A Project Genesis website

Understanding the Holocaust

Question

Why did G-d abandon innocent Jewish people during the Holocaust? Why did it happen in Europe and not in the U.S.? Why were those Jews spared?

Answer

Well first of all, of course, I have to state what is obvious: that I have no access to the reasons behind G-d’s calculations for the world. The Torah is not afraid to admit that there are limits to what even that will teach us (see Devarim 29:28 and Yeshayahu 55:8).

This is, of course, a huge question with no definitive answer.

Many people look to the book of Job for some inkling of the Torah position on such suffering (itself not a simple task).

The simplest reading of G-d’s answer to Job’s question (beginning in ch. 38 – this passage does seem to represent the Torah’s preferred answer) presents a kind of non-answer: “you puny mortals can’t possibly understand the workings of My universe…but know that ultimately, there is justice, even if you can’t see that with your own eyes.”

According to the Ramban (Nachmanides), what the book is saying is that all “loose ends” can be tied and even appreciated when you add various next-worldly calculations to the mix. In other words, if this physical world isn’t all there is, then appropriate reward and punishment can exist side-by-side with an inscrutable world.

So why did these terrible things happen to so many helpless Jews? I suppose the best answer to this is the same as we have to offer in the face of all the seemingly meaningless suffering endured throughout all of human history: we don’t know everything, but we trust G-d and hope to one day understand what it all meant.

With my best regards,
Rabbi Boruch Clinton

Follow-up questions (2)

Question

During the Holocaust some Jewish people in order to survive pretended to be Christians. For example: some children were placed in convents and studied Christianity. Some adults recited prayers and crossed their hearts so people would believe they were not Jewish. Others, posed as non Jews with false documents. Is this all permissible?

Answer

I have to be careful not to judge decisions people made in those times by my own standards and easy life. However, according to what I’ve seen it would seem that one may never actively claim to believe in an idolatrous religion in order to save one’s life. To act in a way that allows other people to draw their own conclusions (to carry false documents which list “Christian” as your religion, for instance) could be permitted.

Whether to leave Jewish children in convents to save them is a question I thank God I’ve never had to face. In the middle ages, it is commonly known, Jews often chose to kill their own children rather than allow them to be taken and raised as Christians.

Question

At the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, I saw a photograph of a family moments before their execution by the Nazis. The members consisted of at least 10 people. Can you believe in Hashem after this?

Answer

I’ve never met someone who minds the fact that he has free will and can, if he desires, choose to do evil and even harm others. Most of us wouldn’t want it any other way (while, of course, most of us won’t seek to harm others). The possibility of evil gives meaning to the good choices we make.

The Nazis make horrifying choices. But that’s the way the world was made…with that possibility. The problem is how that can be considered just for the victims. For that it really isn’t a huge emotional leap to consider that God has a plan for everything and everyone and that, in some inscrutable but real way, there will indeed be a full correcting of accounts in the next world.

Second, A Holocaust Survivors family who were very very religious and learned in Poland became nonbelievers after the war. For example: The father and four sons did return from Auschwitz. It sounds impossible. They don’t believe it is a miracle. However, today their grand children and children are intermarried. The Survivor eats Pork and refuses to believe in Hashem.

Friends of mine who are themselves survivors have often told me of Jews who, before the war, were as distant from Torah observance as they possibly could be, becoming profoundly religious after (and remember: most European Jews were not religious by the end of the 1930s). One of these survivors told me how a very prominent leader in the secular, anti-religious Zionist movement was listed by Red Cross records as dead after the war when in fact he had changed his name, moved to Israel and become very, very religious (he swore my friend – who had recognized him – to secrecy and no one else knows he’s alive).

In other words, some lost their faith, others found it and many kept it intact. It’s all about choices.

Third, Does God live in the present, past, or future. Is he with us now in the present?

I think that’s a nice way to describe it.