I GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 1 PROBLEMS OF EVALUATION Commentators on the attitude of the Churches in certain lands frequently contradict one another. Some Christians, such as Rev. Niemoeller [51] and Rev. Buskes [52] for instance, pass a severe verdict on the Churches and include themselves also. It seems to me that at least one Jewish commentator gives too positive a picture about the attitude of the population in his country, Greece.[53] He may, consciously or unconsciously, have tried not to embarrass the people amongst whom he still lived when he wrote his book. But also the opinion of a Christian that "the hundreds of thousands of Jews that escaped the doom decreed for them owed their survival more to the rescue activities of individuals and private groups, above all the Churches, than to governmental resistance policy" [54], seems to me too favourable. It must be difficult for Jews who know of anti-Semitic actions perpetrated by Church leaders throughout the centuries, and who personally suffered and lost their relatives in the holocaust, to believe that not merely a few "righteous of all Nations" but also Churches publicly and unequivocally spoke out against Hitler's murderous anti-Semitism. On the other hand, Christians are in danger of trying to whitewash the Church and ignoring the many instances when the Church failed. We all tend to forget our failures and to remember our victories. Some commentators tend to forget how the actual situation was in those days. Indeed, it is difficult even for people who themselves lived through it, to project themselves back into the time when Hitler seemed all-powerful. Moreover, we now have the benefit of living after the events, and thus we know many facts, which were not generally known in those days. <9> It seems unbelievable now, but in the summer of 1940, when some people somewhere in the Netherlands formed a resistance group, their leader stated that the British would not liberate us before Christmas 1940, and everybody present felt sorely disappointed. This kind of unwarranted optimism was fostered by many people throughout the war, and thus they underestimated the danger to the Jews and believed that, if German action against them could be delayed by some kind of compromise, much, and perhaps all, would be won. Many people in occupied Europe, in Great Britain and in the United States thought, that the information about the gas-chambers was "atrocity propaganda". The President of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. stated, on May 1, 1943: "What is happening to the Jews on the Continent of Europe is so horrible that we are in danger of assuming that it is exaggerated" [55]. We quote the following from "Unity in Dispersion":