Why did God allow six million Jews to die in the Holocaust? Before I could even think about believing in Jesus, I need an answer to this question.

This is an agonizing question that has been asked countless times by both Jews and Christians, but in many ways, it is more a question about man’s sin against man than about God’s silence during that sin. In other words, the Holocaust is something people did to other people. Why didn’t God intervene? Some Orthodox rabbis would say it was because we, the Jewish people, had sinned against the Almighty and were therefore under his disfavor.

The Holocaust, then, was a massive, overwhelming example of divine discipline, devastating for the moment but leading to health and healing in the end. To the extent that there is truth to this view, we must then ask what sins we had committed to merit such a fate (or to rob us of divine protection). Other Jewish leaders strongly disagree with this view, claiming that even godless Jews who died in the Holocaust were martyrs in some sense of the word, innocent victims of murderous injustice solely because they were Jews.

Which view is correct from a biblical perspective? That is something we will consider, but let me suggest something you may never have entertained: The ultimate image of an innocent Jew suffering atrocities at the hands of godless murderers is not so much the image of a Jew dying in the Holocaust as it is the image of our Messiah, the best-known Jew of all time, beaten, flogged, humiliated, and nailed to a cross. He is a Messiah with whom we can identify—and who can identify with us.

Over the last thirty years, an almost endless stream of literature has been published delving into every imaginable aspect of the Holocaust, including detailed, meticulously documented studies that leave no stone unturned. Still, it is one thing to analyze the natural side of the Holocaust, tracing the political, economic, sociological, psychological, and ethnic factors that contributed to this time of unparalleled suffering. It is another thing to analyze the spiritual (and unseen) side, attempting to understand what God was or was not doing, what Satan was or was not doing, and what the religious dimensions of the Holocaust really were. Closely related to all this is the most fundamental of all questions: Why?

Do we even have a right to ask such questions? Limited as we are, can we really gain true insight into such deep, mysterious matters? Don’t they belong to the realm of hidden things (see Deut. 29:29) that lie beyond the grasp of mortal, finite humans and are known only to God?

Perhaps there are dimensions of the Holocaust that will remain a mystery, and perhaps the motivation behind some of our questions is a wrong motivation. But it is impossible to think that people of faith—both Jews and Christians—would simply put their heads in the sand and not seek spiritual answers, no matter how painful the process may be. In fact, it can easily be argued that it is imperative that we ask some questions, either to learn whatever lessons must be learned from the Holocaust or to provide some assurance of the goodness of God in a time of such spiritual darkness. ²²⁷

So much has been written and said. There have been countless books and articles devoted to the questions, Why did this happen? and Where was God? Is it possible to gain clarity in the midst of so many competing voices and conflicting ideas?

In order to make any headway, we need to step back and get as broad a perspective as possible. To help us do this, let me give you an overview of some of the more important religious Jewish responses to the Holocaust. Then I’ll offer some biblical reflections on these responses. Finally, I’ll present something that could radically affect your outlook concerning the Messiah.

The noted Jewish historian Steven Katz provided a useful summary reflecting major Jewish reflections on the Holocaust current as of 1975. ²²⁸ He enumerated them as follows:

(1) The Holocaust is like all other tragedies and merely raises again the question of theodicy and “the problem of evil,” but it does not significantly alter the problem or contribute anything new to it.

(2) The classical Jewish theological doctrine of mi–penei hataʾeinu, (“because of our sins we were punished”) which was evolved in the face of earlier national calamities can also be applied to the Holocaust. According to this account, Israel was sinful and Auschwitz is her just retribution.

(3) The Holocaust is the ultimate in vicarious atonement. Israel is the “suffering servant” of Isaiah (ch. 53ff.)—she suffers and atones for the sins of others. Some die so that others might be cleansed and live.

(4) The Holocaust is a modern Akedah (sacrifice of Isaac)—it is a test of our faith.

(5) The Holocaust is an instance of the temporary “Eclipse of God”—there are times when God is inexplicably absent from history or unaccountably chooses to turn His face away.

(6) The Holocaust is proof that “God is dead”—if there were a God He would surely have prevented Auschwitz; if He did not then He does not exist.

(7) The Holocaust is the maximization of human evil, the price mankind has to pay for human freedom. The Nazis were men, not gods; Auschwitz reflects ignominiously on man; it does not touch God’s existence or perfection.

(8) The Holocaust is revelation: it issues a call for Jewish affirmation. From Auschwitz comes the command: Jews survive!

(9) The Holocaust is an inscrutable mystery; like all of God’s ways it transcends human understanding and demands faith and silence. ²²⁹

Let me encourage you to reread this brief summary and reflect on each of the responses. Do you find yourself in agreement with any of them? Do you find any of the views abhorrent? Perhaps you have a totally different view of your own.

