden Rule, is never justified, and that wealthy and powerful people don't get special moral exemptions just because they call stealing "taxing".
Just like every country, there were more Nazi sympathizers and potential collaborators than anyone would care to admit, but many people also held fast to their conscience and defied the Nazi regime. On individual levels, St. Alexander Schmorell helped write tracts for the White Rose movement in Munich. In many cases he appealed to Germany’s religious conscience, declaring Hitler an antichrist. St. Maria of Paris was canonized alongside her son Yuri Skobtsov, Fr. Dimitri Klepenin, and Ilya Fondaminsky for their heroic sheltering of Jews at their convent (including printing fake baptismal certificates and helping arrange for people to leave occupied Paris), leading to their martyrdom in concentration camps. And there are many other Orthodox heroes and saints who did similar things. I know Greece was especially defiant against the Nazis. I imagine the former Soviet countries think more of their countries’ eventual participation with the allies. It is true that Romania was complicit due to a fascist government being in power at the time, though. But it should be said that like many things we live very gray lives. Perhaps part of our fallen nature involves being products of our time and culture to some extent, where we allow those ideas to abrogate our God-given morality sometimes. It is a temptation not unique to any culture or religion, though Christ offers us a path out through repentance.
> On individual levels, St. Alexander Schmorell helped write tracts for the White Rose movement in Munich. In many cases he appealed to Germany’s religious conscience, declaring Hitler an antichrist. This is interesting. I had not been aware that Schmorell was E..O. , but it further adds the impression I have had of White Rose being illustrative in that time that, under such duress, and in the face of such evil, the meaningful division in the faith was much less so between denominations/sects/churches as they had split along theological/political/cultural lines previously, but crosscutting these by those Christians willing to go along with evil, or ignore it, and those moved to stand against it. I'm glad to hear this included the E.O. as well as factions from devout Lutherans, Reformed (Confessing Church), and Catholic (Latin Church) adherents who might otherwise seen themselves as not having not much to talk about.
I picked St. Alexander as my patron when I was baptized into the Orthodox Church precisely for his courage and his respect for his friends’ sincerity of faith, which helped align them on their convictions about the clear and present danger that Nazism posed to Christendom. I know that other Christians in areas of duress like in the Middle East have a similar coming together and greater charity with each other since you need to band together when faced with persecution. We in far safer/freer locales would do well to emulate their Christlike charity to one another.
Well said!
Mount Athos is complicated - most of the stories I've heard are basically externally appearing to play nice, especially in things where they had little choice, but behind the scenes doing their own things - I've heard plenty of reports of monks there hiding Jewish refugees.
Also Allied soldiers. When I get home, if I remember, I'll dig up the article I found about a New Zealand soldier returning to the Holy Mountain to thank the monks.
[Found it.](https://athosweblog.com/2017/11/24/1955/) Not realizing the soldier wasn't British, the monks greeted him by saying "Greece must become a British colony!"
Mount Athos is a very interesting story. Yes, the appealed directly to Hitler to protect them (fearing annexation by the Atheistic Bulgarian government of the day), but managed to avoid the worst aspects of occupation, and used the freedom to provide refuge for Jews of all ages and genders, violating the usual norms of the enclave.
The church was caught in the middle of a massive war between two atheist, ideologically-motivated nations, neither of which gave much respect for the faith or worse, actively persecuted it.
https://ajps.org/2017/08/10/who-voted-and-didnt-for-hitler-and-why/ Referencing the source above, protestants in Germany overwhelmingly supported Hitler and the Roman Catholics in Germany did not. Protestants shouldn't be throwing that accusation around especially given that Martin Luther hated Jews and wrote some horrific things about Jews. We also have to give an honest look at history. Most people outside of Germany were unaware of the concentration camps and what the Nazis were doing. Allied military members had no clue about concentration camps until they stumbled across these camps during the war. For some people, a bunch of "Germans" showed up and said fight with us against the Soviets. Understand at that time the Soviets were the immediate threat to millions of people.
And if we are going to be honest about history, we need to be honest about the fact that many people in "Orthodox" nations were perfectly willing and even happy to help the Einsatzgruppen to round up and murder Jews.
Absolutely, that's not unique to people from Orthodox regions though.
