Dru Johnson (00:00)
think about when i was a kid in the late seventy you know my years of consciousness late seventies uh… early eighties especially
I it feels like to me this may be wrong but it feels like to me when I was a kid there was a new holocaust and vietnam movie coming out like every year ⁓ sometimes multiple times a year right and my parents were the kind that let me watch holocaust movies when I was a kid ⁓ even some of the violent ones where you know they’re lining up jews against the wall in the ghetto and shooting them you know with a machine gun ⁓
David Pileggi (00:19)
Hmm.
Very.
⁓ Right.
Dru Johnson (00:36)
And so maybe it’s more scarred in my psyche than the average person, but ⁓ I feel like growing up in the 80s, the Holocaust was a renowned and it was a big deal. And my feeling is that has been completely lost in my children’s generation. And I wonder what you think of that.
David Pileggi (00:50)
Mm.
Correct.
So, you know, it’s commonly understood that we remember events or we remember history really only as far back as our grandparents. So it’s for many of us of a certain age, we grew up in the post World War II.
generation. ⁓ We knew veterans who served in the war. We were raised on all kinds of TV series such as Combat and ⁓ that horrible Hogan’s Heroes, et cetera, et cetera. So we are a post-war generation. And of course, World War II was probably one of the
the greatest catastrophes in at least recorded human history. And so all of that, right, impressed our parents, their children. But after what, two or three generations, we don’t remember historical events anymore. We don’t remember the Spanish-American War, or we don’t think about the, you know, the American…
Mexican War, for example, and we don’t think what what conclusions are we drawing from the Spanish-American War? What do we learn from the First World War? My goodness the First World War brings us into the Second World War. So these things are forgotten. In fact, what is the First World War for many of us as Americans? There might be a statue in our town square of a doughboy, right? And maybe some names listed on the base of the statue. These are some
of the unfortunates from our town who died in the First World War, but it means very little to us. And we’re coming to the place now, unfortunately, dangerously, where the Holocaust and the Second World War are fading, and the consequences and the lessons of that war are being forgotten. To our peril.
To our peril, we are ⁓ in danger of not only repeating ⁓ those mistakes, but we’re in danger of, I think we’re in danger of creating ⁓ the conditions ignorantly that will lead to another disaster in Europe.
Dru Johnson (03:27)
So
I don’t usually ask guests to kind of introduce themselves, but you’re a unique qualifier. You’re a friend of mine, and you have some unique expertise. But could you explain to us where you live, what you do, what are the kinds of things you work on?
David Pileggi (03:45)
Okay, well, I don’t consider myself an academic. I do think of myself largely as an activist. And in the words of the world’s greatest rock and roll band, Let’s See Action, I am currently serving as the rector of Christ Church Jerusalem, ⁓ which is an Anglican church. am…
together with my family who’ve been living in Israel for 45 years. I have a great interest in contemporary history, ⁓ in Jewish history, ⁓ modern Christian history, of course, along with ⁓ my interest in the Bible ⁓ and the Jewish context of the gospels ⁓ and more. And for many years, from our corner,
Jerusalem at Jaffa Gate. We’ve been endeavoring to preach and teach the scripture and of course I we’ve been
blessed with many people who’ve come. They wanted to know more about the Jewish story, its Jewish context. And what always concerned me is that people were interested in Judaism and Jewish history up until the year 70. And then afterwards the Jewish people became something of a museum piece. So I thought, there’s a part two of this story.
And I think it’s relevant for us as Christians, and we should ⁓ know that. think we are spiritually related to the Jewish people. I’m not thinking ethnically, but their history in some way should be our history. Let’s see what we can do to ⁓ educate or teach people about what happens to the Jewish people, especially in the diaspora. The implications for us, Jewish-Christian relations,
of course the Holocaust and what can we as Christians learn or perhaps
but we shouldn’t learn right from that Jewish experience, which I think is, again, very valuable for us. I’m not trying to turn people into ⁓ PhD students of ⁓ medieval Judaism, people should have concern. Prayerful Christians should have a ⁓ knowledge, an intelligent knowledge of Jewish history, and especially as it relates to Jewish
Christian relations. ⁓
Dru Johnson (06:25)
Yeah,
and I was one of those ⁓ ignorant people as well until I started traveling to Jerusalem for academic work. I didn’t know many Jews. didn’t really understand Judaism. It just wasn’t part of the curriculum of going through seminary, certainly. ⁓ And I just felt ⁓ like many people that I ended up inviting Christian scholars over to Jerusalem to participate in some academic work over there. It’s like we all have the exact same reaction.