Let’s sharpen our focus and look at some related perspectives in a little more detail. In a compendium of Orthodox Jewish reflections on the Holocaust prepared by rabbis and students in Israeli yeshivas, Yosef Roth discussed five principal responses, paraphrased below, some of which overlap with the positions presented by Steven Katz: ²³⁰

1. Hester panim (Hebrew for “hiding of the face”; see 5 and 7 in Katz’s list). According to this view, in order for God to allow real freedom of choice, he restrains himself from intervening in human affairs. Thus, to a point, he will allow evil to go on unchecked, even if it results in tragedy and loss of life. Otherwise, there would be no true freedom of choice and no real consequences for evil or good behavior.
2. Holocaust and redemption. Roth states, “According to this approach, the lack of proportion between the sin and its punishment is explained by the end of the Exile and the establishment of the State of Israel.” ²³¹ Therefore, the Holocaust is not seen as a punishment “but rather as a Divine ‘treatment,’ for lack of an alternative, intended to extricate the Jewish people from the Exile.” ²³²
3. The birth pangs of the Messiah. This view, too, does not see the Holocaust as a punishment. Rather, it is part of the final complex of events dubbed “the birth pangs of the Messiah” by the Talmudic rabbis, a period marked by unprecedented suffering and upheaval. (Cf. Matthew 24:4–13, where Yeshua also speaks of a period of time marked by calamity and upheaval called [v. 8] “the beginning of birth pains.”)
4. Fate and mission. This view, articulated by Dr. Yonah Ben-Sasson, sees the explanation to the Holocaust “not in the context of sin and punishment, but as a necessary disruption of Jewish existence and as an imperative for the Jewish mission.” ²³³ Somehow, then, the sufferings of the Holocaust were a necessary ingredient in the development and destiny of the Jewish people.
5. Because of our sins (see 2 in Katz’s list). There are different theories as to what sins were being punished, including failure to observe the Torah and Jewish traditions (according to this view, the chief culprits here would be the Reform and secular Jews who, at that time, were especially prevalent in Germany and other parts of Eastern Europe); seeking to establish the State of Israel before the Messiah’s coming and thereby trying to hasten the end by human (and even atheistic) means (this remains the conviction of anti-Zionist Jews, including the Satmar Hasidim, who blame the Holocaust on Jewish Zionists—including religious Jewish Zionists); the exact opposite view, namely, failing to heed the warnings of Zionist Jews who urged their people to come to the land before destruction broke out in Europe (this is the view of religious Zionists, who blame the anti-Zionist Jews—especially the religious—for the Holocaust). ²³⁴

According to two contemporary Jewish leaders, Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and Rabbi Z. Y. Kook, a prominent Israeli thinker, the Holocaust is to be explained “as a healing process, as divine ‘surgery’ and ‘treatment’ performed on the body of the nation in preparation for its salvation.” ²³⁵ As Rabbi Schneerson stated, “With all the horrifying pain of this tragedy, it is clear that ‘no evil comes from Heaven,’ and that within the very evil and suffering of the afflictions, a sublime spiritual good is embodied… .

The Holy One, Blessed be He, as that professor-surgeon, did everything He did for good.” ²³⁶ Or in the words of Rabbi Kook, the Holocaust was a “deep and hidden internal Divine treatment of the cleansing of impurity.” ²³⁷ For the former, this painful divine process was primarily related to the spiritual salvation of those who died in the concentration camps, while for the latter, it related primarily to Israel’s reestablishment as a nation. For both, however, there was a redemptive side to the sufferings of the Holocaust.

Of course, the problem with any of these answers—and I remind you that most of them come from traditional Jewish circles—is that it is easy to speak in the abstract about “divine purposes” or “redemptive” acts, but it is difficult to look in the faces of millions of victims and continue to speak in such terms. Naturally, these Jewish authors whom I have been quoting have looked into those faces.

Some of them need only look in the mirror to see the face of someone permanently scarred by the Holocaust! Yet it is fair to ask, What would a religious Jewish response to the Holocaust sound like at the beginning of the Holocaust—when no one could have possibly anticipated the overall loss of lives—as opposed to a religious Jewish response after the Holocaust—when the staggering numbers became known?

One way to gain insight into this is to examine Orthodox Jewish reactions to Nazism as early as 1935, and thus, strictly speaking, before the Holocaust really began. It was in that year that the infamous Nuremberg Laws were instituted, resulting in harshly prejudicial treatment of the Jews, both socially and economically. As the Jewish press of the day demonstrates, there were mixed responses to these laws, with the Orthodox newspapers taking a surprising view: ²³⁸

How did the Orthodox press react to the great test of German Jewry with the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935? “We do not want to admit that God has spoken, that the events … contain a call and appeal from God. We were like someone inebriated, we filled ourselves to bursting with the philosophy of the day then in vogue… . In the midst of this daze, the harsh language of the present has struck us in our stupor,” wrote Rabbi Joseph Carleback in Die Laubhütte. “World history is the blast of the ram’s horn of heaven, the voice of God, not the senseless voice of chance.” ²³⁹

