Luther's anti-Jewish rhetoric and doctrines are often described as anti-Semitic [11] or examples of anti-Judaism. [12] Luther had expected that presenting his understanding of the Christian gospel to the Jews would convert them, but when his efforts failed, he became embittered and recommended their harsh persecution. In his pamphlet Von den Juden und ihren Lügen (On the Jews and their Lies), published in 1543, he wrote that Jews' synagogues should be set on fire, prayerbooks destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes "smashed and destroyed," property seized, money confiscated, and that these "poisonous envenomed worms" be drafted into forced labor or expelled "for all time." [13]
British historian Paul Johnson has called On the Jews and their Lies the "first work of modern anti-Semitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust."[14] Australian Lutheran pastor Russell Briese's comments at the Council of Christians and Jews at the Great Synagogue in Sydney: "historians are at a loss to find a direct link between the anti-semitism of Luther's time and that of Hitler's campaign." [15]. Four centuries later, the Nazis cited the pamphlet to justify the Final Solution.[16] Since the 1980s, Lutheran church bodies and organizations have begun a process of formally disassociating themselves from these writings.