St Maria of Paris
Amazing woman
Alexander Schmorell, one of the founding members of The White Rose, was Russian Orthodox and was canonized an Orthodox saint for his martyrdom in opposition to the Nazi regime, so that should tell you something major about the Orthodox Church's overall view of Naziism. I don't know any of the stories about Mt. Athos. I'm sure that, overall during that time, there were certain people in the Church who supported the Nazis, as well as the Communists. In the end, neither one did the Church very many favors. Just because certain people who lay claim to be within the Church give their support to an evil cause, does not mean that the Church as a whole supports that cause. And by the way, there were many Protestants and atheists who supported the Nazis as well, so where do they get the right to point fingers at Orthodoxy as an entire group? Whether Orthodox, Protestant, or atheist, we should deem their support of Nazis as a reflection of their personal beliefs, not their entire group.
[Damaskinos of Athens](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damaskinos_of_Athens) >The Greek Orthodox Church and the Academic World of Greek People Protest against the Persecution... The Greek people were... deeply grieved to learn that the German Occupation Authorities have already started to put into effect a program of gradual deportation of the Greek Jewish community... and that the first groups of deportees are already on their way to Poland... According to the terms of the armistice, all Greek citizens, without distinction of race or religion, were to be treated equally by the Occupation Authorities. The Greek Jews have proven themselves... valuable contributors to the economic growth of the country [and] law-abiding citizens who fully understand their duties as Greeks. They have made sacrifices for the Greek country, and were always on the front lines of the struggle of the Greek nation to defend its inalienable historical rights... In our national consciousness, all the children of Mother Greece are an inseparable unity: they are equal members of the national body irrespective of religion... Our holy religion does not recognize superior or inferior qualities based on race or religion, as it is stated: 'There is neither Jew nor Greek' and thus condemns any attempt to discriminate or create racial or religious differences. Our common fate both in days of glory and in periods of national misfortune forged inseparable bonds between all Greek citizens, without exemption, irrespective of race... Today we are... deeply concerned with the fate of 60,000 of our fellow citizens who are Jews... we have lived together in both slavery and freedom, and we have come to appreciate their feelings, their brotherly attitude, their economic activity, and most important, their indefectible patriotism...[4] Part of a letter written in 1943 by Archbishop Damaskinos to the Greek Prime Minister and head of the German Nazi regime in Greece.
I only know of Romania and Bulgaria, both of which had governments aligned with the Nazis. But for the most part, no.
Even Bulgaria is complicated - despite being aligned with the Axis, there was a substantial effort not to comply with Germany's anti semitic demands.
Romania too, they joined the Axis only as an alliance against the Soviets that had coerced them to cede land under the threat of war.
They had some very vigorous collaborators though.
The Iron Guard in Romania was in no way reluctantly aligned with the Nazis, they were openly and vigorously in support of fascism and the Holocaust.
Yeah, I read somewhere that Romanian/Ukrainian fascists were particularly vicious antisemites. Even made the Germans uncomfortable at times.
I just finished reading a book that discussed the ways various nations were willing collaborators in the Holocaust (I am teaching the book "Night" by Elie Weisel to my 10th grade English class and wanted to get more context), and the amount of *enthusiastic* collaboration with the mass-murder of Jews in the occupied nations of eastern Europe is disturbing.
Sure, that's why most synagogues and jewish neighborhoods are empty in Romania, they all went on vacation.
Actually, it just so happens that a lot of jews did leave Romania during the communist era iIrc. We did have a genocide of the jewish people, I just don't think we joined the Axis's war for the purpose of it. Though I suppose we did have our very own far-right movement that Orthodox Christians associated with that wasn't so different from the Nazis, unfortunately.
Yes, this also happens to be a specific phenomenon in Romania: the communists there, continued the political repression, and anti-Semitic policies. Also, in the interbelic period, important newspapers like Adevarul, periodically published smear campaigns against jews. I know there is this push in Romania to control a certain narative, that they didn't participate in the holocaust as much, but they forget that hating a minority is also unacceptable - it's a small step from there to genocide.
You’ve heard this from Protestants? Germany was the country which birthed Protestantism, no? Also it’s kindof bizarre to pin the political choices of people from other countries on us because we share the same faith in Christ our God. It would be like me accusing a Lutheran of being a nazi because Nazi’s came from a Lutheran dominant country.
