I am asked from time to time to explain my pre-occupation with the history of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and specifically the horrific events that have become generally known as “the Holocaust.”
The Nazi period in Germany (indeed the entire Second World War) is important to me because the events of this terrible time force me to confront the challenge of the most difficult and painful questions of the human condition. Events from the rise of Nazism to the tragic suffering that continued to plague the human community in the shadow of the Second World War, have the power to pull back the veil on the human condition and force me to confront the stark reality of the human condition.
The Nazi story is not unique in its capacity to stir troubling questions. But, there are things that make it uniquely accessible as a challenge to contemporary, particularly western, students.
The events of the Holocaust are relatively contemporary. I was born only nine years after Hitler committed suicide. The events of the Holocaust took place in a “civilized” western environment. The cultural differences that separate me from the Germany of 1933-1945 are significant; but there are also significant similarities between the world I inhabit today and the world in which Nazism emerged in 1933. There is a vast and accessible literature that has grown up around the Holocaust, much of it brilliantly and thoughtfully written. Tremendous intellectual effort has been extended in an attempt to come to terms with the Holocaust.
But, I study the Holocaust, not primarily as an intellectual exercise. I cherish no hope that I will find satisfactory “answers” to the Holocaust. To think that “answers” or even understanding might be available in face of the Holocaust is to diminish a sequence of events whose meaning can never be captured by the human intellect. There are no ultimately satisfying answers to the questions raised by Nazism. To seek “answers” is to diminish the horror and the tragedy represented by the realities of a vicious intolerable totalitarian system.
The first lesson of Holocaust studies is that there are vast dimensions of human experience and history that lie far outside the human capacity to comprehend. Any genuine confrontation with the Holocaust must lead to deep humility and a profound awareness of the limitations of human intellect.
Study of the Holocaust is an exercise in honesty and self-awareness. I wrestle with the questions this history demands I face in the hope that I may come to live a more genuine and deeply authentic human life.
As sociologist Gerald E. Markle writes,
When we examine the Holocaust, we inevitably – perhaps painfully – examine ourselves.
I want to face the questions of the Holocaust because they remind me of the profound limitations of my capacity to make sense of life. I ask Holocaust questions always with the wisdom of Elie Wiesel in mind when he wrote,
…it isn’t easy to live always under a question mark. But who says that the essential question has an answer? The essence of man is to be a question, and the essence of the question is to be without answer. (Wiesel, Elie. The Town Beyond the Wall. Trans. Stephen Becker. NY: Schocken Books, 1982 [orig. pub. 1964], p. 176)
To live “without answer” is to have my heart broken open to the possibility of a deeper reality that includes but transcends my intellectual capacities. I seek to live in response to the prompting of this “deeper reality.”
In the most practical terms, I study the Holocaust in the hope that I may be moved to respond to human suffering in my day (like the current Syrian refugee crisis, or the person in my office whose life is racked with pain) in ways that are more compassionate and just.
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Tomorrow I hope to post some of the questions the Holocaust drives me to confront.
In A Spacious Place 
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September 24, 2015 at 11:01 am
Enid Y B ackhouse
My comments have become an essay on understanding the causative effects of the problems of the world from our own intellectual capacity to comprehend the social , cultural . economic and moral understanding of other cultures whose language uniquely reflects the attitudes of life into which they and we are born.!
Thanks for making me think ! ( I think!)
September 24, 2015 at 11:30 am
CHRISTINA WATKINS
Thanks. I have been very moved by stories of the Second World War this year too. I do believe we need community when we look closely into evil. Solzhenitsyn taught us that the line between good and evil runs right through the middle of the human heart. Russians witnessed the river running red during the Stalinist years. I am still reading Bonhoeffer and am thankful his story is written in tandem with the story of Hitler. We need Christ. People misused some of Bonhoeffer’s latter work. My fave professor of Theology at Emmanuel, David Demsen, taught us many things Bonhoeffer believed. ‘Your experience must always be held against the experience of Jesus Christ.’
Here is a question.
If the truth is that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine, was he those things all the way through his life or was he fully human during his life and fully divine after the resurrection ?’
From Christina Watkins
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September 27, 2015 at 7:53 am
jaqueline
“When we examine the Holocaust, we inevitably – perhaps painfully – examine ourselves.”
As I watch what is happening politically and economically in the USA today I have to question whether studying the Holocaust has helped Americans examine themselves. That nation has produced so much about the Holocaust through books and movies and memorials , yet now it finds itself in the a very similar danger as Germany with it’s radical right, it’s xenophobia ( this time for the other semite brother), it’s political and economic polarisation.
Now, it seems to me that either studying the Holocaust does no- one any good, or it blinds people to an aspect of the German story that might actually help prevent it from repeating: for instance most of your posts begin the story of the Holocaust at 1933 instead of the 1920s and the effect of the Treaty of Versailles which lead to Germany’s desperation for a “saviour”.
We have a lot of literature from the “Victims” we have a lot of literature from the “Victors”, we have tons of info about the Nazis but we have very little from inside the German story, from the ordinary Germans and I suspect it is that story, the neglect of it, the loss of it, the burying of it which has left us vulnerable to the same powers of false light and darkness the Germans faced.
I once said out loud that Harper is Hitler marketed to Canadians, and someone said , but he is not planning to kill millions of people; but how is destroying the world through climate change not going to be killing millions of non white vulnerable people? How is refusing refuge to those fleeing war not contributing to killing millions?
But it’s not the same I hear it said….
It might be a timely reminder that in 1939 the world held a conference in Evian in which it discussed the fate of Jewish refugees and decided they were Germany’s problem. The Holocaust was not the first Plan of action, emigration was, heck Eichmann was even consulting with Palestinian Jews so as to enable emigration to Palestine…and when the world closed it’s doors……well, we all know what solution Germany came up with .
Harper might not demonstrate the extremity of Hitler…I mean he just quietly trashes history and science libraries in the dumpster instead of burning books in the square….he just quietly closes down science research stations and muzzles scientific dissent; he quietly eliminates funding for the arts instead of holding a shaming exhibition; but as a friend pointed out recently neither does Harper demonstrate the extremity of the good Hitler did for Germany. But the fact that we cannot see that Harper and the GOP are the natural heirs of right wing fundamentalism which last rose to power with the Nazis means we have missed something essential about the story of Germany which all our studying of the Holocaust has made us blind to.
What an ironic twist that today’s right wing extremists are so pro- Israel….I sometimes imagine the demons that influence today’s power brokers whisper amongst themselves: “as long as we don’t go after the Jews, no one will guess who we really are”.
October 5, 2015 at 1:15 pm
Robert
“…but as a friend pointed out recently neither does Harper demonstrate the extremity of the good Hitler did for Germany.”
And what good was that Jaqueline?
You might wish to research the spiritual roots of Nazism, among other things. They were profoundly evil in a spiritual sense; satanic.
The Devil does not discriminate; he works through all races and peoples.
I’m afraid Mr. Harper is not quite in the same league, however much some folks may dislike him!
But this is a religious blog, not a political one I believe.