Pope Benedict XVI had this to say at Auschwitz:
How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil? The words of Psalm 44 come to mind, Israel’s lament for its woes: “You have broken us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up, come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!� (Ps 44:19, 22-26). This cry of anguish, which Israel raised to God in its suffering, at moments of deep distress, is also the cry for help raised by all those who in every age - yesterday, today and tomorrow – suffer for the love of God, for the love of truth and goodness. How many they are, even in our own day!
And:
The place where we are standing is a place of memory, it is the place of the Shoah. The past is never simply the past. It always has something to say to us; it tells us the paths to take and the paths not to take.
And:
Yes, behind these inscriptions is hidden the fate of countless human beings. They jar our memory, they touch our hearts. They have no desire to instil hatred in us: instead, they show us the terrifying effect of hatred. Their desire is to help our reason to see evil as evil and to reject it; their desire is to enkindle in us the courage to do good and to resist evil. They want to make us feel the sentiments expressed in the words that Sophocles placed on the lips of Antigone, as she contemplated the horror all around her: my nature is not to join in hate but to join in love.
How easy is it to forget, and how crucial to remember. And to remember to walk lightly on the earth, despite all, in a spirit of love.
Elsewhere: DREADNOUGHT’s thoughts.
Nothing quite spells WTF? like an authoritarian kraut in charge of an immense belief organisation that promises eternal hellfire for unbelievers, sporting designer shoes for a photo op in a Nazi death camp.
I think this letter in today’s Age says a lot:
All this handwringing and debate. What happened at Auschwitz is just one of many examples in history of what humans really are. Facing up to, and accepting, our dark side is found by many to be an impossibility.
The Catholic Church itself, during the Inquisition, carried out obscene tortures on people in the name of religion. While the Pope was pontificating the Coalition of the Killing was bombing and shooting innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Humans are not nice! End of story.
That’s a despicable point of view, Daniel. I thought I’d been made furious enough by all of the other various stoushes here in the last couple of days, but that’s another gear of relativism entirely.
Read some history and cut out the patronising tone.
Oh, dear Daniel, was just about to sympathaise but also to alert you: haven’t you heard? The world is good, good, good, to say anything other is tantamount to yes . . . despicability. Keep the truth to yourself it is not appreciated here. Which particular version of history did you have in mind Liam?
I suspect Liam is thinking about the history of the Shoah, Link.
As to charges that the Catholic Church condoned anti-semitism, the Reverend Dr might care to examine the experience of the Lutheran state churches in Germany, which with some honourable exceptions, dissolved themselves into a nationalistic and pro-Nazi denomination. The history of the Catholic Church in Germany is not without stain either, but I’d have thought that the tribute that the present day Pope paid to the victims of the Shoah, and his analysis of the causes, would attract praise not censure.
Primary Kim, when I see a post written by you I go run and get a smoke, maybe a drink and prepare to sit back and read slowly. Because it’s worth taking time over.
You are a nuanced, thoughtful and complex writer.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Thanks, Another Kim, though in this case I can take little credit, since the post is really just a selection of Benedict’s remarks.
Another Kim wrote:
After fourteen years, I still miss them. Life has never been the same since I quit (lengthened though it might be).
Sorry to break the bad news about the world to you, Liam, so early in the morning. But I’m a realist.
You’re obviously an idealist, one who it seems has either never read a history book or just those sections which tell you what you want to hear.
Facing up to what humans are, and are not, demonstrates maturity, Liam.
Nothing quite like a good read and a smoke at the same time…makes it just that little bit more enjoyable, if that’s possible.
I’ll have one for you, Ron.
Enjoying life to the full.
“You’re obviously an idealist, one who it seems has either never read a history book or just those sections which tell you what you want to hear.”
Well gee Daniel, why not just stick your head in the oven now and save yourself the trouble?
What a load of patronising dogshit.
Where was God?
The same place God was during all the other massacres, holocausts, genocides and mass slaughters of the 20th century.
Elsewhere.
