Where Was Man? By Marius Sidau

During the Holocaust, more than 70 years ago, the single largest mass murder in history happened. More than a million people were sent to Auschwitz during the 4½ years of its existence. More than a million of them died there. Hundreds of Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and other minorities, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 21,000 Roma, 70,000 Polish political prisoners, and 1 million Jews ( at least 200,000 of them children), were exterminated (PBS Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State: Ep. 6).  Within the global genocidal landscape, across time and space, the Holocaust is unique.

As a Catholic priest and a native of Romania (a country that shares the Holocaust’s collective burden), the fundamental and most difficult question that this event poses for me is “Where was God during the Holocaust?” If God exists, how could He have allowed it? After all, as Dostoyevsky put it, “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.” Based on my spiritual work, I know that other people struggle with this question as well. Should we thus simply surmise when examining the evidence provided by the Holocaust that God does not exist?

The issue is truly complex. Above all, it is very emotional. Painful! Yet, when examining the matter objectively, historians conclude that the Holocaust’s main architects, perpetrators, and accomplices lived in a cultured and sophisticated country in the heart of Europe. The people who did this were (often) very intelligent. It is deeply disturbing that they were not brainless thugs operating instinctively. Nor were they afflicted by mass madness. For example, a significant number of people attending the 1942 Wannsee Conference (to plan details of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question") held academic doctorates—some of them, several. Such was the case with Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the SS and an accomplished musician, who insisted his staff call him "Doctor-Doctor." The decision to create and carry on the Holocaust was made commonly, calmly, coldly, methodically and “rationally.” As if it were a living thing, the Holocaust underwent different stages of evolution, of growth. It was also carried on with the silent or explicit complicity of several European nations.  It was justified as necessary for the good and peace of all.

So why did the Holocaust happen? Was it the responsibility of insane men, or was it due to God’s non-existence? The easy way out of The Holocaust Question is either to deny God’s existence, or to explain that what happened there was the creation of madmen. Fact is, the artisans of the Holocaust were not mad, nor were the average citizens who promoted to power—and followed—the Nazis. They were doing (or consenting to) what they thought was the right thing to do at the time. They thought themselves responsible citizens. If we do not understand why people like the artisans of the Final Solution thought the Holocaust was justified and necessary, we are helpless indeed in the face of it happening again.

Under the current, increasingly volatile political-economic global and national contexts, pondering upon the Holocaust and finding meaningful answers is of outmost importance. This is because the Holocaust did not start with the gas chambers. It started with radical ideas sown, germinated, and matured within a context of economic decline and unemployment. It began with politicians exploiting and playing on the prejudices of a civilized Christian nation with desire for freedom and self-determination, with the “Us versus Them” mindset, with intolerance and hate speech, denying basic rights to “some” people only because they were deemed "different,” burning houses of worship.

It started with scapegoating. More disturbingly – the Holocaust began with ordinary people being pursued by the Machiavellian concept that “the end justifies the means,” thus turning a blind eye to injustice and evil against a religious and ethnic minority. George Santayana warns the postmodern world, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” This means that we must learn from the past. Above all, it means that we all share a common responsibility on educating the next generations and thus (hopefully) preventing the Holocaust from ever happening again.

The evidence provided by the historical and social records clearly indicates that the Holocaust did not have to do with God’s absence from human history, but rather with Man’s ambition to be his own god—to be maker and master of his own destiny shaped primarily by pride, ignoring the Law of God. History teaches us that both evil and good evolve and spread based on personal and collective free choice. Thus perhaps the correct question when considering the Holocaust is not “Where was God?” but rather, “Where was Man?” The Holocaust is a lasting reminder of what human beings are capable of creating when failing to choose wisely.