New Martyr Gorazd of Prague was martyred for protecting Czech resistance fighters [https://orthodoxwiki.org/Gorazd\_(Pavlik)\_of\_Prague](https://orthodoxwiki.org/Gorazd_(Pavlik)_of_Prague)
The Bulgarian Orthodox church actively participated in the saving of 30,000 Jews in Bulgaria. The church and parts of the government worked together and ultimately prevented all Jewish Bulgarian citizens from being deported to concentration camps. One important figure was the mitropolitan bishop Kiril who said that if the Jews are put on a train to Germany he will lie down on the railway in front of the train. So you have a clear example of how an Orthodox church, an official institution opposed the Nazis at the height of their power and showed them that they can't do whatever they want with human lives.
On the whole, no. The situation where it gets froggy is Romania and Bulgaria, but neither clergy nor laity were saliently pro-nazi in any other region -- rather, they were butchered by pro-nazi regimes and collaborators, as in Yugoslavia at the hands of Ustase fascists, or in the horrible slaughter of Operation Barbarossa. I'm not gonna engage in any kind of "actually, we suffered the most!" stuff, but the hatred the Nazis displayed for most orthodox people on an *ethnic* basis precludes any meaningful notion of "support" out the gate.
Look up St. Maria of Paris :)
And her companions Sts Dmitri Klepinine, Ilya and Benjamin Fondaminski.
Orthodox Christians, like everyone else in Europe, included people and authorities who collaborated with the Nazis for a thousand different reasons. Ranging from inability or unwillingness to understand the nature of Nazi Germany, to real or imagined shared interests, to common enemies, to personal prejudices or ideological sympathy by persons and political parties, to simply making bad, wrong choices. You may take it as a general truism that nobody, including countless Nazis themselves, ever truly perceived the revolutionary nature of Nazism until the logical conclusion of its beliefs were perpetrated on them. Many countless thousands never perceived, or ever were willing to perceive, it even then. People prewar, and during the war, fit the Nazis into their own preconceived boxes, and only because the Nazis proceeded to do everything they did — only then did everyone have precedent to say, "You should've known! They're literally Nazis!" This is not an excuse. An excuse justifies an act as permissible and good. This is only a reason. A reason simply describes why.
I am writing my Master Thesis-like paper on Greece during the Holocaust and the ever-lasting antisemitism. And yes, some clergy and officials did. But still more people sided with the resistance fighters (mainly because of the Nazi occupation of Greece), and some (a minority) even helped some Jews escape, or were sympathetic to the Jews at least.
The eldest Presbytera at my Greek Parish was in Greece during the War. She remembers how terrible the Nazis were to the Greeks
Yes, I can only imagine!
Yes, I can only imagine!
In Yugoslavia the Orthodox Serbs sided with the Allies and fought against the Nazis whereas the Croats and Muslims supported the Nazis. The pro Nazi Croats committed genocide against the Serbs by murdering 800,000 for refusing to convert to Catholicism. Greece fought against the Nazis. There are four Greek bishops Archbishop Damaskinos, Joachim of Volos, Chrysostom of Zakynthos, and Gennadios of Thessaloniki who are recognized by the yad vashem in Jerusalem as righteous among the nations for protecting Greek Jews. While Bulgaria was a German ally, the Bulgarian Church succeeded in protecting Bulgarian Jews. Metropolitan Stefan of Bulgaria is among the righteous among the nations in the Yad Vashem. The Russians were anti Nazi as well and the Russian Church took a patriotic position against the Nazi invasion. Mother Maria skoptskova and Fr Dimitri Klepinan died in Nazi death camps for helping French Jews. Bishop Gorad of Prague was executed by the Nazis for protecting check patriots implicated in the killing of the mass murderer Reinhard Heydrick. All three are Orthodox saints. The Russians recently glorified the layman Alexander Schmorell who was part of the anti Nazi white rose during the war. Also, according to kyriakos Markides in his book Mountain of Silence Mount Athos monks permitted Jewish women and children to hide on the holy mountain during the occupation of Greece.
There is a memorial to an outright Nazi collaborator at the ROCOR monastery in NY. The Iron Guard in Romania counted many Orthodox among their members and were open about being "clerical fascists" and gladly worked with the Nazis.