David Pileggi (06:41)
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (06:55)
We didn’t even know existed. So I blame myself for that. ⁓ It was there for me to study. I just never ventured over until I actually started to know Jewish thinkers and they would say things that I just didn’t understand what they were talking about and I had to go look things up.
David Pileggi (07:02)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
And of course, oftentimes, ⁓ in the past, when I’ve asked ⁓ either Jewish thinkers or rabbis to explain ⁓ their history and maybe explain Judaism to ⁓ Christian audience, oftentimes, there’s been quite a miss. And I once had a ⁓ very prominent ⁓
Holocaust scholar asked me, why are you taking tours of Poland to study not only Jewish history, but the Holocaust? And basically what he was asking me, why are you a Gentile, right? A Christian explaining our history. And I said to him very simply, ⁓
I have been ⁓ doing this for quite a long time, and I find that oftentimes that, at least in the beginning, ⁓ Jewish ⁓ scholars, rabbis, ⁓ thinkers, don’t always understand how to relate to a Christian audience.
And they don’t understand what concerns us, nor do they always understand how to even best explain ⁓ Jewish thinking and Jewish practice. And therefore, I’ve been able to act.
Something as an interpreter, at least for those who are ⁓ beginning a journey and starting to become interested in all things, or let’s say in many things, many things Jewish. I don’t claim to be the expert or even the final interpreter.
But oftentimes ⁓ people need something of a gentle landing into this field. And that would be true with the Holocaust ⁓ and true with Jewish-Christian relations, especially in Europe throughout the ages. And my goal in all of this is not to create Jewish wannabes or to create people who have a certain empathy with Judaism.
⁓ And it’s even going beyond getting folks to remember the Holocaust.
Because memory, as important as it may be, at least in our contemporary understanding, memory has ⁓ some ⁓ challenges and it becomes quite static. It’s more important, I think, to explain and then to try to take the past or understand the past and to find out, what might be relevant for us in the present day? And the goal of all this explanation
and of course memory and commemoration. We’re not throwing that out. The goal of all this is to get people to become active, stop being passive, stop ⁓ winking at anti-Semitism, or ⁓ to take our relationship with the Jewish people ⁓ seriously, and to also have a, you might say, a mature, ⁓ nuanced view of Israel.
the state of Israel and its current policies.
Dru Johnson (10:40)
Yeah, that’s a tricky one because you’ve been there 45 years. You understand lots of nuances that I don’t even understand. Your children were raised there. They’re native Hebrew speakers, Israeli Hebrew speakers. So you’re all in. And I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to hear what some people say about the state of Israel, Palestinian territories, Gaza.
the Middle East in general. I want to go back to Holocaust for a bit ⁓ before we get into the tours that you take into Poland and other things. maybe just start with, okay, we have some younger listeners and by younger, mean under 30s, right? ⁓ Some people who maybe are of that generation where they’re like, I know the Holocaust is important, but I even have friends who are just like, I think the Holocaust is overstated, right? Like, yeah, something bad happened, but yeah.
you know, six million, that’s not realistic. know, someone did the numbers. I mean, I see videos where people like are trying to calculate out things and show why they couldn’t have killed six million Jews. So maybe you could give us like a thumbnail sketch of what are the things that you think people need to first, people who are in that generation, what do they need to understand most about the Holocaust?
David Pileggi (11:47)
Peace.
my goodness. think when we enter this subject, it is difficult with all the flood of films and articles and books ⁓ that have come out over the years, ⁓ some of which you can only call Holocaust pornography. ⁓
Dru Johnson (12:01)
know that’s an impossible task. ⁓
David Pileggi (12:29)
⁓ films that emphasize the violence or the horror. And while we don’t want to minimize all that, ⁓ somehow it needs to be, the Holocaust needs to be taken out of its narrow context and looked at ⁓ universally. Certainly for the 20th century and maybe for… ⁓
much of recorded human history. This might be the central event. This might be one of the most ⁓ important consequential ⁓ tragedies to happen in all of human history. And on one hand, it concerns the Jewish people. But on the other hand, it ⁓ embraces, I think, all of the human experience and all of
And ultimately, this is not simply about, quote unquote, the Jews, but this is about all of us. And the issue is the Holocaust, which is unique in many ways. It is a genocide that, it’s a genocide unlike all other genocides. ⁓
It has some similarities to what happened in Rwanda, some similarities to what happened in Cambodia, but it is ⁓ different. Now it happened once. the question is, now that it happened, are we going to learn from this and prevent it from happening again? Or is now, you might say, the genie out of the bottle.
