Emil L. Fackenheim, in his book, To Mend the World, said: “To link Auschwitz with Hiroshima is not to deepen or widen one’s
concern with humanity and its future. It is to evade the import of Auschwitz
and Hiroshima
alike.” The same can be said of all of the other cataclysms suffered by
humanity. Each is a separate occurrence of evil.
The history of the Jews, beginning with the conquest of Israel
and banishment of Jews by the Romans, is one long sorrowful testament to man’s
inhumanity. The Nazis did not invent the genocide of the Jews. They merely took
it to new depths of horrendous magnitude. Over the centuries before the
Holocaust the Jews experienced many genocides and pogroms. Around the time when
Columbus was sailing to America , the rulers of Spain were expelling all of the
Jews from their realm. Many reasons are given for this massive persecution, but
no explanation can begin to justify such evil.
One frequently hears people compare things to the
Holocaust. The right-wing anti-abortionists like to say that abortion is the
same as the Holocaust. Such unthinking speech is morally abhorrent. How can any
person compare the elimination of a microscopic, not-yet-conscious,
not-yet-thinking, not-yet-feeling unborn embryo to the deliberate murder of
grown, thinking, feeling human beings? At Auschwitz
and other camps, the Nazis starved millions of Jews. They raped the women, shot
families in front of huge ditches, tortured millions, and, ultimately, gassed
the remainder. They used to save time and trouble by throwing live babies and
small children into the ovens without gassing them first. If you cannot
identify the distinction between that and abortion, you are morally numb.
The excuse given by the Christian Nazis and Fascists for
persecution of the Jews was usually that they were: “Christ Killers.” It is a
revoltingly stupid claim. Jesus of Nazareth was killed by the Romans, yet
nobody has ever wanted to exterminate the Italians. Even if it had been the
Jews who killed Jesus (himself a Jew), why blame it on Jewish descendants
living thousands of years later?
According to the Bible, Jesus had brothers and sisters. We
must assume that many of the descendants of these brothers and sisters were
Jews, and that millions of Twentieth Century Jews in Europe
had the blood of Jesus’ family in them. The Christians who marched Jews into
the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other camps
were actually murdering the descendants of Joseph, Mary, and the family of
Jesus.
As a gentile, I am able to find something valuable in the
teaching of the great Jewish philosopher, Emile Fackenheim. He said “To grasp
the Holocaust whole-of-horror is not to comprehend or transcend it, but rather,
to say no to it, or resist it.” Fackenheim said that 613 commandments were
given on Mt. Sinai
I may not share the beliefs of religious Jews, but by dedicating
my life to tolerance and brotherhood, I can join in the crusade to defeat
Hitler and his progeny.
