A Reflection on the Holocaust, Part II of III
Could this Scripture passage have given him hope that help would come from his God? Or, was he suffering too much pain from the physical and emotional trauma of the S.S. troops to be able to call out to God?
“My dignity is borne off on the wind, and my welfare
vanishes like a cloud. One with great
power lays hold of my clothing, by the collar of my tunic he seizes me. He has cast me into the mire. I am leveled
with the dust and ashes.[i]
Verses through the Book of Job express just how profoundly
realistic the Work of God is concerning the trials and suffering of humanity.
As I reflect on the above Scripture verse, I am observing a
photograph of two Auschwitz prisoners who have just taken their own lives by
hurling themselves onto high-voltage barb-wire fencing. Their contorted bodies
lie motionless as the killer wire lays hold of their burnt flesh and singed
prison garb.
It has been said that many Jews desired to frustrate the
Nazis by not making extermination easy for them. As illustrated in this photo, here is one
case of suicide rather than passive resistance.[ii]
But for many of the Jews, despair overcame any desire of
passively resisting death. Suicide
provided freedom form the heinous torture which was the norm in the Nazi death
camp.
Those accustomed to dainty food perish in the streets; those
brought up in purple now cling to the ash heaps. Now their appearance is blacker than dirt,
they are unrecognized on the streets, their skin shrinks on their bones as dry
as wood.[iii]
The above verses from the Book of Lamentations were written
by a witness of Israel’s humiliation after the fall of Jerusalem in the sixth
century. It was a crucial point in
Israel’s history since its temple was destroyed, its leaders were exiled, and
national sovereignty was lost.[iv]
These same Scripture verses can be easily applied to another
major point in Jewish history, one much more devastating and abominable that
the 6th century calamity.
During the liberation of the Nazi death camps by the Allies,
horrific scenes of death were everywhere.
Thousands of emaciated corpses were found piled upon one another
throughout the camps. This was because
the crematoriums were limited in the numbers of bodies that needed to be turned
to ashes before the liberation.
Unimaginable to try to understand the minds of civilized
military personnel to witness this sadistic contempt for human life.
Emaciated corpses of abandoned, tortured, and starved members of the human family surrounded the liberators throughout the camps. Cruelty of this magnitude toward one human being is hideous itself. But, cruelty which led to the slaughter of eleven million innocent people in such a manner is an evil no human is capable of understanding.
I am now viewing a photograph of a large pit containing the
emaciated bodies of thousands of Holocaust victims.
In the foreground of this photo, women S.S. guards carry
slain victims toward the mass burial site.
Did this deranged task stir the conscience of any of these
women – the purveyors of death? Did any
of them ever express, or receive an act of kindness from any of their butchered
victims? Did the bloodshed from the
human carnage they engaged in every upset them? Or is it possible that Hitler’s propaganda
on The Final Solution – death to European Jews, had so brainwashed these Nazi
guards that this chore served only as their pleasant manifestation of Nazi
victory?
“I loathe my life. I
will give myself up to complaint. I will speak from the bitterness of my
soul. Is it a pleasure for you to
oppress, to spurn the work of your hands, and smile on the plan of the wicked.”[v]
Job addressed God in the above verse by telling him just how
deep his sadness was. Job is being
persecuted and he has no answer from anyone, particularly from his friends who
only offer him poor advice and little compassion. Job calls out to God with blunt honesty when
he says with great discouragement, “Is it a pleasure for you to oppress.”
Millions of Holocaust victims must have echoed the
discouragement of Job by calling out to God for an answer to the tormenting
madness which surrounded them. The
persecution of one who is just was not evident only in the life of Job, but in
countless just souls who experienced the sadistic madness of the Nazi regime.
I look at the photo of a death camp prisoner sitting on a
hump of dirt. Behind him is the electric
barb wire fence.
He is emaciated and wears prison garb rags.
But, the worst terror is evident in the man’s face. His tightly closed eyes express total despair
and his mouth is open, while his face remains tense.
Death surrounds him and he seems to be only a split second
away from death caused not only from starvation and torture, but from the loss
of hope.