The Nazi restrictions were seen as a divine wake-up call and a judgment for assimilation, intermarriage, and worldliness, among other things. ²⁴⁰ As expressed in The Israelit:

We ourselves are to blame that we have any problems. When the ghetto gates fell [meaning when Jews could readily become part of the society at large] … it was our duty to demonstrate that Jews remain aware of their special character even when they are granted the opportunity to pursue the development of their external circumstances of life unimpeded—that they do not abandon the way of life based on the teachings and precepts of the Torah. Jews could have shown the entire world that it is certainly possible to acquire the treasures of culture such as art and science without abandoning the Jewish way of life. We have missed that opportunity of attaining a synthesis between Judaism and its eternal forms on the one hand, and the cultural assets of the surrounding world on the other. ²⁴¹

Thus, there was a perception among many Orthodox Jews that the first signs of Nazi persecution were, at least in part, acts of divine judgment, and such a perception had clear biblical foundations. What God-fearing Jew witnessing the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians would fail to recognize the Lord’s hand of chastisement on a sinning nation, especially if that Jew was familiar with the writings of Moses and the prophets (see above, 1.10)? Persistent and willful violation of God’s covenant would result in divine judgment. The Scriptures are unmistakably clear on this point. ²⁴²

In this vein, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin draws attention—with disapproval—to the writings of Rabbi Hayyim Elazar Shapira, an influential Slovakian Hasidic rebbe, dating to 1933 and the early days of Nazi power:

When [the Nazis] imposed the boycott in Germany against Jewish business, I thought this was certainly not a reason to ordain a fast. For nearly all [of the Jews] in Germany profane the Sabbath publicly by [keeping] their stores [open]. Now they are being paid back measure for measure [i.e., the closing down of their stores]. ²⁴³

Similarly—and on more of a gut level—Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel describes the religious reaction of many Jews upon first entering a concentration camp: “If I am here, it is because God is punishing me; I have sinned, and I am expiating my sins. I have deserved this punishment that I am suffering.” ²⁴⁴ Such feelings are to be expected, since, if you are a religious person, you believe that nothing of significance happens to you simply by chance, and, because it is clear that something is terribly wrong right now, you conclude that you must have sinned. ²⁴⁵

So we must ask, Is it scriptural to view the Holocaust, at least to some extent, as an act of divine judgment? The answer, as difficult as it is for many to handle, is yes—at least to some extent. God’s Word—from the Torah through the Prophets through the Psalms and Wisdom Literature—is just too clear. As a nation, if we were in right standing with God, it is simply impossible to believe that such calamities could have overtaken us in such devastating fashion. Whether you believe that God was judging Jewish assimilation or departure from Rabbinic tradition or failure to return to the land or rejection of the prophets and the Messiah or human arrogance and self-will—whatever the specific causes of judgment were, there must be some recognition of judgment.

Now, please don’t misquote me as saying that the Holocaust occurred because Jews did not believe in Jesus. That is not what I am saying, nor is it what I believe. To the contrary, although I am convinced by the Word of God that it is a sin for any Jew (or Gentile) to reject Jesus, I don’t for a minute think that this particular sin took more than nineteen hundred years to judge.

In other words, if Jewish suffering in the Holocaust was because of rejecting the Messiah, why did it take so long for judgment to come? Rather, I would say that our historic and continued rejection of Moses, the prophets, and the Messiah, and our attachment to this world more than to God, coupled with our desire to be like the other nations, along with our sins of greed, lying, immorality, and whatever other things polluted our lives when we forsook God’s laws all contributed to taking us out of the place of divine favor and protection.

We must recognize that God was doing something during and through the Holocaust, since it is impossible to think he was completely uninvolved in an event of such great significance and magnitude, especially when you consider that his own covenant people, the Jews, were its chief victims. Therefore, I believe there was some degree of judgment or chastisement involved in this time of agony for our people.

To leave things here, however, would be unfair and incomplete. As articulated by Alexander Donat, who survived both the Warsaw Ghetto and the concentration camps,

What had we done to deserve this hurricane of evil, this avalanche of cruelty? Why had all the gates of Hell opened and spewed forth on us the furies of human vileness? What crimes had we committed for which this might have been calamitous punishment? Where, in what code of morals, human or divine, is there a crime so appalling that innocent women and children must expiate it with their lives in martyrdoms no Torquemada [the Grand Inquisitor] ever dreamed of? ²⁴⁶

Or to cite the well-known comments of Rabbi Irving Greenberg:

God comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable, whereas the devil comforts the comforted and afflicts the afflicted… .