And we will never be able to put that genie back in. We’ll never be able to stop this from reoccurring. Because we’re talking about an event, right? The murder of the Jewish people is in the context of the Second World War, in which 40 million people were killed. We’re still living with the horrific consequences of that war, even today, although ⁓ people are forgetting. ⁓
their memory about the war and its horrors are growing dim. again, is this a one-time event in human history or is it going to occur again? And Hitler’s obsession with the Jews is pretty much, very much what actually brings about the war. So.
His murder of six million Jews isn’t a footnote in the war or isn’t just a ⁓ chapter in a book about the war. It is the reason that the war started. ⁓ And it’s the reason that we have.
again, these horrific, horrific consequences. ⁓ The Second World War, led to the rise of the Soviet Union, which led to the Iron Curtain, which led to… ⁓
One, you might say, tragedy and disaster after another. So the murder of the Jewish people is not only a central event of the war. It’s the cause of the war. And I can make an argument for that in a moment, if you wish. And of course, the Second World War in Europe, and maybe even if we want to talk about its connection to Asia, ⁓ is the central
horror again of all recorded human history. And challenge is, you know, do we want to see something like this happen again in our lifetime or the lifetime of our children or our grandchildren? I hope from your listeners that there’s a resolute
No, right? We must be active and aware enough, right, to do what we can to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.
Dru Johnson (16:50)
Yeah, so you gave me a book when I was in Jerusalem with you a few months ago called Ordinary Men and it was about a special unit out of Hamburg, ⁓ Germany, a reserve police officer who are all middle-aged, I think if I remember correctly. ⁓
David Pileggi (16:58)
Hmm.
Okay. ⁓
They
were fat and unfit for ⁓ combat service on the front line.
Dru Johnson (17:13)
Right,
yeah. So I could have been a part of this unit. ⁓ I think what happened, and I’m just going to go biographical here, it awakened something in me. I think I had put the Holocaust kind of like out of mind as well. ⁓ And as a teenager and going through college where Holocaust becomes kind of like an appeal. ⁓
in many different places where people talk about, we don’t want that to happen again, you know. And even in psychology major, a lot of psychological research in the 1950s and 60s was based off of how could normal Christian German men and women do the things that they did. I think one of the things that the book that you gave me Ordinary Men, which I highly recommend to anybody who’s interested in thinking about these things, is it focuses actually not on the gas chambers, where I think a lot of our attention was always put
David Pileggi (17:42)
you
Dru Johnson (18:08)
But on the fact that I think a third of those six million Jews were killed by shooting, direct someone putting a gun to the back of their head or against a wall. ⁓ And interestingly, one of the reasons the Germans decided to quit doing the shooting or to tailor it off is ammunition. And it had a really bad effect on the people who did the shooting, which is, you know, the irony of all ironies.
David Pileggi (18:32)
Right.
Dru Johnson (18:32)
So
I’m wondering, what are the kinds of things that we need to understand about what happened? Because I think you say we need to be awake and woke, as the old song said, that has now been appropriated and misappropriated in all kinds of ways.
but we need to be awake. ⁓ But we really are talking about normal men and women who went off and did the most horrible things we can imagine to people and then returned to society and ran their butcher shop for the rest of their life.
David Pileggi (18:55)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Or we’re insurance agents, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. So.
Dru Johnson (19:06)
All right.
David Pileggi (19:09)
When we think of the Holocaust, right, or even the Second World War, we think of, you know, crazy, lunatic Adolf Hitler. And while he wasn’t a lunatic, he did have some lunatic, ridiculous ideas that he outlined in Mein Kampf and in a second book that he never published, and of course, in his table talks with his friends and generals. And if you examine Hitler’s ideas, I mean, they’re laughable.
⁓ His social Darwinism, ⁓ his basically adapted ⁓ Marxism. ⁓ In fact, Hitler was a communist in his early years.
took Darwin and applied it ⁓ politically, socially. So all of life is a struggle. And if ⁓ my so-called quote unquote race ⁓ doesn’t eat you, you’re going to eat me. And so therefore it’s the law of the jungle. Now, most Germans never went along with that. Most Germans probably never understood ⁓ his ⁓ agenda. Maybe there were several hundred ⁓ key people.
But certainly, Himmler and Heydrich and the architects of the Final Solution ⁓ never fully bought into ⁓ his whole way of thinking. Yet at the same time, was able to motivate millions of Germans to follow him and to… ⁓
throw off what, 3,000 years of Jewish Christian teaching, which basically said that I shall not kill and to ⁓ turn them into ⁓ killers who will kill in the morning and kill in the afternoon and kill all night long. And the question that…
the book Ordinary Men so brilliantly addresses ⁓ is that these 500 men from Hamburg were not through and through Nazis, right? Many of them were not in the Nazi party. They were then sent ⁓
to Poland. They were volunteer policemen, They were sent to Poland to serve behind the lines of the German army.
