Jews and the Eastern Churches in WWII

Metropolitan Evlogiy (Georgievskiy) of the Western Exarchate

Given the considerable and unacceptable uptick in anti-Semitic violence, imagery and dog-whistles in the Ukraine over the past few years, which coincides with an inter-Christian religious conflict within the country that is being driven by a sæcular nationalist government agenda, certain hard questions about the nature and history of Eastern Christianity’s relationship with the Jews in the Ukraine need very badly to be posed.

Archival information from Central and Eastern Europe about the evil years of 1939 to 1945 is apparently incomplete, and what is there has not yet been fully explored. One of the scholars who had been most active in tackling the primary archival data with an eye particularly to the religious dimension of this history, Dr Mikhail Shkarovski of the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, did publish a short article in 2001 on this particular question, in the context of Roman Catholic attitudes toward the Jews during the same period.

Dr Shkarovski makes no bones in showing that, among the Christians of Eastern Europe, no one really has clean hands. (In short: he’s a scholar, not a polemicist.) He notes that anti-Semitic language and attitudes were sadly not unknown even in high places, both in Russia proper and among the diaspora. The heroic work of Priestmartyr Dmitrii (Klepinin) and Saint Maria (Skobtsova) in saving Jews in Paris is discussed in Shkarovski’s paper. So are the lesser-known – to me, anyway – efforts of Western Exarchate (now sadly-defunct, thanks to Patriarch Bartholomew, though that will hopefully change) clergymen like Metropolitan Evlogiy (Georgievskiy) of Paris and his subordinate, Archimandrite Ioann (Shakhovskoy) to secretly baptise Jews or provide them with false paperwork to evade the Nazis – for which activities both men were persecuted by the Gestapo. Archbishop Aleksandr (Nemolovsky) of Belgium (Western Exarchate) was outspoken in his opposition to the Nazis, and was labelled ‘Enemy № 2’ by the Gestapo. On the other hand, Metropolitan Seraphim (Lukyanov) was unfortunately given to anti-Semitic outbursts in his correspondence with the German leadership, though it appears he later repented of his attitudes and inaction during the war.

Both ROCA (i.e., ROCOR) in Germany and the churches of the Moscow Patriarchate were much more unequivocal in their condemnation of Nazi anti-Semitic ideology; and though in Moscow’s case this seems to have followed more strongly from the Soviet government’s directive to oppose the Nazis, they were still more consistently friendly to the Jews than Stalin’s government was. Dr Shkarovski points out that there were a number of Moscow Patriarchate priests – particularly among the ‘Renovationists’ – who were of Jewish descent themselves. In German-occupied Belarus, Archbishop Filofei (Narko) of ROCA managed to save thousands of Jewish children from the gas chambers by baptising them in secret and providing them with certificates. Both Moscow Patriarchate clergy and in particular the ‘Renovationist’ clergy were persecuted and killed by the Nazis in territories they controlled for this reason, and made plans to exterminate them on the grounds that both jurisdictions (ROCA and MP) had been ‘infiltrated by Jewish dogmatists’.

In the Ukraine, where the Soviet Union’s Jewish population was largest and where the Jews had the most contact with Orthodox believers, there was a marked distinction in attitudes between the ‘autocephalous’ church (the UAOC, now part of the so-called OCU) and the ‘autonomous’ church (the UOC-MP). The latter, being affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate, was totally opposed to anti-Semitism and to the Nazis, and behaved accordingly. The former at best kept aloof from the question, and at worst was complicit in anti-Semitic crimes. The relevant passage from Dr Shkarovski’s article is as follows:

The Russian Orthodox Church’s attitude to the Holocaust was more evident in the Ukraine where the majority of Soviet Jews lived. During the occupation there were two Ukrainian Orthodox Churches - an autocephalous church and an autonomous church which was subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate. The latter condemned outright the extermination of Jews. Many of its priests tried to save them in different ways. The most famous example is that of Alexei Glagolev in Kiev. In a speech given in 1991 to a predominantly Jewish audience in New York, Alexius II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, spoke of him together with Fr Dmitrii Klepinin and Mother Maria (Skobtsova) as examples of those who had made heroic efforts to save Jews. Fr. Alexei, Senior Priest at the Church of St Nicholas in Podol’, and his wife Tatiana managed to save dozens of people from death over a period of several years. Fortunately, they both survived.