Moreover, summon up the principle that no statement should be made that could not be made in the presence of the burning children. On this rock, the traditionalist argument [viz., that the Holocaust was a divine judgment] breaks. Tell the children in the pits they are burning for their sins. An honest man—better, a decent man—would spit at such a God rather than accept this rationale if it were true. If this justification is loyalty, then surely treason is the honourable choice. If this were the only choice, then surely God would prefer atheism. ²⁴⁷

Of course, I could see a biblical prophet taking issue with some of these statements, arguing that however fierce the judgment, it would be merited. After all, there were starving children and mutilated mothers when Jerusalem was sacked in 586 b.c.e., and that event was viewed as an act of divine wrath (just read Lamentations!). Still, one must reckon with the enormity of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust—clearly dwarfing anything in our past—and one must ask, Why at this time? Were the sins of the Jewish people any more ugly than they were in centuries past? Why such ferocious judgment now? ²⁴⁸

Frankly, although the Scriptures force me to see clear elements of judgment in the Holocaust, those same Scriptures allow me to see something else: This was not merely judgment. Rather, it was also a satanic attack on our people, an attempt to wipe us out just before the time of national regathering. Thus, as happened before in our history, because we were not in right standing with God as a people, we came under a season of judgment. (It is commonly known that most German Jews before the Holocaust were more German than Jewish, and almost no one would argue that European Jewry as a whole was spotless or especially righteous.)

But Satan exploited it by using wicked people to carry out his plans, plans which have always included the destruction of the Jewish people. After all, if he can destroy Israel, he can prove that God is not all-powerful, that his Word is not true, and that there is no reality to his promises. If he can stop the long-prophesied reestablishment of the Jewish people in their homeland, he can thwart one of God’s greatest and most important covenantal pacts.

Did the devil know it was the eve of Israel’s return to the land? I am quite sure he did! And just as Pharaoh was moved to kill all Israelite male babies at the time that Moses, their deliverer, was about to be born, and just as Herod was moved to kill all Jewish male babies in Bethlehem at the time that Yeshua, the Messiah, had been born there, so the devil tried to wipe out the Jewish people before the return.

We can see, then, that the Holocaust reflects a spiritual battle of cosmic proportions, and the Jews, by virtue of their calling as the chosen people, were stuck in the middle of it all. ²⁴⁹ Therefore, to a certain extent, the Holocaust was a hideous, diabolical event, made possible, however, by a lack of divine covering over us as a people.

What about the human side of this? We have addressed the issues of divine activity and satanic activity, but in the end, we are left with the stark reality of debased, demented, and utterly depraved human activity. How could it be that so many people could commit so many wicked acts? How could it be that highly cultured and civilized Germans could conceive and carry out such an evil plan? (So much for human advancement after thousands of years of progress.)

How could it be that such willing accomplices were found among the Poles and the Ukrainians and the Romanians and the Lithuanians? If people could sink so low, what hope is there for us as a race? If so many could participate in cold-blooded murder, could it be that such ugliness exists potentially in all of us? ²⁵⁰

The answer to all these questions is disturbing, but it is one that Christians actually hold to as one of their core beliefs: Human beings, essentially, are not good; we are fallen and corrupt; by nature we do what is evil and wrong. (See further above, 1.10, and vol. 2, 3.20.) That’s why Christians believe people need to be saved—meaning, fundamentally, saved from sin.

Doing wrong is in our blood. All of us, without God’s intervention, are capable of doing things we find repulsive, shocking, and reprehensible—and all too often, we do those very things! Unfortunately, we tend to go into denial, not recognizing the gravity of our sin, or else we fall prey to self-justification, explaining why our unclean thoughts and deeds are actually not that bad.

Nazism is just one extreme example of how far we can fall, and all the good deeds and kind acts in the world can never outweigh the sheer depravity of the Holocaust. The same can be said of the ruthless genocide carried out in Cambodia, or, on a more individual level, of the actions of a sexual predator such as Jeffrey Dahmer, who raped, tortured, killed, and then ate several dozen men. What good deeds can erase such sinfulness?

The problem, sadly enough, is that most religions—including Judaism—basically look to man himself (with God’s help) to turn back and repent, not fully reckoning with how debased human nature really is. ²⁵¹ And while Jews and Muslims are taught to ask for mercy and forgiveness in prayer, there are no sure grounds for atonement and no full recognition of the depth of human corruption. ²⁵²

It is one thing for the “average” person—who, supposedly, is not that bad—to improve in some areas and ask for forgiveness where he or she falls short, but how can a Nazi be forgiven? How can the murderer of babies be reformed? And, if similar manifestations of depravity lurk in all of us, how can any of us ever be truly righteous?

The Holocaust forces these questions on us and gives us, I believe, only one possible answer: God himself had to reach down into this deep pit of human evil to save us from our sins—including the sins of the Holocaust. Without him taking this initiative, we would be totally lost.

Lest my position strikes you as too Christian, let me point you back to the concept of Israel playing the role of Isaiah’s servant of the Lord, suffering for the sins of the nations and dying that others might live. According to this view, the afflictions of the Jewish people should be understood as vicarious and substitutionary so that the nations of the world could receive healing through the wounds of the Jewish people.

