Holocaust and Genocide
Six million.
For any Jewish person born in the years following World War II, six million is a number like no other. Some of us knew it even before we could count to six. Six million souls perished at the hands of the Nazis for no crime other than being Jewish. The enormity of it dwarfs comprehension. For some, however, there is an almost equally enormous question: if there is a God, how could He have allowed it to happen?
The number six million does not tell the whole story. Although the Jewish people lost more than a third of their world population (not to mention inestimably important centers of Jewish scholarship and culture), they were not the only group that suffered. Millions more perished in the camps: the mentally diseased, ethnic minorities like the Gypsies, and men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other true Christians who hated what Hitler stood for. Twenty to thirty million Russian civilians also died in World War II. The list goes on and on.
It seems that few lessons have been learned even after enduring such horrors. The atrocities in Biafra, Rwanda and Darfur are only a few of the genocidal campaigns that have been carried out in a world that only pays lip service to peace. And the question remains: where is God?
There are no easy answers to this question. The Holocaust caused many to turn from God, protesting that no just or even sane deity would ever permit such a thing. Others found faith in God who sustained them, whether they lived or died.
What was the meaning of the Holocaust? The complexity of the issue comes out in the words of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, when he reasons that the Holocaust "could not have been without God, nor could it have been with God. It cannot be conceived on any level." Yet Wiesel is also right when he holds that regardless of the cause or reason that we may give for the Holocause, we must continue to relate to God, and even struggle with God when facing tragedy. He states, "For a Jew to believe in God is good. For a Jew to protest against God is still good. But simply to ignore God, that is not good."
There is a belief that wherever great suffering exists, there is God. In fact, love and suffering are bound together in a unique way in the One who suffers for and with the persecuted and oppressed at all times. He is the Messiah, who the Talmud depicts as one who sits at gates of the city, taking His place with other sufferers, binding his wounds along with them.
This Messiah is also described as one "who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death on a tree." (Philippians 2:6-8)
In the midst of suffering as staggering as that of the Holocaust, we may not find the answers we seek. But we may find something more - the presence of God and of the Messiah sent to suffer alongside us and in our place.