The author Christopher Browning draws this very nuanced, complicated, you might say complex portrait of these men. There were 500 altogether. They, as we mentioned earlier, were middle-aged. They had families.
They came from Hamburg, which was the most anti-Nazi city in Germany. Many of them had been socialist or communist and had been opposed to Nazi propaganda when they were ⁓ younger. ⁓
according to what the author discovered, very few of them were members of the Nazi party. Only one or two of the 500 were members of the SS. And they were sent to Poland in 1942 to 1943. And these so-called ordinary men who were not
highly motivated by ideology, the Nazi ideology, they, during their stay of a year and a year plus, they were responsible for the murder of 83,000 Jews. So if they’re not primarily or only motivated by ideology, what turned these so-called ordinary men into such willing killers? And this is what’s ⁓
you know, very frightening about the book, right? They murdered because of ⁓ social conformity. They pulled the triggers because they were afraid to be called cowards. They…
were afraid of, ⁓ they were afraid that they would be punished if they were not involved in going into small Polish towns and shooting, right, at point blank range, usually in the back of the neck, ⁓ shooting Jews.
There are a number of other factors involved in this. And so you had folks at the top with this ideology that probably most people at the bottom didn’t understand. And yet at the same time, you had millions, not just Nazis, but millions of Germans who participated or were bystanders in some of the most horrible evil, again, in recorded history.
history. And this is what, in part, should keep us up at night. Not just anti-Semitism, but it can propaganda, social pressure, ⁓ the ⁓ fear of being courageous, you might say, or taking a stand and ⁓ being different. ⁓
opposing the spirit of the age, you might say. And you know what’s kind of fascinating about this is that you remember in the opening of the book, there was a major by the name of Trapp. So Major Trapp tells his men, men, this is a horrible.
A horrible thing has come upon us. I’ve been given orders that we’re to go into this small village in southeast Poland and we’re to round up the Jews, take them to the nearby forest and we’re to shoot them.
And he says, this is very distasteful. said, why has this order been given to us? But orders are orders and ⁓ we must obey them. He then says, anyone who does not want to participate in this, you have the freedom to opt out. Okay. This is very, very critical. And in the beginning, ⁓
you have about 10 % of all the men who say, I can’t do this or I won’t do this or my conscience won’t allow me to do this. But as time goes on, right, because this… ⁓
unit is in Poland for a while and they’re killing more and more Jews, the killing becomes easier and there are fewer and fewer conscientious objectors. Now many people who are listening to this would say, oh yes, but they had to do it because if they didn’t, the Nazis or the Germans, they would have been shot. But you know what the…
The incredible thing is, is that we don’t know one single case of a German soldier or policeman who said, I can’t do this. My conscience won’t allow me. They were never punished. They may have been scoffed at, they may have been shunned, they may have been mocked, they may have been transferred, but they were never punished. No one was ever shot for not shooting, for example. Yet the fear of punishment, you know,
drove these 500 ordinary men, again, who were not ideological. They weren’t married to Nazi ideology. They probably knew better. Yet the fear of punishment, in part, drove them to commit these horrible atrocities. So.
Dru Johnson (27:23)
Yeah.
I think that’s a really good summary and he kind of outlines the kind of psychological problems that came with the option to opt out, right? That actually exacerbated the problem for some people. He was going off of eyewitness testimony and the testimony of the men themselves who participated. So he’s not making up a lot of it. He’s just kind of rehearsing what these men themselves said about these operations. So yeah, I think what you said there, and I’m not sure if everybody will catch it, but
David Pileggi (27:35)
Thank
Right.
Dru Johnson (27:55)
Almost none of these men were Nazis in any kind of classical sense of the word, right? They’re doing this killing. They’re just working for the Nazi machinery. they’re just, ⁓ they’d be like, you know, we don’t really have a reserve police force in America. We have reserve police officers. But they’re like National Guardsmen, you know, that aren’t very active anymore, right? Yeah.
David Pileggi (28:04)
Mm-hmm.
Or
volunteer, maybe volunteer firemen sort of, a little bit like that. Yeah, they would be called up in an emergency in their city. And of course the German army, the German military having invaded foolishly, having invaded the Soviet Union, soon found out that they were short of manpower, right?
Dru Johnson (28:20)
Yeah, volunteer firemen. Yeah.