Taking this one step further, Rabbi Ignaz Maybaum, an influential author on the Holocaust, actually suggested that the Holocaust represented the crucifixion of the Jewish people. Let me quote Professor Steven Katz at length as he explains Maybaum’s interpretation (endnotes supplied in the following text are my own, for the purpose of clarification):

With a profound insight into the relative world-views of Judaism and Christianity, Maybaum argues that for Judaism the central motif is the Akedah (the sacrifice of Isaac, [Gen. 22]), whereas for Christianity the central motif is the enormously powerful image of the Crucifixion. ²⁵³ The Akedah is a sacrifice which never happened. Isaac can grow to maturity, marry, have children, die normally.

According to Maybaum there is no heroic tragedy in the Akedah, its message is: there can be progress without martyrdom and without death. Alternatively, the Crucifixion is a sacrifice that did happen. Jesus’ life is foreshortened, he cannot marry, have children, die normally. Here is the stuff of heroic tragedy, its message is: martyrdom is required that others may live, vicarious death is needed so that the world may go forward. “The cross contradicts the Akedah: Isaac is sacrificed.” As Maybaum understands it, the message of the Crucifixion is: “somebody had to die that others may live.”

With the Crucifixion as its model of Divine activity in history, the Christian world is unable to grasp the higher religious meaning of the Akedah. Tragic as this may be, for Judaism to speak to Christians it must speak in a language they understand—the language of the Cross. Thus the modern Jew collectively, as the single Jew of two millenia [sic] ago, must mount the Cross (undergo persecution, suffering and death) in order to arouse the conscience of the gentile world.

So powerful is the hold on western consciousness of the image of the Crucifixion that progress can be made only when framed in terms assimilable to this pattern. The third hurban (the Holocaust), ²⁵⁴ like the earlier two, is a divine event which is meant to bring about humanity’s advancement. It is framed in the shape of Auschwitz, an overwhelming reliving by the entire Jewish people of the Crucifixion of one Jew in order that it may be able to address the deepest sensitivities of modern Christian civilization: “In Auschwitz Jews suffered vicarious atonement for the sins of mankind.” Pushing this interpretation of Jewish history to the utmost, Maybaum writes: “The Golgotha of modern mankind is Auschwitz. The cross, the Roman gallows, was replaced by the gas chamber. The gentiles, it seems, must first be terrified by the blood of the sacrificed scapegoat to have the mercy of God revealed to them and become converted, become baptized gentiles, become Christians.” ²⁵⁵

Now, I want to submit to you that there is something to Rabbi Maybaum’s comparison of the Holocaust and the crucifixion, and I can easily see an important correlation between a crucified Jewish Messiah and an almost-exterminated Jewish people. In fact, even for Messianic Jewish author Arthur Katz, who strongly argues for the judgment aspect of the Holocaust, there is a distinct connection between the crucifixion of the Messiah, whom God judged for the sins of the world, and the attempted extermination of the Jews:

The crucifixion of Jesus the Messiah was as much the judgment of God on sin as the Holocaust of the Jews under the Nazis was the judgment of God upon Israel. Both devastations were judgments. Both were equally deserved because God’s judgments and God’s wrath are not arbitrary. Both events have cost God greatly. He was not some passive observer looking down on the excruciating sufferings of the Jewish people, nor those of His own Son. He was in the midst of that suffering and was Himself afflicted. God is not cruel so that He takes malicious delight. Rather, “In all their affliction He was afflicted” (Isa. 63:9). Can Judgment be God’s final provision to obdurate and unwilling men, when every other grace to obtain our attention has failed? If so, it is a grace and a mercy though it be a painful one. ²⁵⁶

How interesting it is that Katz, a Messianic Jew, and Maybaum, a Reform rabbi, both compare the death of Jesus with the death of European Jewry, although their overall interpretations of the Holocaust could hardly be more different. Still, you might be wondering, what has all this got to do with the issues we have been discussing? How does this address the problem of the sinful nature of man? What, if anything, are we to make of the notion that Israel played the role of the suffering servant?

Let me propose to you that the key here will not be found in a reinterpretation of our people’s suffering in the Holocaust but rather that our suffering in the Holocaust points us back to the Messiah’s suffering and death, calling us to reinterpret that event. In other words, it is not the Jewish people as a whole who fulfilled the image of Isaiah’s suffering servant, dying for the sins of others and suffering that they might be healed (see especially Isa. 52:13–53:12, and see vol. 2, 3.15, and vol. 3, 4.10–4.22), but rather it was one righteous Jew in particular—our Messiah—who fulfilled that image.