Where was God during the slaughter of millions in Rwanda, Somalia and the Congo? Where was God during the firebombing of civilian-filled cities like Dresden and Tokyo? Where was God during the Armenian genocide? Where was God during the massacre of civilians in Algiers, Indonesia, Blieburg, Hama, Taiwan, Seoul, Fallujah? Where was God on September 11? Where was God during the reign of Pol Pot, of Stalin, of Nixon?
Where was God when one-third of the East Timorese population was slaughtered?
Elsewhere.
By the hand of their fellow humans, during times of ‘war’, more than 200 million people were killed between 1900 and 2000.
As shocking as it may be to realise, it is none the less true that the majority of young people in the world today know little about the Holocaust and how this monstrous stain on humanity came to be a reality.
Why?
Because the Holocaust was not an anomaly of the 20th century and the mass killings of humans hasn’t stopped since.
There’s too much money in it. There were millionaires made during the Holocaust, just as there were hundreds of new millionaires made during World War I and thousands made during the rest of World War II.
Just as there are millionaires growing ever richer today from the ongoing slaughter in the Congo, in Darfur, in Iraq.
If the mass killing of other humans was a global industry, then it stands as the most successful and most profitable of the 20th century.
We will never forget.
But what have we learned?
Maybe we should just learn that invisible friends stay that way.
You’re a realist are you Daniel?
That is what historians describe as, in a very technical term, a “chickenshit cop-out”.
In an historical event in which bad things happen, it is always specific people and groups who are not nice. In the Nazi holocaust, the topic of the post, there were certain people who were to blame, and other people who were not. Explaining the actions of the guilty away to some ‘human nature’ to which we all have to ‘face up’ is a pathetic and insulting response.
Indeed, Liam.
Often individuals made the crucial and only difference when it mattered most.
Indeed Liam. Daniel’s POV would have made an interesting defense for Eichman “What did you expect? I’m only human.”
Darryl Mason and Link. Thanks for your intelligent comments.
And for the others who think the Wicked Wabbit makes humans do what they do, keep dreaming. One day reality may dawn!
WTF?
Believers and nonbelievers alike wonder where God is when the shit hits it. The very worst happens?
Try to reinvent the wheel?
Job never really figured it out, either.
That’s a strange reason I still read that book.
The question : ‘Where Was/Is God?’ has been asked often, the Pope is just the latest to do so.
But what about ‘There Is God’. Can anyone recall any events where you might be inclined to believe that the Hand Of God intervened to save thousands of lives?
The following question has nothing to do with Holocaust deniers, but is there a solid explanation why so many autobiographies/biographies of the WWII leaders, like Churchill. Roosevelt, and the acclaimed histories of that era, like Wilmont’s ‘The Struggle For Europe’ do not mention the six million dead? Were these writers, leaders, embarrassed by the events? Was the true extent of the Holocaust not known in the late 1940s and early 1950s?
Having taken only a serious research-orientated interest in World War II in the last few years, I’m stunned at how many books from the late 1940s and 1950s fail to make mention of the overall Holocaust, though they do discuss the massive death tolls from numerous German camps.
I saw the ‘World At War’ series as a kid in the late ’70s, and that series devoted most of an hour long episode to the Holocaust. So the information was all there in the 1970s. But why not in the 1950s?
Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
So, Darryl. You are American? I think only we saw that in the seventies.
Answer to why it takes awhile to address certain things.
Some things knock your fucking guts out. The vets there were like that. And survivors.
But Jebus, Mary and all others help us when survivors decide it is the right time to tell.
Sweeties
The Holocaust, like the Gulags and Mao’s millions slaughtered in his cultural revolution were all the apotheosis of anti-liberal Leftist romances.
Lest We Forget.
I hope this helps.
Hitler was a leftist! Oh no, why didn’t somebody tell me! I now must embrace RWDB-ism as the only alternatives are to be a mass murderer or a raving rightist.
Kate
If you do not think that both Bolshevism and National Socialism have the same roots in 19th century German athiest rationalist collectivism and socialism you are bloody clueless.
I hope this helps.
Nuts.
Seconded, Kim.
Nothing like the Holocaust to bring out the patronising 3dgy wankers. What makes anyone come to a thread like this and trumpet their political views and blame others for the deaths of millions?