Posted on 06/26/2007 3:31:21 PM PDT by cpforlife.org
ERLANGEN, Germany, June 26, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A city court in Erlangen, Bavaria, gave Lutheran Pastor Johannes Lerle a one year jail sentence for the “crime” of comparing abortion to the Nazi holocaust.
In response, Jim Hughes, Vice President of International Right to Life Federation has called on pro-life activists internationally to take action on the matter by contacting German authorities to demand freedom of speech and freedom of religion for the pastor (see contact information below story).
Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the annual murder of 150,000 babies through abortion in Germany to the murder of thousands of innocent Jews in Auschwitz. The court, which consisted of no jury and a single judge, ruled that this statement made Lerle a holocaust denier.
On 14 June, Judge Erda Erdenhofner convicted Lerle of a particular crime known as “volksverhetzung”, or “incitement of the people”. Ironically, volksverhetzung was an accusation that was frequently used by the Nazis to convict those with whom the regime disagreed, a slap-conviction that could be used to dispose of inconvenient people.
During his address to the court, Lerle defended himself and claimed that his statement was in no way taking away from the gravity of the sufferings of the Jews.
The German Catholic news service kreuz.net reports that the reason for the severity of the punishment is in part due to the pastor’s six previous convictions, which have seen the pastor serve two prison terms lasting eight and a half months in total. He was formerly imprisoned for calling abortionists and their aides “child murderers.”
Brussels Journal reporter Paul Belien notes that German courts have slammed other pro-life advocates with heavy sentences for similar statements. German pro-life advocate Günter Annen, for example, was reported by the Journal as having called for an end to “unjust abortions” in 2005. She received a 50-day jail sentence on the grounds that her claim that abortion is “unjust” is legally inaccurate. The courts decided that her words wrongly implied that abortion is illegal in Germany.
Other Germans have also faced stiff sentences in the past for using strong language to condemn abortion.
After calling abortuaries places where, “life unworthy of living is being killed,” some were convicted for allegedly choosing similar language to what Hitler used to describe euthanasia under the Nazi regime.
Pope John Paul II underlined the parallel between the Nazi Holocaust and abortion, which he calls “legal extermination,” in his book “Memory and Identity” (2005). He wrote, “It was a legally elected parliament which allowed for the election of Hitler in Germany in the 1930s.” He also pointed out that the same country that declared Jews non-persons less than a century ago has ruled that unborn babies are not persons either (see http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/feb/05022306.html).
Angela T. Wu, International Director of the Becket Fund, an American organization that guards the freedom of religious speech, commented to LifeSiteNews.com, “If these reports are true, this is a harrowing example of a growing trend of government laws that control its citizens’ viewpoints and stifle the free speech rights of religious organizations and practitioners.”
She continued, “Whether or not you agree with the pro-life position, Pastor Lerle and those like him must be allowed to freely espouse his and his church’s views on the issues without fear of government reprisal. While Volksverhetzung laws exist in Germany because of its unique history, that is no excuse for illegally violating the international human right to freedom of belief, which must include the right to profess those beliefs, even those of a controversial nature.”
Calls to the German Embassy in Ottawa for comment were not returned by press time.
To respectfully voice concerns:
President of the Federal Republic of Germany
11010 Berlin
Germany
Tel: +49 30 20 00-0
Fax: +49 030 20 00-19 99
E-Mail: Bundespraesident.Horst.Koehler@bpra.bund.de
Chancellor
Angela Merkel
Willy-Brandt-Straße 1
10557 Berlin
Germany
Tel: +49 180 272-0000
Fax: +49 1888 272-2555
E-Mail: InternetPost@bundesregierung.de
Prime Minister of Bavaria
Dr. Edmund Stoiber
Postfach 220011
80535 München
Germany
Tel: +49 89 / 2165-0
Fax: +49 89 / 29 40 44
E-Mail: ministerpraesident@stk.bayern.de
Minister of Justice in Bavaria
Beate Merk
Prielmayerstr. 7
80335 München
Tel: +49 89 5597 1799
Fax: +49 89 5597 3580
Email: beate.merk@stmj.bayern.de
Mayor of the Town of Erlangen
Dr. Siegfried Balleis
Rathausplatz 1
91052 Erlangen
Germany
Tel: +49 9131 86-0
Fax: +49 9131 86-26 92
Email: ob@stadt.erlangen.de
Local Court Erlangen
Familiengericht
Richterin Frank-Daupin
Mozartstraße 23
91052 Erlangen
Germany
Tel: +49 9131-782 01
Fax: +49 9131/782-361
(No email address available)
German Embassy in Canada
1 Waverley Street
Ottawa, ON, K2P 0T8
Tel: 613-232-1101
Fax: 613-594-9330
Email: germanembassyottawa@on.aibn.com
See related LifeSiteNews coverage:
Pope Compares Abortion to Holocaust in his New Book
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/feb/05022306.html
(c) Copyright: LifeSiteNews.com. Permission to republish is granted (with limitation*) but acknowledgement of source is *REQUIRED* (use LifeSiteNews.com).