To make this point more clear, let me introduce you to another voice, the voice of a saintly Christian woman, a German woman, at that, and a passionate lover of Israel. It is the voice of Basilea Schlink (originally Dr. Klara Schlink), founder of the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary. These words were originally written to her own German people in 1958. ²⁵⁷ Listen carefully to her anguish and consternation, both as a Christian and a German. Perhaps you have never been exposed to this kind of expression of Gentile Christian repentance and grief:

How are the Jews to believe in Jesus? Have not we ourselves blindfolded them? They cannot see Jesus because of our conduct. They cannot believe in Him, because in our lives we have not presented to them the image of Jesus; rather we have shown them the image of mercilessness. “Your deeds in Germany talk so loud that I cannot hear your words,” a Jew of our times comments. Our words about Jesus must cut Jews to the heart, considering the cruelties we have perpetrated against them in the name of this Jesus from the time of the Crusades up to the present day. And not only that. How many acts of love have we neglected to do? Thus we share in the horrible guilt of our people in murdering six million Jews. This guilt still hovers over us like a cloud. (36–37)

For Basilea Schlink, her people could no longer go on with “life as normal”:

Can we Germans really continue to walk under the open sky of our fatherland, in daytime in the sunshine and at night beneath the stars, enjoying it all without feelings of shame? Must we not remember that not long ago, under that same sky, in the midst of our people, gigantic flames ascended from the burning bodies of millions of people day and night? Were not these flames like a cry of desperation and a raised finger of accusation? (38)

We Germans were Satan’s henchmen. In the midst of our people this hell was created. After reading the reports of those who survived it, we can only confess that never before in the whole span of history has a civilized nation been guilty of a crime such as has been committed here in Germany, a Christian country, a land of culture… . Within a few years, millions of people were murdered, gassed, burnt alive or tortured to death in every conceivable way. Who can still eat his fill at a nicely laid table without visualizing the emaciated forms of the thousands of victims in the extermination camps? (39–40)

We are personally to blame. We all have to admit that if we, the entire Christian community, had stood up as one man and if, after the burning of the synagogues [on Krystallnacht], we had gone out on the streets and voiced our disapproval, rung the church bells, and somehow boycotted the actions of the S.S., the Devil’s vassals would probably not have been at such liberty to pursue their evil schemes. But we lacked the ardor of love—love that is never passive, love that cannot bear it when its fellowmen are in misery, particularly when they are subjected to such appalling treatment and tortured to death. Indeed, if we had loved God, we would not have endured seeing those houses of God set ablaze; and holy, divine wrath would have filled our souls… . Oh, that we as Germans and as Christians would stand aghast and cry out ever anew, “What have we done!” At every further evidence of our guilt may we repeat the cry. (42–43)

Oh, how can we now look upon German children playing happily and not think of the many, many thousands of children who screamed in anguish and terror when they were burnt alive or when they, either with or without their parents, choked to death in the gas chambers! May we not close our eyes but face up to what we have done, for these are the plain facts, and innocent blood cries for retribution: “If any one slays with the sword, with the sword must he be slain” (Revelation 13:10). Thus says Holy Scripture. (44)

These are convicting words! These are solemn indictments! These are words that can draw only a painful, deliberate sigh of affirmation from Jewish readers of every background—especially those who lost loved ones in the Holocaust—and draw a sorrowful admission of “It is so!” from every Christian reader. Surely, no one could possibly call Basilea Schlink insensitive or ignorant. She has taken the full weight of Germany’s sin—including the sins of every professing Christian in the land—and she has confessed that sin, repented of that sin, and given her life to making restitution for that sin.

But there is something else you must see: In the suffering Jewish people, Schlink recognized a reflection of her Savior, Jesus the Messiah. Their rejection, anguish, and hardship mirrored the experience of the Son of God. Listen again to the one affectionately known to millions around the world as “Mother Basilea”:

Woe betide us when we are called to account! Then it may turn out that Jesus finds His likeness in Israel and not in us. Two-and-a-half thousand years of immeasurable suffering have made her poor and wretched, so that she does indeed resemble the image of Jesus, “despised and rejected by men” [see Isa. 53:3]. (29–30)

Israel, unintentionally and unwittingly, has become a spectacle before heaven and mankind, because she bears the features of the Servant of God [from Isaiah 53]. The sight of her should continually remind Christians of Jesus, despised, destitute, covered with bruises, afflicted, hated, persecuted, tormented, and hounded to death. Even if these marks borne by the people of God also betoken the chastening hand of God stretched out in judgment upon sinners, the fact remains that by these very dealings God proclaims Himself to be the Holy One of Israel.

We as Christians are to hold in high esteem this people who bears such a close resemblance to Jesus. The sight of Jews as an oppressed and afflicted people crossing the face of the earth, despised and rejected, should make us think of those words of Jesus about the destitute and the needy: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). Who matches so accurately our Lord’s description “the least of these my brethren” as His people Israel? Who has suffered so much contempt from all nations down through the ages? Who has been so rejected? From whom did men turn away their faces? Who has been persecuted and tormented with such burning hatred? Who has been wounded and tortured to death so often as this His people? Here, indeed, are the brethren of our Lord Jesus.