David Pileggi (28:46)
In fact, the German military pretty much knew six weeks after the war began with the Soviet Union that they weren’t going to win the war. ⁓ But then again, it dragged on for years and it cost the lives of ⁓ probably 30 million people. So most of those who died ⁓ in the Second World War, civilians and soldiers died on the Eastern Front. And Americans know nothing about this. We know nothing about this war.
nothing about the sacrifices of the Soviet people. And God forbid that I’m ⁓ praising or defending, you know, Uncle Joe Stalin and, you know, his murderous regime. you know, saving Private Ryan, you know, or Private Ryan himself, and Tom Hanks did not win the Second World War for us, right? The Second World War was won ⁓ by the
the Soviet, the Red Army and the Soviet Union. By the way, also committed some very egregious war crimes. ⁓ But they are…
Dru Johnson (30:00)
Right.
David Pileggi (30:06)
totally forgotten by the US, unfortunately. And just to give you a statistic that makes this quite shocking, think in Europe itself, the American casualty rate was probably…
We took 250,000 dead and no way dishonoring those who sacrificed their lives. But at the same time, the Red Army took the same number of casualties in the last month of the war. Okay, so there may have been 9 million Soviet soldiers who died. But before even, before the Holocaust, ⁓
outgoing in the summer of 1941. ⁓ The German army ⁓ captured millions of prisoners, Soviet prisoners, and by the end of the war, they had captured four million ⁓ Soviet soldiers who had surrendered. ⁓ And these included, you know,
Soldiers from the Baltic States, from Azerbaijan, from Belarus, right? Because the Soviet Union was a multi-ethnic ⁓ empire. The Germans starved three million Soviet prisoners to death. Okay. They… And this was part of the understanding that their great enemy was ⁓ Bolshevism.
Their enemy was the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union was not only their ideological enemy, the Soviet Union had land.
and natural resources that not just Germany, here again, there’s a classic mistake. We think of Hitler as a German nationalist. He was a German nationalist, even ⁓ more importantly, he was a racial nationalist, right? He believed that
that the state, German state, actually served the quote unquote race, the so-called Aryan race. And we all know there’s no such thing as the Aryan race. There might be the Aryan Motorcycle Club out there somewhere. ⁓ the Aryan.
The category Aryan is a language group, right? It is not a race, right? And by the way, while we’re at it, one of the things that drives me crazy, but it’s the way that folks, even Christians talk about the Jewish people as being a race, right? Jews and Jewish people are not a race. They’re a religion and an ethnic group at the same time, but they’re not, there’s no such thing as the Jewish.
Dru Johnson (33:06)
Right.
David Pileggi (33:10)
as the Jewish race. Well, if you want…
Dru Johnson (33:14)
And if you were ever
in doubt of that, you can just go to Israel today and just walk around and see all the people who are Jewish and you will see many different races from all over the world.
David Pileggi (33:18)
Exactly.
Exactly, exactly. But you know, the whole notion of the survival of the fittest, right? So again, you either eat,
and conquer and dominate or someone else is going to dominate you, right? No one else is going to eat you. And so in order for the Aryans to thrive and to continue their domination, again, life is nothing more than a continual struggle, ⁓ Germany… ⁓
against serving the Aryan race needed land and it needed resources. And it’s hard to believe that in the 1930s, people counted calories, right? Not like we do today. Today we can’t count calories because we have too much food. In the 1930s, before the Green Revolution, right, there was never quite enough food. So you needed, the Aryan race needed,
the Ukraine, needed the black soil of the Ukraine, they needed the natural resources of the Soviet Union. And who is the Soviet Union? Soviet Union is also our ideological enemy. ⁓ They’re going to eat us if we don’t eat them beforehand. And who runs the Soviet Union? Who’s behind Bolshevism? But the Jews, right? The Jews.
Dru Johnson (34:51)
the Jews. Yeah. Yeah, I don’t think most people understand
unless you’re old enough, you don’t associate Jews with communists, right? But that was actually the common of the day.
David Pileggi (35:00)
Exactly.
And all through Europe and the United States, ⁓ the Jews were not just leftists, but the Jews were prominent. They were accused of being prominent in the Communist Party, ⁓ inventing Marxism, inventing ⁓
socialist theory and then putting it, especially putting it into practice, right, in the Soviet Union. And so there were some Jews involved in the Russian revolution and then the creation of the Soviet system. of course, so Judaism and Bolshevism, Judaism and communism became the big threat. And even those 500 men in rural Poland,
They’re basically told, right, men, may not like going out on this mission and killing these Polish Jews, but there are Jews in America and Jews in the Soviet Union.
