But the notion that this generates anti-Semitism is not entirely to be scorned. Movies about the Holocaust generate a measure of straight-out anti-German sentiment. Mel Gibson's movie ("Braveheart") about the Scots generated, however fleetingly, anti-British sentiment. The movie "Zulu" is here and there resented as depicting black Africans as savage.
The danger that the reiteration of the story of the Crucifixion will do anti-Semitic damage is, happily, slight. The Vatican in 1965 rejected and indeed denounced the proposition that the acts of individual Jews 2,000 years ago justify anti-Semitism. The nightmare of the Holocaust will always keep us awake to the awful lengths to which ethnic and religious hatred can go. But if there is consolation to be sought, surely it is that Hitler was utterly indifferent to any crimes any Jews might have committed against Jesus Christ. His antagonism -- his hatred -- was based on preposterous, but no less lethal, ideas of racial purity. I know of no text by Hitler against the Jews -- and they are legion -- in which the death of Christ is even hinted at as indicating 20th-century Jewish culpability.
The idea of corporate guilt is stultifying. Yet it is constantly being fed, as by such doings as President Bill Clinton's going about Africa apologizing for slavery. It is one thing for modern Americans to regret slavery, quite another to apologize for it. Slavery, like anti-Semitism, is perpetually regrettable, but only those who engage in regrettable activity need to apologize for it. If it were otherwise, who among us could be free of ethnic or racial or religious taint from one or more historical abominations?
And even as we continue to see depictions of the Holocaust, and to learn from them, we will continue to see depictions of the tragic end of Christ on Earth, and learn from them.