The Grey Book

man life, rendering it ultimately impossible... [10] <VII> The fact that the protest of the Church against the persecution and annihilation of the Jews was an inseparable part of its general protest against the inhuman and anti-Christian character of modern anti-semitism places the documents collected in this volume in a broad historical context. These documents offer ample evidence of the Church's opposition to an historical phenomenon rooted long before the Nazis came to power, hence also prior to the rise of modern anti-semitism. The protest of the Church was fundamentally directed against those pagan and mythological elements that had crept into Christianity itself in the course of its historical development among the heathen. To many of the fathers of modern anti-semitism, which is the racial and political Anti-semitism that arose towards the end of the 19th century and reached its highest stage during the Third Reich, the rejection of Judaism was tantamount to the rejection of religion in general.