NEWS TIPS to lsn@lifesitenews.com or call toll free 1-866-787-9947.
Columnist Jack Anderson said about Terelya’s “Witness”, "Another Alexander Solzhenitsyn is crying out to us from deep within the Soviet prison system."
After all the brutal torture he endured and evil he witnessed in the USSR, Josyp had to walk outside to gain composure at what he saw in the Memorial. He said that the worldwide holocaust of abortion is far worse than any other atrocity in history.
LifeSiteNews.com
Wednesday February 23, 2005
In New Book Pope Compares Abortion to Holocaust, Calls Gay Marriage “part of a new ideology of evil”
ROME, February 23, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new ‘ideology of evil’ is threatening society and it includes gay ‘marriage,’ and abortion writes Pope John Paul II in his new book, “Memory and Identity.” The book is about his experiences with 20th-century totalitarianism and its effects on him as a priest, bishop and Pope. “Memory and Identity,” which publishers expect to be a best-seller, was made available today and has already come under attack from Jewish groups. In it, the Pope drew a parallel with abortion and the Nazi Holocaust.
Pope John Paul calls abortion a “legal extermination” and compares its institution with the German laws which declared the Jews non-persons and allowed them to be murdered by the state. He wrote, “It was a legally elected parliament which allowed for the election of Hitler in Germany in the 1930s.”
John Paul wrote that abortion and legalized genocide are both the result of people usurping the “law of God” in the name of democracy. “We have to question the legal regulations that have been decided in the parliaments of present-day democracies. The most direct association which comes to mind is the abortion laws. Parliaments which create and promulgate such laws must be aware that they are transgressing their powers and remain in open conflict with the law of God and the law of nature.”
The president of Germany’s Central Council for Jews, Paul Spiegel, said, “The Catholic Church does not understand or does not want to understand that there is an enormous difference between mass genocide and what women do with their bodies.”
Speigel and other pro-abortion Jewish leaders, however, do not speak for all Jews. In 2003, Rabbi Yehuda Levin wrote about a poster he saw in New York city that declared, “STOP The Silent Holocaust — 2,000,000 children destroyed by abortion in Israel.” The poster is part of a campaign sponsored by a Jewish/Israeli group, EFRAT-C.R.I.B, dedicated to stopping abortion in Israel.
The Pope has also raised the ire of homosexual activists when he suggested that the world-wide push for same sex unions is part of an ideology of evil. “It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.” he wrote.
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(c) Copyright: LifeSiteNews.com. Permission to republish is granted (with limitation*) but acknowledgement of source is *REQUIRED* (use LifeSiteNews.com).
NEWS TIPS to lsn@lifesitenews.com or call toll free 1-866-787-9947.
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Hitler is laughing if that is allowed in hell! People in Germany really did want Hitler, and he lives!
Not following the logic. However, I do perceive the irony that Lerle is being punished in the same way many were punished by the Nazi regime for statements against the Holocaust.
Germany has a lot to learn from the USA about freedom of speech.
It appears lost on those who sentenced him that jailing someone for merely expressing an opinion is about as Nazi-like as it gets.
Some have called abortion in our country, the Black holocaust.
Lutheran Ping; no affiliation of church/synod given. Probably not SELK?
I don’t recall who runs the Lutheran Ping List...
The freedom of speech in the EU NO LONGER EXISTS unless your want to say something bad about Christians. Soon it will be the same here as it is in Canada and the EU.
I don’t know weren’t there some recent laws passed here forbidding pastors from preaching that homosexuality was a sin and that homosexuals were damned to hell. So much for freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
After Germany destroys itself by destroying the values that it once had, the jihadis will march in and eliminate all the leftists who led the destruction of values.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal indicted and convicted ten Nazi leaders for “encouraging and compelling abortions,” an act which the Tribunal characterized as “a crime against humanity.” As with their other crimes against humanity, the Nazis protested that “we were just following orders.” Lieutenant General Richard Hildebrandt, the SS (Schutzstaffel) Chief of the RKFVD’s Race and Settlement Office in Berlin, stated that “Up to now nobody had the idea to see in this interruption of pregnancy a crime against humanity.”
— Nuremberg Military Tribunals,IV:1081-84. Nuremberg: NO-3512.
I should have posted this at the top. I’ve had it on my website for years. It really stands out in light of this news. I wonder if those involved know this piece of their own history?
I believe Dr. Niemoeller was also a Lutheran.
Bookmark
Lutheran? I wonder if he’s in SELK.
“German Pastor Sentenced to a Year in Jail for Comparing Abortion to the Nazi Holocaust”
Coming SOON to a Democrat-Run city or town near YOU.
Also, anti-gay speech will be a thought crime, as well...
He was warned not to quote Scripture regarding sodomy when preaching inside the local Catholic Church, not out in public INSIDE the Church. That is so disgusting.
He’s retired Navy, a Nam vet and won’t back down. I always tell him to give them hell when he goes.
I would bet if the evil Hildabeast captures the White House she will advance this and worse.
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