But several priests and laymen in the Ukraine were killed by the Nazis for trying to save Jews. For example, on 6 March 1942 the Security Police and the SD made a report on the execution of Sinitsa, the Mayor of Kremenchug in the Poltava region, for baptising Jews together with the local priest, giving them Christian names and so saving them from extermination. In the report there was no information about how the priest was punished. A Arkhangelsky, a senior [Moscow Patriarchate] priest from the Crimea, reported to the Metropolitan of Leningrad, Aleksei (Simansky) on 13 July 1944 that during the occupation the senior priest of the cemetery church in Simferopol, Fr Nikolai Shvets, read an anti-Nazi appeal made by the Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergei to his parishioners, and then Deacon A Bondarenko helped him to distribute it. ‘Their patriotic deed was supported by the elder Vikenti, a former Renovationist bishop. They were all shot by the German Gestapo. Fr N Shvets was also accused of baptising Jews.

However, some Ukrainian nationalists voluntarily took part in exterminating Jews. Most of them belonged to the Greek Catholic Church but some belonged to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. In a horrific report made by the SS operational command № 5 in autumn 1941 we read about the actions of the latter. The report speaks of the extermination of 229 Jews in the town of Khmelnika, and of how the inhabitants of the town received the news of the murders with such enthusiasm that a thanksgiving service was held. Whilst the leadership of the [UAOC] did not approve the anti-Jewish actions, it also did not condemn them.

The Uniate, or ‘Greek-Catholic’, church in the Ukraine is a separate case entirely. In the broad strokes: the top hierarchs of that church were bravely opposed to anti-Semitic violence – after a brief period of enthusiasm for the Nazis. However, the Uniate laity and lower ranks of the priesthood – who were then fully in thrall to the Ukrainian nationalist ideology which viewed Jewry as a foreign and ‘Asiatic’ element to be purged – did not take the hierarchs’ lead. To his credit, Dr Shkarovski does highlight the personal bravery of Met Andrei Sheptitsky in sheltering Jews in Lvov from the Nazis, and also in resolutely opposing the extermination of Ukrainian Jews both to the German government and to Pope Pius XII. ‘However,’ Dr Shkarovski damningly notes, ‘the majority of his parishioners were extremely anti-Semitic and the Metropolitan’s example did not have the necessary effect on them.’

All of the foregoing should not be treated either as exculpation from or as recrimination for historical crimes. Particularly in the wake of the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, the truly important point is and ought to be Dr Shkarovski’s insistence that no one’s hands are truly clean save Christ’s; he faults even ROCOR and the MP for ‘insufficient practical action’. But truth is a necessary prerequisite to reconciliation, and history – and particularly this history – has a bad habit of not going away. For the intellectually-curious, honest and attentive it must serve as necessary context for the current political and ecclesiological disputes which are still inextricably linked.

EDIT (26 Feb): One of my readers in the comments, and one of my readers on social media, have most graciously corrected one of several glaring oversights in this piece, which is the neglect of the saintly and heroic Bulgarian Orthodox clergy in managing to save 50,000 Bulgarian Jews from the hands of the Nazis, for which they are rightly honoured today as Righteous Among the Nations. It is also a significant oversight in the topic to ignore the rôles that the Serbian and Greek churches played in rescuing Jews in their own countries, or else suffering alongside them, or that of the Royal Family of Romania in saving Jews from extermination in that country. In an article on the relations between the Jews and the Eastern Churches during the Second World War, overlooking the Bulgarians, Serbs, Greeks and Romanians who often opposed not only the Nazis but even occasionally their own governments and risked their own lives to save the lives of Jews, is rather inexcusable; I offer my apologies.