Never have a seen a photograph that depicts despair as much
as this one. The man looks too weak to
take another breath. I cannot imagine
the last time he had a decent meal, a shower, a compliment, an expression of
kindness. Why, and how did he manage to
live as long as he did? Was he formally
a robust man who survived immediate death upon arriving at the extermination
camp, to be a slave for the Nazis? How
many times did he call out to God asking for liberation, for salvation from
hell on earth? Did he die the moment
after this photo was taken? Was he
crying from the depths of his soul this verse from Scripture:
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me, far from my
prayer, from the words of my cry? O my
God, I cry out by day, and you answer me not, by night, and there is no relief
for me.”[vi]
How can one live another moment of life with such despair?
Oppression of the
Jewish Community
“His mouth is full of cursing, guile and deceit; under his
tongue are mischief and iniquity. He
lurks in ambush near the villages; in hiding he murders the innocent; his eyes
spy upon the unfortunate. He waits in secret like a lion in his liar, he lies
in wait to catch the afflicted; he catches the afflicted and drags them off in
his net. He stoops and lies prone till
by his violence fall the unfortunate.[vii]
The above psalm verses explicitly detail the oppression of
the Jewish community. Although the psalm
deals with the difficulties of Jewish oppression during Old Testament times, it
certainly expresses oppression during the Holocaust.
These verses portray the evil of the Nazis as one views photographs of them rounding up Jewish people, as if they were wild beasts to be destroyed.
The psalm becomes an unfortunate reality as I see
photographs of Nazis mocking and beating their victims in the streets. Older
Jewish men upon their immediate arrest have their beards sheared off by Nazis
who laugh during this profane mockery of human dignity.
Nude women await their turns at the gas chambers, tenderly
clutching their infants and small children under the evil oppression of the
Nazi guards. Men, women, and children
are packed like cattle in freight cars as they board the death trains on route
to Auschwitz. Their persecutors hurry
them along at gun point.
Hitler’s youth desecrate sacred temples with profanity and
slogans such as Death to the Jews and The Jews are Swine.
Nazis entertain themselves by having Jews subject to their
sexual inclinations. Women are raped
prior to their death by gas. Jewish children,
wearing yellow stars identifying their nationality, are led to death in the gas
chambers under gun point. Over one
million of the six million slaughtered Jews were children.
Men are forced to dig their own graves prior to being shot
by the Nazis, and then these men are buried by the next group of victims who
are members of their own families –their brothers, sons, fathers, grandfathers,
cousins, and uncles.
Gassed Jews have their gold teeth extracted by specially
trained Nazi guards. Men, women, and
children undergo sadistic medical experimentations at the death camps. They are subject to starvation experiments,
injected with malaria, cancer – and other diseases.
The human carnage continues as millions become death
statistics to the delight of the Nazi’s.
A Meditation on
Proverbs
“A scoundrel is a furnace of evil, and on his lips there is
a scorching fire. A lawless man allures
his neighbor and leads him into a way that is not good.” [viii]
As I reflect on the above Scripture verse, I picture scenes
of death train prisoners on their way t Auschwitz and the other extermination
camps.
The trains were the least expensive and the most efficient
manner by which masses of Jews could be sent to the death camps.
The Nazis allured the Jews to the trains, which eventually
reached the death camps, by telling the Jews they would be colonized. These lies were simply a device used to trick
the Jews and keep them calm during their transportation.
The trains began in Vienna in October, 1939 and soon
afterwards transported Jews from Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Poland.[ix]
Often the innocent, baffled, and defenseless train prisoners realized the Nazi lies were manipulating them to the gas chambers. Subsequently, to the fires of the crematoriums.
Giza Landau, a prisoner of the Nazis, who narrowly escaped
death describes what traveling to a death camp was like:
“We traveled in locked wagons, closely packed together and
half suffocated. We all said goodbye to
each other for we knew that the ovens and gas chambers were waiting for
us. Although we often talked about it,
nobody could really imagine what I could be like. When we arrived in Auschwitz in the evening
we were taken to Berkenau. When we were
still a long way away we could see the sky glowing red as if there were a
fire. None of us could imagine that it
could be human beings burning like that, although we had already been through a
lot. There was no smoke coming from the chimneys, only a rain of sparks. People asked the guards what was burning and
they replied it must be bread being baked.
Day and Night. But we knew this could not be the case.[x]
The aforementioned psalm mentioned referred to a scoundrel
as a furnace of evil with lips of scorching fire representing his neighbor as
evil. Tragically, this verse became q
vivid reality for millions of Jews who were led to the fires of the
crematoriums.
