Rabbi Smulowitz: Was God silent during the Holocaust tragedy?
On a cellar wall in Cologne, Germany where Jewish people hid from Nazis the following poem was found:
“I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.I believe in love even when feeling it not.I believe in God even when he is silent.”
Silence….
Is God ever really silent? And if so, how do we interpret his silence? Eli Weisel was possible the first to capture in his writing the unavoidable inner tension one feels when dealing with the Holocaust: namely, that it is an event in human history so profoundly unbelievable, so distant and yet so personable that we are numbed into silence and yet uncontrollably compelled to speak.
We talk about it and write about it so that we may remember and also grieve. Certainly history teaches us that hatred and prejudice if unopposed, leads only to pain, social calamity and spiritual darkness.
Anyone who views the Holocaust as a Jewish problem is clearly living an illusion, for the way in which a society reacts to its cultural diversity, the way it treats its minorities is an unmistakable barometer of its mental health. Six million Jewish people and millions of others! All those individual hopes and dreams that could have so profoundly influenced the course of mankind; found a cure for cancer, written a symphony or found the right words to appease an angry society. Six million Jewish souls and millions of others - Jews, Christians, Gypsies deprived of the right to experience life, to enjoy a sunset or derive joy from children. To destroy all those hopes is to wage war with God!
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How do we deal with grief related to the Holocaust?
Frist of all let us never forget what happened, but never become cynical about life. People have demonstrated an unlimited capacity for good.
In order to enter the main sanctuary of the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, one must first pass through the “Corridor of the Righteous Gentile.” It is a very moving experience. This area depicts and describes hundreds of individual acts of heroism; of Catholics and Protestants concealing and helping Jewish people, often at the cost of their lives. Not only individuals but countries as well are deserving of praise. Norway, Denmark, Greece, Bulgaria where demonstrations, church involvement and military resistance finally succeeded in driving out the Germans in September of 1944.
Finally we should never forget the Americans who lost their lives liberating the camps. I hope and pray that Jewish people never lose sight of the significant contributions made by other faiths. We must find a way to internalize and personalize the Holocaust, both individually and nationally.
We recently experienced another blatant attack and aggression of human rights in Kuwait, but through standing strong together using unity, military strength, and the grace of God, human dignity prevailed.
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Perhaps nothing more fully captures the purity and worth of the human soul than an excerpt from a poem written by an unknown child from within a concentration camp.
“Try to open your heart to beauty,Go to the woods someday and weave a wrath of memory there.Then, if the tears obscure your way…You’ll know how wonderful it is to be alive.”
In 1980 United States Congress passed a resolution designating a week each year as “Days of Remembrance of Victims for the Holocaust.” This year Sunday, April 16th thru Sunday, April 23 has been designated as Days of Remembrance.
Rabbi Hillel Smulowitz is the former Principal-Director of the Louisville Jewish Day School and a Retired Army Chaplain.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Holocaust Remembrance Day: Was God silent during the tragedy?
