German Evangelical Church

In 1939 the five regional churches led by the ‘German Christians’ officially forbade ‘non-Aryans’ from being church members, telling pastors that if they wished to offer services for ‘non-Aryans’, such services could not take place on church property.

The intensity of their efforts, and the daily tragedies with which those Confessing Christians working to help the Jews were confronted, were in marked contrast to the pronouncements of the official German Evangelical Church. After 1939, when emigration had become virtually impossible, Jewish Christians received even less support from their church (the official church was utterly silent on the plight of the non-Christian Jews).