I think that there would be very little debate if I suggested that this question is in fact the question. The pain generated by the Nazis attempts to end the existence of the Jewish people, is almost as real to today's new generation, as it was to the old. I was surprised when I first started dealing with the problems of Jewish students, to find the children and grand children of victims, still having their lives disturbed and in some cases destroyed by the Holocaust . The Jewish people have not stopped bleeding.
The question whether the Holocaust killed belief or not , should have been thought about by every Jew alive . There are some however, who simply refuse to think.
There is a book which I wish every Jew would read, it is called "Reunion" and it is by Fred Uhlman. The book is a semi autobiographical account of the author's adolescence, in pre war Germany. It gives us a rare glimpse into the lives of a not untypical, German Jewish family. In the book, the Jewish boy through whom the tale is told, reports an incident when his neighbours wooden house went up in flames burning to death the three children who were inside . He writes "It shook me as nothing had shaken me before. I had read of one million people drowned by the Yellow river, of two million drowned by the Yangtse. I knew that a million soldiers died at Verdun. But these children I knew, I had seen them with my own eyes - this was altogether different. What had they done what had the poor mother and father doneto deserve this? It seemed to me that there were just two alternatives - either no God existed or there did exist a deity who was monstrous if powerful and futfle if powerless. Once and for all I jettisoned all belief in a benevolent mastermind."
In the story the Jewish boy discusses the issue with his non-Jewish friend who takes it to his Pastor. The Jew is very unimpressed with the answer he receives and there the issue is left. Imagine; someone who boldly declares that he never superseded the intellectual achievements of his adolescent mind. At least the non-Jew takes a theological question to a Theologian. Not so the Jew. There are some who refuse to think.
A number of years ago a very angry student asked me how I would answer someone who was religious and who went through Auschwitz and declared that there was no G-d.
The answer of course is, that I would have no answer for him!. There is a Jewish teaching which declares that, you shouldn't judge someone, until you are standing in their shoes. I would however have a question of my own, "What would that survivor say to someone who didn't believe in G-d and went through Auschwitz and declared that there is a G-d?". One of my teachers told me of a non Jew who actually converted in Dachau . A Mikva was dug underneath one of the huts, it was filled with rain water and this man was circumcised and became a Jew..... in Hell!
All of these cases demonstrate one thing unequivocally. The Holocaust proves nothing with regards to the existence of G-d, it neither destroys belief nor endorses it. I have met a Jew who was created an atheist by Auschwitz . I have met two Jews who had the reverse experience. I have known scores who were and are Torah Jews, despite the camps.
At almost the end of the Torah G-d warns Moshe what will happen after his
death. Devorim 31. 17-18 ; " G-d says to Moshe, When you go to lie with
your Fathers and this people will rise up and lust after the alien gods of
the Land into which they are coming And they will abandon me and break my
covenant which I made with them." "And my anger will burn against them on
that day and I will abandon them and hide my face from them and they will be
their enemies prey".
It would seem to be, that the conditions of the contract between G-d and the
Jewish people is spelled out here. If you give me up and chase after other
belief systems and "Isms" , then my ultimate punishment will be....... 0. K.
you want it , you've got it It . If we choose Nationalism , or Socialism
and the Nationalists or Socialists turn on us then the question is no longer
how could G-d let this happen ? rather, how could we have let this happen ?.
In every generation there is an alternative system of belief , available and tantalising to Jews. The "Ism" comes along, offers itself and carries off thousands and sometimes millions of adherents . The contract we have with G-d is simply the availability to embrace the new "Ism" ...but it has to be a full embrace, with all that implies, if this alternative fails us , then we have to bear the consequences , we chose it .
There is a phenomenon which I will call "The solitary remaining Jewish advocate". After an " Ism " has proven itself bankrupt and failed , you will find solitary remaining Jewish advocates , arguing that their particular fossil , is still vibrant , alive and necessary.