Those Jews are behind those two systems, the capitalist system and the communist system, and they’re squeezing us. And if we don’t get them, they will get us. And so in order to prevent us from being either conquered by the United States or pressured by the United States, conquered by the Soviet Union, again,
FDR and their mind was being run by Jews. Stalin was being run by Jews. We have to kill these poor Jews.
⁓ in this very rural part of Poland, right? Somehow the entire Jewish people are a collective and they think together and act together and walk together and talk alike. we have to, they are enemies and therefore, you know, we have to kill them. ⁓ this is what is largely and part largely behind the Holocaust.
cost.
Germans, people don’t understand the Germans saw themselves as victims. They were victims of the American capitalist system in Wall Street. They were victims of the Jewish conspiracy. They were victims of the machinations of the Soviet Union. And this is
Our friend, Rene Girard, always talked about, right, he always warned about don’t necessarily side with the victim because victimhood can be very subjective. And so those policemen, while they weren’t Nazis, they were also in part motivated by this fear of the Jewish conspiracy or this fear of Jewish Wall Street or Jewish Bolsheviks.
and they were all enemies of Germany. Nazi propaganda hammered that home very, well. And basically what they said before the war and during the war is that if you’re for the Jews, you’re against us.
Right? If you want to be against the Jews and Jewish control of the world, so-called Jewish control of the world, then you need support what we’re doing. And they tried to frame their whole, they tried to frame their whole project as ⁓ the other European countries as a war against Bolshevism. And here’s where the Christian church comes in. I think people talk about…
Christian antisemitism and there is certainly ⁓ a case to answer for traditional Christian antisemitism. But what people don’t realize is that in the 20s and 30s, and that in many churches, Catholic churches especially, ⁓ from Spain to Warsaw.
and from Sicily to Stockholm is that ⁓ the Catholic Church, many priests, bishops, cardinals, ⁓
went out of their way to make a huge point about the ⁓ relationship between ⁓ the Jewish people and Bolshevism. The Jews were Bolsheviks and Bolshevism was a Jewish ideology, therefore it is our enemy. ⁓ that, ⁓ you might say that fear, that hysteria, ⁓
You know, helped many Germans and other Europeans, right, to turn a blind eye when Jews were being either arrested or Jews were maybe on the run and looking for a hiding place. ⁓ They say, well…
You they say in Hebrew, deserve this because you’re Bolshevik. You brought Trotsky and Lenin and ⁓ Stalin, you know, to us and you’re doing nothing but causing problems and creating chaos. Right. So this was an important… Yeah. No, go ahead.
Dru Johnson (40:44)
So thinking about today,
⁓
You know, the kinds of things then that I’m just hearing what you’re saying, like, OK, so people who are now spouting conspiracy theories where they’re I mean, just conspiracy theories and problems are in general are problematic, right? Conspiracy theories about the Jews, right? That they actually behind every these are very old theories. I mean, they go back centuries, but and then they get, you know.
David Pileggi (41:05)
Yes.
You’re right.
Dru Johnson (41:18)
So if we want to think about something like, ⁓ you know, fully ⁓ violent anti-Semitism that ends up, you know, killing Jews in some way or another, all you need is some good tap into some deep roots of conspiracy theory. And then ordinary people who are in kind of a system of that kind of thinking, where these are the bad guys, can be raised up to go do extraordinary violence against those people. That it’s not some magical concoction.
David Pileggi (41:32)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And it has to be reinforced over and over and over again. So for example, Jews are behind, and forgive me, I’m not sure I know the right term, the replacement theory. Yes, this is a Jewish plot to what?
Dru Johnson (42:08)
yeah.
David Pileggi (42:16)
to replace the Anglo-Saxon population, European population of this country with folks from the third world, et cetera, et And then of course, here we have a complicated problem. We’re a rich, prosperous nation. whether in ancient times or modern times, the poor and those seeking refuge or shelter are going to what?
to where wealth is or where you have money and economic opportunities. So this ⁓ has been something that’s happened all through human history. And all of a sudden, America’s flooded with immigrants. ⁓ It is… ⁓
Many people then begin to feel insecure or threatened and all of a sudden you have to look for a scapegoat or for a simple answer. And throughout much of history, the scapegoat or the simple answer has been the Jews, right? The Jews, the Jews. And no matter how you might explain this or logically show, ⁓ rationally show, right?
know, Jews aren’t ⁓ involved in all this, right? ⁓
For example, in the United States, who was most in favor of immigration? Business owners, Or those who owned factories, or those who had firms that needed service workers. Most of these people were probably conservatives, Republicans, and even Christians, right? But no, that doesn’t matter. This is simply a Jewish plot to destroy the United States.
