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Religion
Lessons from the Holocaust for Today
Patterns of hatred and indifference shown during the Holocaust can happen again.
Updated February 1, 2025 Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
Key points
- We remember the Holocaust in part to avoid making the same mistakes of hatred and indifference.
- The Holocaust likely wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for "thin," extrinsic Christianity.
- Individuals and communities can learn to resist oppression and demonstrate empathy, compassion, and justice.
Approximately 6,000,000 Jews and 5,000,000 others—including political opponents, gays, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled, and mentally ill persons—were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Part of the purpose of remembering the Holocaust is to reflect on how an advanced democracy such as Germany during the 1930s and 1940s could come to engage in such mass hatred and violence, and to learn from its mistakes so that we don’t engage in similar behavior again.
As a psychologist of religion, I am particularly interested in how religion—and, specifically, Christianity—played a role during the Holocaust. Unfortunately, I fear, we may not be learning from history as much as we should, as religion seems intertwined with similar problems today.
Christianity and the Holocaust
The seeds for the Holocaust lay in the history of antisemitism, a strand of which long has been perpetuated in the Christian church. Beginning soon after Christ died, some Christians inaccurately blamed Jews for the crucifixion. For centuries, many Christians also struggled with the fact that Jews do not convert to faith in Christ.
Partly because of these reasons, Martin Luther wrote his book On the Jews and Their Lies, in which he describes Jews as “base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.” He goes on to give “sincere advice” to Christians that includes calls to set the Jews’ synagogues and schools on fire, raze and destroy their houses, and take their prayer books and Talmudic writings. Luther’s stated motivation may be even more striking: “This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians.”
Such sentiments often were quoted and circulated in Nazi Germany as rationale for the Holocaust. The conclusion that religious studies Professor Stephen Haynes draws is that, “although Christian anti-Judaism did not by itself make the Holocaust possible… [it] could not have occurred without Christianity.”
“Thin” vs. “Thick” Religion
To help understand how religion influences genocidal behavior, theologian Miroslav Volf, in his book Exclusion and Embrace, distinguishes between “thin” religion and “thick” religion. Thin religion, according to Volf, involves a misconstrued, superficial, vague, and formulaic kind of faith that selfishly serves “primarily to energize and heal;” it often is influenced by factors outside the faith itself, including national or economic interests.
In contrast, thick religion “maps a way of life” and connects with an “ongoing tradition with strong ties to its origins and history… with clear cognitive and moral content,” such as the essential teaching to “love one’s neighbor as one’s self.” Volf concludes that thin but zealous practice of the Christian faith is likely to foster dehumanization and violence, while thick and committed practice will help generate empathy and compassion.
Related psychological research supports Volf’s conclusion. Based on a distinction originally made by Gordon Allport between “extrinsic” religiousness and “intrinsic” religiousness, decades of studies reveal that faith motivated by the hope for future secondary gain is associated with greater prejudice, while faith motivated by sincere belief is associated with less prejudice. As Allport said, “there is something about religion that makes prejudice, and something that unmakes it.”
From this, it seems that much of the “Christianity” practiced during the Holocaust likely was quite thin, motivated mostly by national, economic, and self-interests.
Standing By vs. Standing Up
Although hatred played a major role in the Holocaust, so did passive indifference, what social psychologists refer to as “the bystander effect.” Research on the bystander effect suggests that such behavior, at least in part, is explained by the human tendency to diffuse responsibility to others during difficult circumstances. Psychological research suggests, additionally, that the bystander effect is more likely to occur when individuals look to others to see how they’re responding. If others don’t seem very concerned, we don’t become concerned either.
If the leaders of the Christian church and large numbers of the Christian faithful had stood up to Nazism, history likely would be significantly different today. Indeed, standing up to oppression of various kinds is a key aspect of thick faith.
There were Christian individuals and communities that did stand up in heroic fashion during the Holocaust as well. Researchers have tried to understand what factors predicted who rescued those in harm’s way during the Holocaust. Some reasons are instructive, and include having a close relationship with someone in need of help, seeking to obey biblical teachings about love and, in a dramatic reversal of historical antisemitic views, feeling a spiritual kinship with those of Jewish faith.
Parallels Between the Holocaust and Today
It’s easy to believe that those who engaged in Holocaust atrocities must have been evil, while we, on the other hand, are too good to have been involved. Similarly, it’s easy to believe that the forces that caused the Holocaust couldn’t possibly be in operation today.
But, there are parallels. For example, the hatred/indifference shown by some Christians toward Jews during the Holocaust in some ways is similar to the hatred/indifference shown by some Christians toward some individuals and groups today.
We as individuals each have choices to make, as do each of our communities. The importance of the choices becomes magnified during times of significant disruption and social unrest.
May we all learn to never forget the Holocaust as we seek to be on the right side of history from this day forward. Being aware of the temptation to subscribe to a thin version of our beliefs in service of national, economic, or self-interests; becoming actively involved in resisting oppression; and bravely committing ourselves to empathy, compassion, and justice are good places to start.