Who is the memorial for?
See my response to the other comment.
Who?
Andrey Vlasov - there is a memorial to him at the Novo-Diveevo convent.
Some countries like Romania and Bulgaria did. ROCOR did with some beautiful exceptions. Others like Greece and Serbia fought like lions.
There were Orthodox Nazi collaborators. There were also Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, and atheist Nazi collaborators. Because the Nazi plan involved a genocide of Slavic peoples, most of whom are historically Orthodox, Orthodox Christians suffered under the Nazi regime, though not specifically because they were Orthodox. Many people of all religious communities were happy to help with persecution of Jews, and unfortunately, some Orthodox clergy and laity took the wrong side in this. Many people also thought Nazism was more similar to earlier nationalist movements than it turned out to be, and underestimated the danger that it posed, seeing it as preferable to communism, which many thought of as a more immediate threat because of the Bolsheviks' actions.
Seeing as there were Protestants and atheists who supported the Nazis, that is very rich and you should ignore them. That aside, were there Orthodox Christians who did so? Sure. Were there also Orthodox Christians who opposed them? Also sure. This is not unique to Orthodoxy.
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https://youtu.be/jhfybumwBUo?si=_IGIaefJ53TrV9sp Here is a very good movie that describes whats was hapening in thèse years if you don’t speak russian you can activate subtitels in english
St Matej and St Bogolyub of Chisholm are both martyrs who got murdered by the nazis in Yugoslavia. St Teofan of Chisholm got martyred by the communists in Yugoslavia. All from my area in Minnesota.
I thought it was the Ustase, who identified everything Orthodox as non-Croatian.
The ustase were puppets of the Nazis. They had concentration camps built for exterminating Jews and other ethnic groups like Serbs and the Romani. They also deported a lot of Jews to Nazi Germany.
The persecution of Serbs was an Ustase project, maybe the Germans helped, but the camps where those saints died were staffed by Ustase Croats.
Yes. Ustase croats who's nation and political party were under the control of Nazi Germany. Don't try to act like the Nazis didn't have anything to do with this. The ustase even had German troops in their ranks.
The Germans did horrors in Yugoslavia, but they didnt run the camps at which those saints died.
>The persecution of Serbs was an Ustase project, maybe the Germans helped The Germans had concentration camps: [Banjica concentration camp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjica_concentration_camp), [Crveni Krst concentration camp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crveni_Krst_concentration_camp) and [Topovske Supe concentration camp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topovske_%C5%A0upe_concentration_camp). They even implemented a policy whereby for every soldier killed, 100 Serbians would be murdered, while a wounded soldier would result in 50 Serbians being killed. Both were brutal.
Being hyper zealous in pursuing a guerilla war is a different type of horror than the ethnic and anti-Orthodox violence metted out by the Ustase against Serbs in Croatia. Again, the point stands, the saints were killed by the Ustase.
I'm from Greece and I know our Church and a lot of people hid Jews from nazis. What is the story you heard about Mount Athos? The only thing I know is that a monk wrote to Hitler and asked him to respect Mount Athos, which he did. And that a Saint from Mount Athos was gathering food every way he could to help people starving. (Greece had a hard time during the war, everyone was starting as my grandparents were explaining.)
Did you expect of the monks on Mount Athos to self-immolate? The Church has survived many tryants before the little corporal and will survive many more in the future.
Quick Google “jasenovac concentration camp”
Who’s we? I know I didn’t. Not sure about you but I wasn’t even born until 30 years after the war ended.
Many people sided with nazis but in short NO. The Croatian ustashe killed 300k serbs (orthodox christians) and forcefully converted many to catholicism and martyred some priests. Also I'm pretty sure there is a story about a orthodox priest somewhere in east Europe who saved allot of jews something about the nazis wanting a list of the jews and the priest wrote his name on it and was killed.
Some areas did. As an American convert and Romanian Orthodox Christian in the US, the Romanian Church has a tragic history of brutal antisemitism, including collaboration with the Nazis. I have even heard antisemitic things be spoken in my parish by a couple of individuals. We need to acknowledge these things and combat them.
