structure which functioned as the only ontological framework in which the
individual may acquire his own identity, his selfknowledge and understanding.
While in a different, non-totalitarian civilization man establishes his inner
freedom by means of intellectual autonomy, the Nazi regime made the actual
biological belonging to the Aryan race into the ultimate condition for the
self-realization of Man.
Hence one who could not belong to the Aryan race, the prototype of whom was
the Jew, was doomed to be completely alienated, deprived not only of all
rights, but of the very justification to exist. It was this reversal of the
status of the individual which prepared the ground for subsequent developments
against which the Church protested, such as forced labour, the repression
of independent thought, the indoctrination of the young by the State and
their estrangement from their parents, teachers and preachers. An example
of this tendency towards the total dehumanization of the individual, as
reflected in the persecution of the Jews, and that provoked the Church to
protest, was the decree authorizing sterilization. The stand of the Church
in this matter was stated in the "Letter on the Question of Sterilization"
that was sent in May 1943 by the Protestant and Catholic Churches in Holland
to the officials of the Reich and in which, among other things, we find the
following:

"...In the last few weeks the sterilization of the so-called mixed marriages
has begun. But God, who created heaven and earth and whose commandments are
for all men, and to whom even your Excellency will have to give account one
day, has said to mankind: 'Be fruitful and multiply' (Gen. 1. 18).
Sterilization is a physical and spiritual mutilation directly at variance
with God's commandment that we shall not dishonour, hate, wound or kill our
neighbours. Sterilization constitutes a violation of the divine commandment
as well as of human rights. It is the last consequence of an anti-Christian
racial doctrine that destroys nations, and of a boundless self-exaltation.
It represents a view of the world and of life which undermines true
Christian human life, rendering it ultimately impossible... [10]
<VII>
The fact that the protest of the Church against the persecution and
annihilation of the Jews was an inseparable part of its general protest
against the inhuman and anti-Christian charact