The British Methodist Church and the Holocaust

At last month’s Methodist Conference in Portsmouth ministerial delegates applauded a speech that dismissed the Holocaust as a “tool” and an opportunity for financial gain.

The conference went on to pass a resolution that has been welcomed by those who wish the State of Israel ill-will including the government of Iran news agency.

But it was the suggestion of anti-Semitism that really ruffled Methodist feathers.

Graham Carter , the chair of a working party that drew up a  report for Conference on Israel and Palestine matters complained  “I want to state quite clearly and categorically that there is no hint of anti-Semitism in what we have said or in what we intend.  If other people want to do things like that, that is their problem. It is not our problem as a Methodist church.”

Carter was wrong. British Methodists have every reason to be sensitive about both the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. We have a nasty story in our history that we desperately want to world to forget. Anti-Semitism is a problem for the Methodist Church.

Last week I alluded to a story I thought was common knowledge during an exchange on the social media. I was immediately challenged to name names and give facts. One individual spent several hours on the search engines, found nothing and challenged my assertion. However all this information is in the public domain and has been for at least 17 years.

The key dates are of course, pre-internet. They are October 1940 and Wednesday 6 January 1993.

In October 1940 a British Methodist Minister, the Reverend John Leale, who had enthusiastically assumed the role of Attorney General and President of the Controlling Council for the German occupied  British island of Guernsey send a list of Jewish residents on the island to the Germans saying “I have the honour to enclose a report from the inspector of police on the subject”.

Leale was not acting in innocence, ignorance or under duress. Another leading islander, Sir Abraham Laine openly and categorically refused to support the legislation requiring Jews to be registered.

A colleague admitted “I feel ashamed that I did not do something by way of protest to the Germans: a vital principle was at stake even if no human being on Guernsey was actually affected”.

Known Jews had been evacuated from the Channel Islands before the German occupation for “racial reasons”. There was no doubt that it was appreciated that being a Jew on Nazi occupied territory was a danger, even if the full implications of the Holocaust had not yet revealed.

One writer says “The detailed correspondence between the police, the Guernsey and Jersey governments and the Germans survives, and makes grim reading. The island officials made no attempt to protest; on the contrary they complied with every German request promptly and courteously with meticulous attention to detail”.

The identified Jews were not immediately deported. Leale even stepped in as a favour to an employer to stop one of his useful employees being deported. Nevertheless by October 1942 the island council that Leale led forwarded a report to the Germans celebrating  that there was “no record of  Jewish residents on Guernsey”.

Three Jewish women, all alone, had been deported and subsequently killed with Leale’s connivance. They were Therese  Steiner, Marianne Grunfeld and Auguste Sptiz. One survivor of the train that took  Auguste and Therese to Auschwitz recalls “I can still see in the distance the women who went in a different direction”. It is believed they were gassed an hour or so later.  

In the most recent books about the occupation, both that which had been published before January 1993 and after, Leale frankly does not come out as a respected individual. One writer talks of his “cultured tastes” and alleges that he avoided deportation to labour camps in Europe with other English born men because of his good contacts with the Germans. Leale was a Cambridge graduate who had inherited a fortune, he was ordained in 1914

Leale made it quite clear that he opposed any resistance passive or otherwise. On one occasion he handed the Gestapo a list of school children who had been chalking “V” for victory signs around the island. In the 1950s he held fast to his position, opposing the granting of honours to any for resisting German occupation.

Just before the island’s liberation it was reported by  a policeman “I came away from the window and later saw Sir John Leale, who was President of the Controlling Committee, which acted somewhat on the same lines as the Cabinet, with his head down looking rather glum”.

Fortunately for Leale the British government wanted at that point to develop a myth of defiant Britons standing up to the German occupier. He was knighted. Guernsey now boasts a

John Leale Avenue

and a John Leale House. His reputation survived the occupation intact.

On Wednesday 6 January 1993 the real story began to emerge. Until then no one had known of Leale’s complicity in the identification and transportation of the island’s Jewish people all three of whom were to perish in the death camps.

In any case, up until then, Leale could have been dismissed as a maverick, an aberration for which the British Methodist Church could readily apologise and seek repentance. What happened next tells us much about the priorites of Methodism at the turn of the 20th century.

Leale’s complicity made headline news in most national newspapers, all of which pointed out that he was a Methodist Minister. However the Methodist Recorder refused point blank to take up the story despite a challenge.

A letter to the Connexional offices, then at Westminster Central Hall, was redirected to the Chairman of the Channel Islands District who responded that this was all far to sensitive and best left alone.

British Methodism, both at a Connexional level and in its  denominational newspaper, was not prepared to acknowledge that one of its Ministers had been complicit in one of the greatest crimes in history.

The sensitivities of the denomination took precedence over repentance and justice. I felt at the time that this, among other things, amounted to an underlying, institutionalised anti-Semitism. The deaths of three Jewish women counted for nothing compared with the sensitivities of a Christian denomination.

British Methodists recently made grand speeches attacking the Jewish state and demanding “justice”. They heard  the Holocaust dismissed as a "tool".  Perhaps we should pause and remember Therese  Steiner, Marianne Grunfeld and Auguste Sptiz together with the Methodist Minister who sent them to their deaths. They did not die as Zionist "tools".

Earlier this week Methodist Church House was asked for a statement on this issue. Four days later they were unable to provide a comment. 

It is time we made a comment. 

It is  already seventeen years overdue. It  certainly should be made before we ever listen to anyone else dismiss the Holocaust as a "tool" or take offence when some assume our motives are anti-Semitic.