H7: Responses to Holocaust

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Children over theology

Rather than engaging in theological debates and reflections
concerning the Holocaust, the survivors of the Chassidic and
yeshiva communities of Eastern Europe have concentrated on
the future. They have rebuilt lost worlds by having children
in great numbers. They have replaced an absent generation
by relocating and rebuilding their communities and institutions in Israel and America. This too is a response to the Holocaust. It is a belief that many deaths can only be redeemed by the creation of many new lives. Against the backdrop of falling Jewish marriage & birth-rates, orthodox Jews, especially ultra-orthodox Jews, have dedicated themselves to having large families. "I will not die, but I will live..." (Psalms 118:17) has been one of the most powerful responses to the Holocaust. Rabbi Wasserman's dying words were not in vain: The fire which burns our bodies will be the fire that restores the Jewish people.

Deafening Silence

Elie Wiesel, who has written extensively about the Holocaust, wrote why he and other survivors were hesitant to speak about their experiences:

"First, because we were afraid that no one would believe us. Second, we were afraid that, in the very process of telling the tale, we would betray it...For some reason, I believe that had all the survivors gathered in a secret meeting, somewhere in the forest, and decided together, (I know it's a poetic unfeasible image, but I feel this sense of loss of this opportunity) If we had then all of us decided never to say a word about the Holocaust, I think we could have changed Man by the weight of our silence. But then I also believe that Mankind wouldn't be able to bear it. It would have driven the world to madness. That is why, I think, we spoke."

Holocaust and halacha

There is a particularly Jewish response to suffering. There are two ways through which evil can be experienced: one passive, the other active. People suffer: they are objects to whom things happen. But people also act: they are subjects through whom things happen. As objects, we ask 'Why has this happened to us?' As subjects, we ask a quite different question: 'What then shall we do?' In tragedy, the Jew refuses to be transformed from subject to object. In this context the most striking literature to have emerged from the Holocaust does not concern theology, it concerns halacha i.e. Jewish law. Rabbis had to give rulings on Jewish law in the ghettos and concentration camps in response to never-before-imagined questions: May a father purchase his son's escape from the ovens, knowing that the quotas will be met by another child dying in his place? May a Jews in a ghetto say the morning blessing, 'Blessed are you, Lord, for not making me a slave'? How should one celebrate Pesach, the festival of freedom, in a concentration camp? Even in the death camps our people found ways to practise Judaism. It is as if they were saying: You can take away our belongings, our homes, even our lives, but you can't take away what we believe in! We lived as Jews, and in the name of God, we will die as Jews! There is no point at which evil can turn us from subjects to objects. We cannot often choose the situation we are in, but we can always choose how we are going to react to it. Even in hell, we can be Jews.

Duties: past & future

There is a moment in Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah in which one survivor talks of watching his friends go to their deaths in the ovens. They refused to obey the order to undress, and they stood and sang first the Czech national anthem and then the Hatikvah. He was not scheduled to die but he ran in to join them. He felt that he could not bear to live beyond this. But they thrust him out, telling him: "You must live and bear witness to our suffering." To live and bear witness to their suffering is a command to live and give meaning to their suffering. All Jews now feel bound to this. We fail in our duty to the past if we allow the Holocaust to be forgotten. And we fail in our duty to the future if we allow the Holocaust to haunt our people. This is the challenge of post-Holocaust Jewry.

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