It may well be that He often feels closer to His people Israel than to those proud Christians who believe in Him and yet refuse to acknowledge their guilt towards the Jews, their heartlessness in passing by their brother in his desperate need. (33–34)

My Jewish friend, does this present a picture to you that you have never seen before?

Consider the image of a despised German Jew, stripped naked by the Nazis and then mocked, tormented, and beaten, before being taken away to die a very public, humiliating death. In a moment, he is shot in the back of the head and burned to ashes in a massive, flaming pyre. Then consider the image of Jesus our Messiah, flogged and beaten beyond recognition, ridiculed and mocked by the Roman soldiers as they push a crown of thorns deep into his scalp, then stripped of his clothes, nailed to a cross, and raised up to die a slow, agonizing, and very public, humiliating death, hanging naked alongside two common criminals. ²⁵⁸ And then hear him express the pain of his people through the ages, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” We have much in common! ²⁵⁹

How strange it is that Jewish philosophers and religious thinkers could speculate that the Holocaust represented an act of vicarious, substitutionary suffering for our people, the experience of the servant of the Lord depicted in Isaiah 52:13–53:12, and yet these same philosophers and religious thinkers cannot conceive of our Messiah in such terms, nor can they find a point of identification between Yeshua and the Jewish people. Yet the identification is there! He is like us. He knows our pain. He can identify with our sufferings. He understands intimately what it means to be left alone in this world, abandoned and handed over to die a terrible death at the hands of wicked people. This was the fate of a crucified man: “Punished with limbs outstretched … they are fastened and nailed to the stake in the most bitter torment, evil food for birds of prey and grim picking for dogs.” ²⁶⁰ How this resembles the horrors of the Holocaust!

In a deeply moving account, Elie Wiesel described the hanging of a young Jewish boy—a “sad-eyed angel”—who died an agonizingly slow death on the gallows in front of the whole concentration camp. As Wiesel and others watched in helpless horror, the question was asked, “Where is God now?” From within, Wiesel heard the answer: “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows.” ²⁶¹ Yet Wiesel and other Jewish intellectuals who could see the reflection (or reality) of God in the face of that youth hanging on the gallows, can find no reflection (or reality) of God in the face of Yeshua hanging on the cross. Isn’t it infinitely more appropriate to look at that bloody instrument of death and say, “There is God. He is hanging there on that tree, and he is dying for me”?

Now that is a powerful image, and one that brings hope as well, for while Wiesel’s unforgettable picture of that struggling, expiring boy—dying as a Jew and hence, in a sense, as God’s Son—evokes sympathy and pain, it brings no hope; the image of the agonizing, dying Messiah—dying as a Jew too and as God’s Son in a special sense—brings life. ²⁶² Please take time to think this through. My whole point is that Yeshua is the Messiah we need.

Would we prefer a lofty and powerful Messianic king who always triumphed in battle and exercised complete authority, never feeling the pangs of humiliation, never knowing what it was like to be under someone else’s control, never knowing what it was like to be stripped, beaten, and led away to die? Would we prefer a Savior who could not possibly relate to the sting of public rejection and ridicule, who was never challenged, never misunderstood, never slandered, never repaid with evil for doing good? Is that the kind of Messiah we want? Or do we want a Messiah who suffers and then reigns, who dies and then lives again, who gives himself for us long before we give ourselves for him? The choice should be obvious.

More than nineteen hundred years ago, Jewish followers of Jesus were reminded of how far the Messiah came in order to reach out and save the Jewish people and the world:

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity… . For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Hebrews 2:14, 16–18

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Hebrews 4:14–16

The horrors of the Holocaust should draw us to the side of the suffering Servant rather than drive us away from him. He can identify with us in our pain. And out of death (the Holocaust and the cross) came resurrection—the State of Israel and the raising up of the Messiah. There are some similarities here!

Yet we must recognize that there are some profound differences as well in these two experiences of suffering—the suffering of the Jewish people and the suffering of Yeshua—since by recognizing these differences, the work of our Messiah becomes all the more important, essential, and even appealing to us.

During the Holocaust, as Jews we suffered unwillingly. If we could have stopped the atrocities, we would have. But Jesus suffered willingly, telling his disciples not to fight on his behalf, since he came to die. He came to give his life as a ransom for us all:

Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way? … For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Matthew 26:53–54; Mark 10:45

This is the nature of the perfect Shepherd, the character of the ideal Messiah: Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). Yes, of him it is written:

He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

1 Peter 2:22–24

That is vicarious suffering!

In addition to this, we have noted that to some extent our suffering in the Holocaust was because of our sins as well as because of the sins of others. No doubt, we were victims who were viciously sinned against and abused, but we were not totally guiltless as a people—as recognized by some of the Jewish thinkers quoted above and as clearly taught in our Torah—and thus we suffered, to some degree, for our sins. Jesus, however, committed no sin, and he suffered entirely because of the sins of others as well as for the sake of the sins of others. People killed him, but he was dying for their sins. Again I say to you: Yeshua is our ideal Messiah, a righteous King forever imprinted with the marks of suffering.