General Patton said we should have fought with the Nazis against the communists, not with the communists against the Nazis. He was 100% correct. Watch Europa the Last Battle for more info on this.
Not really. That said, the Germans were often viewed as liberators when they occupied communist territory. Here's an excerpt someone posted from the memoirs of a German soldier: “As divisional adjutant, I found time and opportunity to make contact with local people, in the course of which, my knowledge of Russian came in useful. I was astonished to detect no hatred among them. Women often came out of their houses with an icon held before their breast, crying, ‘We are still Christians. Free us from Stalin who destroyed our churches.’ Many of them offered an egg and a piece of dry bread as a welcome. We gradually had the feeling that we really were being regarded as liberators... Destruction in the industrial quarters and of the bridges over the Dnieper was immense. In the midst of the ruins, Smolensk cathedral pointed to the sky. It appeared largely unharmed. I followed the women and the old men and as I entered the cathedral, was deeply impressed by its beauty. It looked intact. The altar was adomed; burning candles and many icons richly embellished with gold bathed the interior in a festive light. As I went up to the altar with my companions, an old man, poorly dressed and with a flowing beard, spoke to me in broken German. “Gospodin officer, I am a priest who used to preach here before the Lenin-Stalin era; I have been in hiding now for many years, scraping a living as a shoemaker. Now you have liberated our city. May I say a first mass in this cathedral?”...“I gave the priest permission to celebrate mass the next day, for which he wanted to bring in an additional priest. The following day, I went to Smolensk again, having informed the divisional commander in the meantime; as a precaution, I took along an armored patrol. The sight that met our eyes when we arrived was breathtaking. The square in front of the cathedral was full of people moving slowly toward the entrance. With my orderly officer, I jostled my way forward. Already, there was not a corner left in the cathedral in which people were not standing, sitting, or kneeling. We remained standing to one side to avoid disturbing the service by our presence. I was not familiar with the Russian Orthodox ritual, but the ceremony that now began drew me more and more under its spell. Invisible behind the altar, one of the two priests began with a monotone chant, which was answered by a choir of eight voices standing in front of the altar. The chanting of the precentor and the choir filled the vast space of the church. The acoustics gave the impression that the chanting came from above, from heaven. The people fell on their knees and prayed. All had tears in their eyes. For them, it was the first mass for more than twenty years. My companion and I were greatly moved. How deep must the faith have been of these poor, oppressed people; no ideology, no compulsion or terror had been able to take it from them. It was an experience I shall never forget.” Excerpt From: Panzer Commander: The Memoirs of Colonel Hans Von Luck
Nazism as an ideology is fundamentally atheistic, but there were supporters of the Nazi parties who were Orthodox, as the political beliefs vary compared to ideology. Different Nazis had different beliefs (not all were anti-Semitic, for example), but nobody Orthodox could have thought like Hitler or Himmler. Their beliefs were staunchly un-Christian. However, it’s important to point out that beliefs of the Orthodox Church are now considered ‘anti-Semitic’ by many groups, so you may want to think about if you are willing to be thought of as an anti-Semite by a great number of people.