This is the kind of dangerous ⁓ anti-Semitism ⁓ that ⁓ will again lead us to, ⁓ could easily lead us to disaster, right? Iran’s obsession with the Jewish people and destroying Israel, ⁓ you know.
⁓ could lead to ⁓ a disaster, could lead to a third world war. One of the reasons we don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons is because ⁓ since the Islamic revolution in 1979, they have been talking vehemently about wiping out and destroying the Jewish people. And they call Jews ⁓
cancer or they call them an epidemic or they call them, ⁓ use all kinds of terms. And of course you can’t have a genocide. You can’t have mass murder of any group of people until they’re completely dehumanized. So the dehumanization has to come first. The dehumanization has to come first. then ⁓ once you create ⁓
dehumanize people, ⁓ for example in Rwanda, where it’s called cockroaches, right? So it’s easy to eliminate
the people or the ethnic group that you call, political group that you call cancer. Right? So, ⁓ right? These are, this is very dangerous. And so dangerous ⁓ for us, right? Politically and dangerous for our future security. ⁓
but it’s also a test for us, right? And are we gonna fall for this again or are we gonna be smart enough to stop it? And the antisemitism is a parasite. It usually attaches itself, almost always attaches itself to some kind of bigger issue, right? So it’s antisemitism plus the…
conspiracy theory. It’s antisemitism plus one’s hatred of socialism or left-wing progressive ideas, or it’s antisemitism ⁓ plus one’s, you might say, disgust at the
you know, right wing neoconservative ideas. So it’s always connected with something bigger. And the rule of thumb Antisemitism will always be seen, I should say, as opposing the common good or whatever.
I might think the common good should be. So if I’m a left-wing Democrat, well, I will think, okay, those Jews are behind… ⁓
Fox News or they’re behind this foundation or another foundation and they’re spreading right wing ideas. Or if I happen to be right wing, then the Jews control Hollywood and they’re destroying the morality of the United States.
I’m living in any country in the world, right? The so-called Jews as a collective will be accused of opposing, you know, what is good or what is stopping people from flourishing. So, you know, this is where we’re at.
And this is, I think, because of our relationship with the Jewish people biblically and because we have a responsibility of our failure throughout history. ⁓ We as Christians need to take a. ⁓
take a strong stand and not just speak out or write things on social media, ⁓ but to be active in opposing ⁓ this kind ⁓ of anti-Semitism and keeping in mind, ⁓ well, spiritual consequences and secondly, the political. ⁓
consequences that could follow from all of this.
Dru Johnson (48:43)
Yeah, and I want to be clear. mean, you’re Israeli. ⁓ Are you an Israeli citizen at this point?
David Pileggi (48:49)
I have
family that are Israeli citizens. I even have grandchildren who are Israeli citizens. But I’m considered a resident ⁓ virtually. No, in a way, I’m an alien. Yes. I can do everything but vote in a national election. We’ve been there that long. Yes.
Dru Johnson (48:59)
Resident Alien.
Okay. So I think
when we say anti-Semitism, we also have to disambiguate ⁓ that you’re not taught. mean, anybody who’s spent any time in Israel knows the most intense and fiery critiques of the Israeli government.
come from within Israel. And then the other ones are just like lobbing grenades from the outside. you’re not talking about ⁓ nobody can ever say, the government’s doing something incorrectly here, or we think they’ve gone too far, or the plan is bad. You’re really talking about this view of going against the Jewish people, propagating conspiracies against the Jewish people, et cetera. Am I hearing you correctly?
David Pileggi (49:40)
Mm-hmm.
You’re hearing me very correctly and I’ve long advocated ⁓ Christian friendship with the Jewish people, Christian friendship with the state of Israel and at the same time I’ve tried to warn people that ⁓
friendship and even certain sympathy for the state of Israel and its predicament does not mean that we uncritically support ⁓ every Israeli government ⁓ or every Israeli government policy and that we should be quite careful how this is expressed. I think ⁓ any critique of Israel should be done, you might say, from a place of humility. ⁓
For example, I’m an American citizen and our country has been ⁓ less than perfect over the years and ⁓ we’ve had ⁓ state policies of racism and we’ve unfortunately been involved in some wars. ⁓
in recent years that have been counterproductive. So if you live in a glass house, you should be careful about throwing stones. You should be careful that we don’t come with some kind of Christian moral superiority. But at the same time, I think as Christians, we can say to our Jewish friends and even to those Jewish people who want to listen, look, both of us.
