IS THIS SCULPTURE SLANDEROUS?

This 700-year-old anti-Semitic statue was the subject of a recent German court case by a Jewish man, who fought to remove it from a church where Martin Luther once preached.

The Jew-pig sculpture on the Town Church in Wittenberg, Germany, is one of more than 20 such relics from the Middle Ages that adorn churches across Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

The sculpture depicts Jews suckling the teats of a sow while a rabbi lifts the animal’s tail. It evidences the hatred toward Jewish people at that time and the anti-Semitism of a Christian leader like Martin Luther who apparently condoned the image.

The sins of the Christian church are one of the many historic influences that contribute to the current complex conflict in Israel - Palestine, included in my soon-to-be-released novel, ‘Wall of Tears’.

The court concluded that due to a recently added inscription, ‘in it’s current context’, the statue was not of a slanderous nature.