Faith, Lack of Faith, and the Holocaust
We often hear — mostly, but not exclusively, from lapsed-but-not-assimilated Jews — comments along the lines of, “I can’t believe in God after the Holocaust.” The argument is basically that, if God is good, He would not have allowed the Holocaust to occur; since it occurred, either God does not exist, or He is not good and is therefore unworthy of our faith.
Putting aside whether this argument is valid or not from a theological perspective, it implies something which those who make the argument never seem to claim. The fact is, even if God allowed the Holocaust to occur, surely He did not directly do it Himself. The roundups, the deportations, and the killings were all done by human beings, with free will to choose between good and evil. Now, what did these people have in common, in addition to their choice for evil?
Well first, it was not nationality; they were not all Germans. Hitler and many of the Nazi leaders were Austrians rather than Germans, though they argued that those were the same thing. But even though the leaders were Germans and Austrians, much of the dirty work was done by others. As Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and others have pointed out, before the camps were set up, much of the killing in Eastern Europe was done by Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and other Slavs, under the supervision of Germans who didn’t want to get their hands dirty (literally, not figuratively — there was a lot of blood, and they had to move a lot of dirt to make those mass graves). And of course, there were Slovaks and Hungarians and French and Croatians and many others who helped with the deportations.
Second, it was not religion. Some were atheists, some were Christians, and among the Christians were Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox.
Third, it was not political or even racial ideology: While the German leadership were Nazis and no doubt believed in “Aryan” racial supremacy, the Poles and other Slavic peoples who cooperated could hardly be regarded as being motivated by a racial ideology according to which they were inferior (though not as inferior as the Jews).
Those who perpetrated the Holocaust had, in addition to their choice for evil, one thing in common: They were all Europeans.
So why doesn’t anyone say, “I can’t believe in Europeans after the Holocaust”? Why don’t people who say they can’t believe in God after the Holocaust oppose European unification, which is supposed to lead to renewed European strength, with every fiber of their being? Why don’t they opposed European meddling in the Middle East, which — given that it’s mostly based on opposition to Israel — looks like an attempt to “finish the job” of the Holocaust?
The answer, I think, is that they don’t really disbelieve in God because of the Holocaust. They disbelieve for other reasons — perhaps because life is easier if you don’t need to worry about whether you’re doing what God wants you to do — and the Holocaust provides a convenient excuse. In a sense, it’s even more “useful” for these purposes than atheism: atheism is dependent on the assertion that God does not exist, but with the Holocaust excuse, you can claim that even if He does exist, you don’t have to serve Him.
And that is yet a further tragedy to come from the Holocaust. As if there weren’t enough already.