Holocaust

[VeraMaria]

We are studying it in history. We are reading a book called "Night" by Elie Wiesel, and we watched documentaries.

I just can't believe people would do something like that. People. How could God allow all thos einnocent men, women, children to be tortured like that, to die.

In the book NIGHT, the author says that a few moments were enough to shatter his faith forever. In class we had a discussion, and most people, i could tell after a while, were thinking that either God doesn't exist, or that he exists and just doesn't care.

This depresses me. I'm sorry for yet another rambling post, but I'm just struggling with the question "why?"

[Richard]

Vera, I'm with you all the way.

Nothing grieves me more than the inhuman acts that man is capable of committing to his own kind.

I read a book set in wartime France called "Charlotte Grey". The persecution of the Jewish people (particularly children) made me cry.

[Gunga_ann]

I read that book, Night it is so... scary. So sad. :mellow:

[VeraMaria]

i know.

[VeraMaria]

sad can't describe it. i just feel a horror. it's indiscribable.

when watching a documentary, with the pictures of auschwitz, i just felt something really really dark was suffocating me.

[Richard]

Such feelings (although horrifying) are surely a sign that you're a natural, caring and sensitive human being.

Feeling nothing would be infinitely more worrying. That's how the perpetrators were able to commit such abominable acts in the first place.

[M.SIGGA]

I threw up and teared up at the Holocaust Museum in Washington when I went last year. There is a room at the end of the tour filled with all the actual shoes that were left outside the gas chambers in Auschwitz - belonging to men, women, children, babies - I'm a man that was too much for me to handle.

The only way I find some peace was knowing that God never abandoned anyone, not in Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Maoist China, Saadam's Iraq, etc. God was there in the midst of it all working through many courageous people, he promised to never abandon us. It's also a realization that there is a great evil in this world that hates what is good and true.

Avoir Les Enfant , literally "GoodBye Little Children" is a movingly beautiful and tragic story of how the French resistance tried to hide French Jewish children in the Catholic schools. The plans is an ultimate fumble I had to read it in high school and watch the movie and that particular film really openned my eyes. Go check the movie out and you'll see the good, the innocent, and the evil.

God Bless.

[Jake Huether]

Hey Vera,

Try to look at it from another angle. What miracles ocurred during those times. How many Jewish people were brought closer to God because they had to put their faith in Him. Catholics helping Jews to survive. Enemies helping enemies within the Jewish community.

The question isn't why God would "do" or allow something such as this to happen.

The Holocaust only serves to prove what it is like WITHOUT God. Because it was the Nazis who totally rejected God.

The secular media and society in general likes to blame God for alot of things. But lets put blame where it is due, to Satan.

See how twisted our society is. The Holocaust didn't occur because of God, it happened due to a lack of God.

If Hitlar believed in God and followed God's commands, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened. It isn't the other way around.

People look and see how hurt the Jews were and wonder why God would allow that. But they forget to analyze WHY the Jews were being hurt. Why? Because a group of individuals denied God and rejected His Commands.

[Richard]

It's the poor kids that effects me the worst. In the book I read, they were loaded onto buses (separate from their parents) to go to the camps. They had to write signs round their necks with their name on, but some kids didn't know how to write their name or what their surname was. They were too young.

I read that bit, thought about my two kids and broke down. I'm choked up writing this now, but the world has to know what went on!

[Ellenita]

Vera, you should read Corrie Ten Boom's autobiography if you haven't already! Her family were Christians who hid Jewish people during the war; they were then caught by the Nazis and were sent to a concentration camp themselves; a number of her family didn't survive. Corrie talks about how it affected her belief in God and her faith - it is a very powerful account.

[Lil Red]

I threw up and teared up at the Holocaust Museum in Washington when I went last year. There is a room at the end of the tour filled with all the actual shoes that were left outside the gas chambers in Auschwitz - belonging to men, women, children, babies - I'm a man that was too much for me to handle.

I went there too, my senior year in high school. My English class had just finished reading Night and it made a powerful impact on me. If you ever get a chance in your lifetime, you MUST go to the Holocaust museum. It is very powerful.

Vera, God bless. I'm sorry I cannot write more right now.

[jmjtina]

I've read Night. It is a book beyond sad. It isn't that God allowed it to happen, but we allowed it to happen. It is a book that should compel us to speak up for what is right. It is a book that still speaks not only of the memories of the horrors of the Holocaust, but the horrors that go beyond the Holocaust. As I read that book, I saw abortion and enthuasia as the Holocaust of today. As Jake said, there were miracles. Look at St. Maximailian Kolbe! He died to save another who had a wife and children! I took that book and made it my own. My grandfather (abuelito) lost an arm and fought in WWII. Our battle is without guns/granades, but with rosaries and Mass. It is the ulitmate battle we cannot lose for our brothers and sisters who have no voice but ours who are too weak, too little, not "Healthy enough" born deformed, too old etc.

If sometimes our poor people have had to die of starvation, it is not because God didn't care for them, but because you and I didn't give, were not instruments of love in the hands of God, to give them that bread, to give them that clothing; because we did not recognize him, when once more Christ came in distressing disguise- in the hungry man, in the lonely man, in the homeless child, and seeking for shelter. God has identifed himself with the hungry, the sick, the naked, the homeless; hunger, not only for bread, but for love, for care, to be somebody to someone; nakedness, not of clothing only, but nakedness of that compassion that very few people give to the unknown; homellessness, not only just for a shelter made of stone, but that homelessness that comes from having no one to call your own. ~ Blessed Mother Teresa

[VeraMaria]

a whole chunk of Our Lord's suffering and Passion must have been suffered for the sins committed during that time in those camps

[Tom]

It's something that I find tremendously painful. I think partly because it's very close to home as so many of my family were killed in extermination camps, but also because it forces me to confront the horrors to which humanity can sink. I went to Yad Vashem (the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem) a couple of years ago and stuggled not to completely break down in tears. The most powerful part I found was the children's memorial. They have a single candle in the centre that is reflected throughout the room by mirrors, whilst a tape plays the names and ages of children who were killed by the Nazis.

I think though that rather than turning me away from God, it brings home to me how much I need to place my trust in Him.

[willguy]

I went to the Holocaust museum. That one of the saddest things I've ever had to go through, but it was like I knew I had to do it, that I couldn't escape it, and it wouldn't go away just because I wanted it to.

Jake makes some good points. Remember, we have a free will. Completely free. God can try, but in the end, we choose. In that instance, the world, for the most part, chose to turn away. As has been said, there was good that existed in and came out of the Holocaust (NOTE: I am NOT trying to justify what happened by the good that came out of it). In addition, when we view the Holocaust, we see that part of us that we want to hide. The part that hates. We see what hatred, bigotry, and apathy cause. And we learn. We learn that we cannot turn away, and we cannot say "someone else will take care of it."