Elected or Cursed? Between Refusal and Acceptance: Catholic Church in Slovenia and the Jews

Renato Podbersič

Elected or Cursed? Between Refusal and Acceptance: Catholic Church in Slovenia and the Jews

Key words: Catholic Church and Jews, persecution of Jews, rescuing Jews, conversions of Jews, antisemitism

Abstract:
In the introductory part this article provides a synthesis of the complex relations between the Catholic Church and the Jews through the centuries and the “causes” for the Church’s perception of the Jewish difference. The following part shows a wide range of relations between the Slovenes and Jews: from refusal or misunderstanding of the Jews, i.e. anti-Semitism in our country, to the Jewish adjustment or conversion to the Catholic faith in the first half of the 20th century. The attempts to rescue Jews by the high representatives of the Catholic Church in the so-called Ljubljana Province (Bishop G. Rožman) and the region of Gorizia/Gorica (Bishop C. Margotti) during the Holocaust are also presented.

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