A Macabre Anniversary
What came to be referred to as the First Crusade was the first of a number of religious wars initiated, directed and supported by the Roman Catholic church during the medieval period, and lasted from 1096 to 1099. It was called the People's Crusade because it was composed of mobs of poor Roman Catholic “volunteers, and was led by Peter the hermit, a French priest. These mobs passed through Germany, engaging in massacres of the Jewish people along the way. The Crusader army finally reached their goal in the Holy Land and surrounded Jerusalem, laying siege to it in preparation for a July invasion on this day, June 29,1099.
In a sort of macabre anniversary, a similar scene took place some 849 years later, a massacre directed by the Roman Catholic Nazis, conducted what is known as the “Kaunas Pogrom.” Just like their predecessors, the Nazis, led by SS commander Franz Stahlecker, directed Lithuanian “volunteers” in Kaunas to “solve the Jewish problem" Stahlecker bragged that by the end of June some 3,800 people were slaughtered. The massacre occurred on this day, June 29, 1941.
Germany went on to lose the war and was divided by the Berlin wall for decades. Latin remains a dead language. But Hebrew has been resurrected 2000 years after the Romans sacked Jerusalem, and the Jewish people have been firmly established in the land. Israel is now a spiritual, technological, economic, and military super power.
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