Remembrance and Repentance

The Call to Remember and Memorialize the Holocaust

"Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my
brothers, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:40)

From the Introduction:

Holocaust studies are very important. We are living in a time when the last Holocaust survivors, the victims and eyewitnesses to the atrocity, are dying out. Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are on the rise, and it's important for people to know what happened. — Rabbi Dr. Michael Schiffman, Executive Director, Chevra USA

Christian anti-Semitism built the road that led to Auschwitz. In the Holocaust, two thousand years of anti-Jewish replacement theology culminated in genocide. European Christianity sat as if bewitched in the cold darkness of indifference just outside a fiery circle of doom while the ovens roared and the smoke of six million innocent Jewish lives filled the skies over Europe.

What has changed since then?

More than seven decades after the extermination began, Western Christianity still sits seemingly numb and in denial of any spiritual responsibility for its tragic failure to come to the aid of its Jewish neighbors as the Nazi monster consumed men, women, children, grandparents, and grandchildren. How? Why?

The Holocaust demands a reply. Now as the last survivors of that generation begin to fade, it is time for us to acknowledge culpability and take positive action to root out Christian anti-Semitism. This book is about remembering what happened in the past, understanding how we contributed to the nightmare, and learning from those mistakes to change the future.

About the Author

Daniel Hennessy has studied under both Jewish and Christian teachers and received training as a small-group pastor at Hope Chapel Ministry Institute in Hermosa Beach, CA. He did his initial research as a secondary school educator at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, CA then went on to be trained as a Holocaust Educator by staff from the International School of Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem and at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. by its resident staff and staff of the Anti-Defamation League in conjunction with the Archdiocese of Washington. He has also studied at and created educational programming for secondary students and faculty members at the Center for Holocaust Awareness and Information (CHAI), a part of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester (NY). Hennessy is a past recipient of the Meyer A. Nathan Scholarship for Holocaust Education awarded by the Anti-Defamation League.

"The Holocaust, which established the standard for absolute evil, is the universal heritage of all civilized people"
—Our Living Legacy, The Survivors' Declaration

For more on the Holocaust, be sure to visit Yad Vashem's website and the museum in Jerusalem when you visit Israel.