Meditation on Psalm 44
“You have let us be driven back by our foes: those who hated
us plundered us at will, you marked us out as sheep to be slaughtered; among
the nations you scattered us.
“You made us the reproach of our neighbors, the mockery and
the scorn of tose around us. You made
us a by-word among the nations, a laughing stock among the peoples. All the day my disgrace is before me, and
shame covers my face. At the voice of
him who mocks and blasphemes, and in the presence of the enemy and the
avenger.”[xi]
The above psalm verses express the tragedy of an earlier
Israel community. The author of the
psalm continually uses the term you on addressing God. Not only does this expression portray an
intimate relationship between the author and God, but is also expressed the
author’s belief of a culpability of God for the wretched condition of the
Israel community. The psalm verses are those which express the lamentation of
the community.[xii]
The verses of this psalm are also profoundly expressive of
various circumstances of horror which afflicted the Holocaust victims.
I am continually impressed at how Sacred Scripture
profoundly captures illustrates meaning for events throughout time.
As the Israel community lamented through when this psalm was
written, so too does the psalm express suffering of the Israel community during
the Holocaust. Another time, another
place, but see how the following scene depicts oppression, slaughtering of the
innocents, mockery, shame, and disgrace.
These are indicative of the evils described in the psalm, and again
here, a description of evil during the Holocaust by one of its most renowned
authors, a former prisoner at Auschwitz:
“Between 450 and 500 persons were crowded into a chamber
measuring 125 square feet in Treblinka.
Parents carried their children in the vain hope of saving them from
death. On the way to their doom they
were pushed with rifle butts and gas pipes.
Dogs were set upon them, barking and biting and tearing them apart. Then the doors were shut tightly with a bang. Twenty-five minutes later everyone was dead
and they stood lifeless; there being no free spaces, they just leaned against
each other. They no longer shouted
because the thread of their lives had been broken. They no longer had any needs or desires. Mothers held their dead children tightly in
their arms. There were no more friends
and no more enemies. There was no lo jealousy.
All were equal. There was no longer any beauty and ugliness for all
looked yellow from the gas.[xiii]
The above quotation shows the horror of extermination and
death in an expressiveness which is also evident in Sacred Scripture. Scripture also continuously depicts the evil
of war, hatred, oppression, and persecution.
The Holocaust, as well as other earth shattering evils does
not have any rational reasons to give answers to the question of why? Man, no matter how brilliant, will never be
able to adequately explain a mystery of evil – why was such evil permitted and
caused.
A Reflection on the Holocaust, Part I of III
[i] Job
30:15-19.
[ii]
Milton Meltzer, Never to Forget (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1976) p.
140
[iii]
Lamentations 4: 5 & 8.
[iv] New
American Bible, Introduction to the Book of Lamentations
[v]
Job 10: 1 & 3.
[vi]
Psalm 22: 2-3.
[vii]
Psalm 10: 7-10.
[viii]
Proverbs 16: 27 & 29.
[ix]
Nora Levin, The Holocaust (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1968), p. 163.
[x]
Gerhard Schoenberner, The Yellow Star (New York: Bantam Books, 1973, p. 187.
(Quote of Giza Landau)
[xi]
Psalm 44: 11-12, 14-17.
[xii]
Raymond Brown, The Jerome Biblical Commentary (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1968)
p.583.
[xiii]
Elie Wiesel, The Holocaust as Literary Imagination, Dimensions of the Holocaust
(Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1977) p. 15.
About the Author
Vincent J. Bove, CPP, is a national speaker and author on issues critical to America. Bove is recipient of the FBI Director's Community Leadership Award and former confident of the New York Yankees. He served as spokesperson for a coalition of victim’s families of the Virginia Tech tragedy. He is the author of 275 published works, including 15 cover stories for The Chief of Police. His most recent books are Reawakening America and Listen To Their Cries. For more information see www.vincentbove.com or twitter @vincentjbove
Related Coverage: Protecting Houses of Worship: A National Model
Photos - Due to the passage of time, photo's originally reflected on for the 1985 thesis, are not used but substitutes that also reflect the horror of the Holocaust.
1. Children at Auschwitz. (Getty Images)
2. Einsatzgruppen killings. (Credit PBS)
3. Auschwitz (Universal History Archive, Getty)
4. Child with hands up. (Unknown Author)
Labels: Character Training/Development for Students, Diversity, Education, Faith Based
posted by Vincent J. Bove, CPP at 9:23 AM
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