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church helped the Bulgarian Jews to be saved from the nazis. Many metropolitans and priests were doing their best to tell the government that it is bad to kill innocent people. Many of the people also were against killing the Jews and in fact insisted that Bulgaria will not send its Jews to the camps. The Tsar and the government did listen to the Church and did not send them, sadly we couldn't save the Jews in Macedonia because it was ruled by the German soldiers. But some of our officials were pro-German and I think the prime minister dared to say to Excarch Stephan that he should look at His church work and let the government do its job. But Excarch Stephan and The Holy Synod continued to fight against sending the Jews. So the Orthodox Church is against any tyrannical, godless type of government and ideology. It is important to know that Christ came to establish His Kingdom in Heaven not on Earth. Every ideology that we see is a result of man's fallen nature and his way of thinking to establish Heaven on earth. But this thing always ends by the worst way by making the things devastating, destroying the civilisation. Look at communism, look at nazism, look at the so called "democracy" of today. All of them lead us to nowhere and are focused always on man, on his pride, his power, his ideas distracting us from our real purpose of life to fight our passions, to be better persons, to be holy and to be like Christ - Theosis. We Orthodox Christians should be patriotic in sense of loving our nation and people by trying to make it a better place, to be beautiful and glorify God. I personally think that the better form of government that we as fallen humans can achieve is Orthodox monarchy. In a similar way like the Russian empire, Eastern Roman Empire - Byzantium and every orthodox nation was ruled before by Symphony between Church and State. Now of course saying the best that we can achieve because it is not perfect, the monarch can of course make mistakes and we should not focus on earthly things but still this type of monarchy offered in a sense a more ordered way of life in the nation and society. Sadly nowadays the times are really difficult because of all of the evil that is in the world but our hope is Christ! May the Lord by the prayers of his Holy Mother and all the saints helps all! ❤️☦️
I mean, one could argue that [Hitler was a Protestant himself](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler), but I digress. I'm Greek-American. My great-grandmother died in 1945 due to Nazi occupation disrupting trade to the islands of Greece, causing her to starve to death so her children could eat and then live. Her sacrifice is one reason, a major reason potentially, of why I am here on this Earth along with the 100+ descendants from her, aka my father, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Also there was the [122nd Infantry Battalion of the U.S. Army](https://www.athensinsider.com/the-forgotten-history-of-the-122nd-infantry-battalion/), which was composed of Greek-Americans that volunteered to fight for the U.S. Army in Greece. There are evil people in all walks of life.
In addition to the history directly concerning the Nazis, you can also examine the larger context. For instance, I think the Eastern Roman Empire was more tolerant of the Jews than the governments installed by the crusaders. Judaism was officially recognized by the Eastern Roman empire and it was illegal to destroy synagogues, or prevent them from worshipping. I’m not saying bad things didn’t happen, just that the explicit laws and suppression became worse when Roman Catholics gained control of what used to be Orthodox governments during the crusades. Also, note that the most destructive force in Russia tended to not be race-based, but class/ideology-based (Stalin just killed everyone, although perhaps he singled out the Ukrainians for especial persecution). America has been better towards some groups, however, it is interesting to note that shortly before the rise of Nazisism, Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed that Germany’s “Jewish question” was nothing compared to how America treated black people. This isn’t an argument to say Orthodox countries are these idyllic places, just things to point out to folks who are comfortable in their ideas.
This is a rather remarkable whitewash of our history. We fast an extra week before Lent to atone for Heraclius slaughtering Jews…
Interesting, I would like to read more about this; where did you hear about it? But I wasn’t attempting to white-wash anything. Just to point out a general trend that things didn’t get better when the Protestants or Catholics were in charge if we are simply judging things by the tolerance level. Honestly a lot of my perspective is simply coming from this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Byzantine_Empire Again, not trying to “whitewash” just giving some thoughts that might make Protestants and Catholics think twice about themselves as more “tolerant”.
Serves them right, they collaborated with the fire worshipping Persians!
I sure hope that’s sarcasm…
I sure hope you don't support collective punishment in any other situation.
I don’t, it sure sounds like you do tho’…
So we can also agree that that anti German pogroms after WW2 were wrong. We can also agree the mass executions of Cossacks and their families after WW2 by the Soviets were wrong.
🤦🏻♂️
Sorry but the levels of anti-semitism in the "Orthodox" countries of Eastern Europe has historically been ***much*** worse than in Western Europe.
In what time frame? I had the general impression that Europeans during the medieval time, especially during the crusades, were the worst. Of course, I’m not saying the Russians were good at prosecuting the instigators of the pogroms. Also, I edited the comment to just refer to the Byzantines. Although I understand they also were not great at times.
Paints with a broad brush like that in an attempt to malign the Church is operating at room temperature IQ.
An honest look at history is not "maligning the church".
No because national socialists weren’t Christians, they followed the occult
We live in the information era. The Orthodox Church of the 20th Century did not. People did not understand what was going on. The Greeks, Russians, and Serbs were all persecuted by the Nazis
I was just checking my great grandfather's papers from a concentration camp. His sons mostly fell fighting against those people (except the one that survived his injuries). I doubt that *we* were supporting our killing.
Its a good thing Jesus doesn’t side with either - Jesus wouldn’t have sided with hitler or orthodox Christian’s who were cowards like the Germans - but Jesus doesn’t side with the current regimes that rule and reign with force and violence given any empire, creed or religious group using him as their source.