H9: The Holocaust

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Beyond answers

No matter how much you learn about it, the deepest questions still remain. Why? How could they? Where was God? Where was man? Some attempts have been made to answer these questions but none are ultimately satisfying. A thought: faith is not always about knowing all the answers. Faith is sometimes about living with the questions.

Arthur Ziegelbaum ...who?

One of the saddest episodes of the war, had as hero a Polish Jewish leader exiled in London: to protest the inaction of the Allies, and also to alert public opinion, Arthur Ziegelbaum, member of the 'national Committee to free Poland,' put a bullet through his head in broad daylight in front of the entrance to the House of Commons. In his will he expressed his hope that his protest would be heard: By my death I wish to express my strongest protest against the inactivity with which the world is looking on and permitting the extermination of Jewish people. I know how little human life is worth, especially today. But as I was unable to do anything during my life, perhaps by my death I will contribute to destroying the indifference...

He was quickly forgotten, his death proved useless. Ziegelbaum dead or Ziegelbaum living: to those hearts of stone it was all the same. For them he was only a Polish Jew talking about Jews and living their agony; for them he might just as well have perished over there, with the others. Arthur Ziegelbaum died for nothing. Life went on, so did the war with the Nazis who continued their war against the Jews. And the world blocked its ears and lowered its eyes.

The 614th Commandment

A Jew may not respond to Hitler's attempts to destroy Judaism by co-operating himself in its destruction... There is now a 614th commandment: Jews are commanded to survive as Jews lest the Jewish people perish. They are commanded to remember the victims of Auschwitz lest their memory perish. They are forbidden to despair of man and his world and to escape into cynicism... lest they co-operate in delivering the world over to the forces of Auschwitz. Finally, they are forbidden to despair of the God of Israel, lest Judaism perish. (Emil Fackenheim, survivor, philosopher)

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