THE HOLOCAUST

 Today is the last day of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks. Lately, I have been reading spy novels about World War II Germany and I have been thinking a lot about the mammoth slaughter of the Jews during the Holocaust. Thinking about the Holocaust always makes me very emotional. I do not know why. I am not Jewish, but the very thought of this atrocity moves me deeply. As a gentile, the Holocaust has always presented a serious problem for me. How could a modern, culturally rich, Christian nation, carry-out such a monstrous act of evil? With all of the crimes of man, including the genocides committed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and other places, and the atrocities committed in every war, I still see the Holocaust as a horror unmatched in the history of human evil. It should never be compared to other acts of evil.

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. He offered a 614^th commandment. In effect, he said that if we forget, or minimize, or diminish the importance of the Holocaust, if gentiles engage in anti-Semitism, if Jews give-up their beliefs and culture because of the Holocaust, they will be letting Hitler gain a form of victory. He said that we must not let Hitler win.

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.