The place where I studied in Yeshivah, is a very anti -Seniitic part of the world. I was once visiting Manchester and went into the Jewish book shop belonging to a Mr Falk. The owner was someone whom I admired greatly. He was a German Jew and his children are amongst some of the most outstanding personalities in the Rabbinic world The shop was empty and he asked me how I was getting on in Yeshiva. There had just been a particularly ugly anti sernitic incident and I decided to tell him the whole story. Once I started it all came gushing forth. This was in the late seventies and the National Front were doing really very well , I was sickened and fed up being spat at , shouted at and occasionally attacked . Mr Falk invited me to sit down and began to tell his own story. "My wife and I were in Buchenwald . It was a place which took people and ground them into tiny bits. When they rounded us up we were marched to the railway station where thugs with wooden staves waited to meet us. The cattle trucks which were to take us to the camps stood with their doors open. We were told that we had to shout ( here he mentioned a long German word which apparently combines all the worst swear words into one) . If we shouted that we were that word , then we were allowed to pass unmolested by the jeering thugs . If however you refused to shout it you were beaten by the thugs." Mr Falk shouted it and when he was squeezed into the cattle truck he found himself beside someone , who had blood pouring from a gash in his forehead. The man who had refused to give in, asked Mr Falk how he could have brought himself to say it . It took me a number of years to understand what Mr Falk replied - it was this... " I said it because it didn't touch me".
The train moved off , travelling though the birthplaces of some of the great Philosophers and Composers the Jews on the train had been brought up to be so proud of . When they arrived at Buchenwald Mr Falk said that he thought " I don't know why G-d has put me here but it's my Job to get on with being a Jew here , just as much as it would be anywhere else " and then he said something which astonished and inspired me "And with that attitude, I was able to help very many people" .
Imagine Buchenwald , where human beings were reduced to animals ; being able to help very many people. The answer to the riddle of his reply to the casualty in the cattle truck , lies in the phenomenon of the solitary remaining Jewish advocate. During the 193O's in Berlin, large numbers of Jews would be found every day who had committed suicide. The reason for their suicide can be found in the "Reunion" . " I still remember a violent discussion between my father and a Zionist who had come to collect money for Israel. My father abhorred Zionism. It could only end in endless blood shed and the Jews would have to fight the whole Arab world. And anyway what had he, a Stuttgarter , to do with Jerusalem ?
When the Zionist mentioned Hitler; and asked my father if this would not shake his confidence , my father said , "Not in the least . I know my Germany . This is a temporary illness , something like measles, which will pass as soon as the economic situation improves. Do you, really think the compatriots of Goethe and Schiller, Kant and Beethoven will fall for this rubbish? How dare you insult the memory of the twelve thousand Jews who died for our country ? Fur unsere Heimat ?"
Unable to take being rejected by Germany, Unsere Heimat , Jews gave up their lives. Germany for these Jews was life. That was what the man meant when he asked "How could you bring your self to say that about your self ? ". He couldn't, he was a real German a patriot ; the solitary remaining Jewish advocate . Mr Falk could say it because it didn't offend his German-ness , his life wasn't being a German, it was because it didn't offend his German-ness , his life wasn't being a German, it was being a Jew.
A memo was sent by Gestapo headquarters in Berlin to Gestapo H.Q. in Poland It said: The Nazis were willing to allow some Jewish emigration from Germany and Austria, because the assimilated dejudaized Jews of Western Europe would simply blend into whatever country was willing to accept them; there was no danger that they would re-establish Jewish life in their new surroundings . From Eastern Europe , however, no escape was to be permitted. The OstJuden were too Jewish, they would rebuild their institutions and start all over again. This they could not permit.
Hitler put it this way;
" It is true that we are barbarians . That is an honoured title to us . I free humanity from the shackles of the soul , from the degrading suffering caused by the false vision called conscience and ethics. The Jews have inflicted two wounds on mankind - circumcision on it's body and conscience on it's soul . They are Jewish inventions . The war for the domination of the world is waged only between the two of us, between these two camps alone - the Germans and the Jews. Everything else is but deception."
I am proud to be , by their own definition of their antithesis , the opposite of a Nazi , a "Too Jewish Jew". Every "Ism" has eventually failed us. When we have insisted that G-d withdraws , then we have been shown by that , in which we put all our trust , how wrong we were. The question "How can we believe in G-d after Auschwitz " begs another in reply, "After auschwitz , how can we believe in anything else?"