By: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
When in high school, I sometimes passed out Christian tracts to householders. Most people politely said no-thanks, so I moved on to the next house. Only one encounter stands out. In the wealthy community of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, I knocked on the door of a mansion.
An elderly man opened the door, stepped outside with me, and closed the door. Judging by his accent, he was obviously from Germany. After my surprise abated, I rapidly realized I had never before encountered a person with such obvious anger when passing out tracts. He did not tell me his name, so I will call him Wilhelm.
I knew his anger was not against me (I just met him), so I just listened to him. I felt he needed someone to talk to, and I was curious about him. As I was standing on his porch listening to him, I noticed a luxury car in his driveway; I was from Detroit, so I often noticed cars.
Wilhelm explained his father was a Jew, but he was not considered a Jew in Nazi Germany because his mother was Aryan. According to the Nuremberg Laws, a person with three or four Jewish grandparents was a Jew and Wilhelm only had two.
Wilhelm’s father, a Lutheran minister, was a mischling (German for “mixling”) because he had three Jewish grandparents. He explained the church expelled all ethnic Jewish ministers even though they converted to Christianity.
Wilhelm’s father, not only converted, but became an ordained minister. Jews who converted to Christianity, including Wilhelm’s father, were usually sent to a concentration camp. Mischlinge (plural for ‘mischling’) was a pejorative legal term used in Nazi Germany to denote persons of mixed “Aryan” and non-Aryan race.
The Nazis enacted the Nuremberg Laws to apply the belief widely held by scientists then about inferior races into law. They believed that the world is divided into distinct races that are not equally strong and valuable.
The Nazis considered Germans to be members of the superior “Aryan” race, the strongest, and most valuable race. Intermarriage “polluted” the pure race.
Although Nazi Germany was an overwhelmingly Christian nation, predominately Lutheran, with similarly overwhelmingly self-identified Christian leadership, it did very little to oppose Nazism. They also did little to help Wilhelm’s father, and by expelling him from the church exposed him to the Nazis.
He was imprisoned and died there after being worked to death. If he was allowed to continue leading his church, he may well have stayed in the shadows. The church did not want to get involved in politics but stuck to preaching the gospel and allowed the state to run the country.
Wilhelm lost his Jewish father but nonetheless was not enough Jewish to be sent to the camps, so was drafted into the Nazi army where he served honorably.
The story Wilhelm patiently explained to me illustrated the fact that his wealth could not compensate for his loss. After close to 30 years, he was still very bitter about what happened to his devout Christian Lutheran minister father who happened to have one too many Jewish grandfathers.
I have no idea how he became wealthy and did not ask. I just listened to his story. He needed someone to ventilate too, and I was glad to help him in some small way by serving as a good listener. After he thanked me and explained his family was tired of listening to his past, I left and never forgot his story.
My encounter was like, when flying, people sitting next to you may tell you intimate details about their life that they would never tell friends because they know they will probably never see you again.
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Dr. Bergman is a multi-award-winning teacher and author. He has taught in the science and psychology area for over 40 years at the University of Toledo Medical College, Bowling Green State University, and other colleges. His 9 degrees include a Doctorate from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He has over 1,800 publications in both scholarly and popular science journals that have been translated into 13 languages. His publications are in over 2,400 college libraries in 65 countries. Bergman has spoken over 2,000 times at colleges and churches in America, Canada, Europe, the South Sea Islands, and Africa.