Re- ⁓ our-
claim to be in partnership with the God of creation, the God of the Bible. We both can do better. We should be doing better. Let’s work together. But we just have to be careful to support, be careful that we’re not supporting policies of a certain government. ⁓
this government or that government in Israel that might be destructive or might be ⁓ immoral, ⁓ might be, ⁓ you know, have dangerous consequences for the region and even for our own country. So it needs to be nuanced, it can’t be simplistic, but at the same time there should be, I think, genuine
I think there should be this genuine friendship and concern for the future of the Jewish people and an offer to help where we can ⁓ in a positive way. Right. We don’t owe the Jewish people settlements. We certainly don’t owe the Jewish people a third temple. These Christians owe the Jewish people love. Right. Paul says in Romans 11 that God loves the Jewish people for the sake of the patriarchs. And I think we should. ⁓
you know, have an attitude that’s ⁓ no different than that. And love sometimes means being honest and frank, right, with people. But again, coming at it from, be careful of coming at it from a place of ⁓ moral superiority, right?
Dru Johnson (53:16)
Where can people find you that wanna go, suspect some people would think about, I would love to go on a tour to Poland and think about the Holocaust.
David Pileggi (53:25)
Okay, well,
it is a 12-day tour. It’s a 12-day study tour. It is comprehensive. And while we do cover the Holocaust, and in fact, we use the book you referred to earlier, Ordinary Men, ⁓ as something of a travel guide ⁓ for several days while we’re in ⁓ Southeast Poland. ⁓ Just so that people get a bigger idea, we are studying ⁓
Jewish spirituality, you know, in the diaspora, like the Hasidic revival. And we’re looking at Jewish-Christian relations. And in particular, we’re looking at some of the ⁓ thinking of ⁓ John Paul II and his efforts, right, to heal Jewish-Christian relations. So it is comprehensive.
Again, it’s not Holocaust pornography, although we will be… ⁓
Holocaust will slap us in the face just about every day. People will say, do you go to Auschwitz? And I say, yes, we go to Auschwitz, but just always like to remind people that Auschwitz is not the icon or the symbol of the Holocaust, Auschwitz, there a million Jews who died at Auschwitz, but at the same time, there are many thousands that actually survived Auschwitz. But if…
People want to see the Holocaust face to face and to ⁓ encounter its reality. That’s done at Treblinka, right? Treblinka was a small camp in Northeast, no, small death factory in Northeast Poland. I think it was 900 yards by 900 yards. It was all barbed wire and two by four. And in its year and a half operation, it murdered 900,000 Jews.
It, um, Jews would come to Treblinka and they would be dead in 90 minutes to two hours. There are 30 survivors from 30 Jews survived Treblinka. 900,000 were murdered. Right. That’s.
That’s the Holocaust, right? It’s interesting. Most of those American movies you referred to earlier, they’re about survivors, right? Schindler’s List, Defiance, right? Hollywood, generally the pianist, we have to have someone who survives and we have to have a sort of a, kind of a…
happy sad it right sort of a happy ish ending right maybe semi-sweet and you know ⁓ ending to the movie right the Holocaust is about the millions of people who didn’t survive right about millions of people who just
you know, was shot at the edge of a ditch somewhere in the Ukraine. ⁓ And, you know, that’s the reality. That was the goal. Germans had to wipe out the Jewish people in order to create a ⁓ new paradise on heaven and earth, right? The Nazis had a millenarian, know, streaking them, and they were going to bring the world into a…
a much better, happier place. And the way to do that was to murder the Jewish people. And interestingly, it’s very contrary to what Jesus said to the woman at the well in Samaria, where he said, you know, the salvation is of the Jews. And the Nazis, Hitler in particular, turned that on his head, right? Salvation only comes when we eliminate and destroy the Jewish people.
So you can see the sick demonic and even twisted thinking and all of this. So 12 days in Poland and, that you can find us on narrow bridge tour.com. Okay. To narrow bridge tour.com. And, ⁓ it is a tour that it’s not for everyone, but I hope that.
influencers and maybe preachers, Bible teachers would come, begin to learn, be initiated perhaps into this world, this Jewish world that most of us don’t know much about, and then go back into not only further their study, but to teach and to inspire others. So that’s the goal.
Dru Johnson (58:12)
Well,
David Pileggi, your mind is like a matrix of insights and information. ⁓ I really appreciate you contextualizing the Holocaust for us. And for some people, you’re introducing them to things they’ve never even heard of before. So really appreciate your time and your wisdom.
David Pileggi (58:28)
Okay. Well, thank you for having me and letting me, know, pontificate. I really appreciate it.