What then of the view of many Jewish commentators and theologians who, through the centuries, have suggested that the suffering of our people at the hands of the nations was vicarious, as described most clearly in Isaiah 53 (v. 5 “he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed”) and as articulated in the Talmudic formula “the death of the righteous atones” (see vol. 2, 3.15)? And what of the specific application of this theory to the Holocaust? Frankly, it doesn’t work.

Our suffering in the Holocaust (and really, in history) has not brought healing to the nations that afflicted us. (Would anyone think that Germany has been healed through the Holocaust?) ²⁶³ Rather, our sufferings have brought judgment on the nations that so cruelly afflicted us. As they have treated us, so God has treated them in return. This was a recurring theme in the prophets: “Woe to you, O destroyer, you who have not been destroyed! Woe to you, O traitor, you who have not been betrayed! When you stop destroying, you will be destroyed; when you stop betraying, you will be betrayed” (Isa. 33:1). ²⁶⁴

Yet the sufferings of Jesus have brought healing to countless millions of people, both Jews and Gentiles alike, who have found mercy, forgiveness, deliverance, redemption, and restoration through his wounds. His shed blood has become a fountain of purification and cleansing to all who will recognize his love. Can you grasp the weight of this? Is a new picture beginning to emerge?

You see, it is one thing to suggest with Ignaz Maybaum that Jewish suffering in the Holocaust was a Jewish, national “crucifixion.” It is another thing to argue that it actually saved anyone. In reality, it did not improve human nature (just consider how many national atrocities have taken place since the Holocaust in Cambodia, in Russia, in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda), nor did it eradicate anti-Semitism (this virus is growing again in much of Europe—especially the former Soviet Union—and continues to intensify in the Islamic world), nor did it result in a cessation of wars and racial conflicts.

How then was it a redemptive “crucifixion”? It seems that it was not redemptive at all.

I recognize, of course, that in some Christian circles—including Roman Catholicism—the post-Holocaust era has been marked by a partial recognition and repudiation of anti-Semitism. ²⁶⁵ However, the overall tide of Jew hatred continues to rise worldwide, especially in Islamic lands. More importantly, there is no power in the Holocaust itself to change or redeem people. Those who survived it are, for the most part, not better because of it, and those nations that participated in it are no more humane than they were before. In fact, some of those nations have become world leaders in perpetrating historical revisionism, i.e., seeking to deny that the Holocaust even occurred. ²⁶⁶ In contrast with this, those who look to the Messiah’s self-sacrifice on the cross encounter the love of God firsthand and meet with mercy and grace.

We must also admit that the Holocaust really provides no antidote for the reality of human evil. Yeshua’s death on the cross, however, is the ultimate antidote: God himself, in the person of his servant the Messiah, exacted the full penalty for human sin and displayed the depth of that sin through the cross. After all, the closest the human race came to a face-to-face encounter with God was in the person of the Messiah, and we, fallen race that we are, killed him.

The cross says that people are capable of the basest forms of evil, that human beings cannot save themselves, and that only a drastic, radical form of atonement—the death of the Son of God—can possibly pay for our sins. Therefore, it is with complete justification that we call Jesus the Savior of the world. As the Letter to the Hebrews stated almost two thousand years ago, “He is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them” (Heb. 7:25).

Therefore, the cross means sacrifice, the cross means atonement, the cross means there is hope for the worst of sinners. And as I emphasized earlier (above, 2.6), the cross is not an image of triumphalistic pride or a symbol of a conquering Crusader. Rather, it is a symbol of humiliation and pain, of suffering and death, of being forsaken by God and man. That is the image for which our Messiah is known, and it is an image that should draw—not repel—our Jewish people, especially in light of the Holocaust.

Now, I fully recognize that there are dozens of fundamental questions about the Holocaust that I have not even raised, but my intent has not been to attempt to address every major question, nor do I claim to have full and complete explanations for them all. Instead, I want to encourage you to see Jesus and his relationship to the Holocaust—really, his relationship to our suffering through the centuries—in a whole new light. He is one of us. And when you see a photograph of a Jewish child being led naked to the crematorium, I want you to look again: Jesus is standing there too.

I pray that you hear his call: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30).

Isn’t it time for you to put your heavy burden down—your burden of sin, of guilt, of sorrow, of pain, of confusion, of sadness, of alienation, of bitterness, of anger, of doubt, of unbelief, of whatever it is that weighs you down or separates you from God—and take the Messiah’s burden instead? He has already carried the heavy part for you, all the way to the cross. Your burden can be light.

²²⁷ In this regard, Arthur Katz, a Messianic Jew whose whole life has been shaped by the Holocaust, rightly observes, “When something of this proportion takes place in history, the interpretation of it, or the lack of an interpretation, is enormously consequential. The most tragic thing would be that the event itself should not be properly understood as God intended.” See The Holocaust: Where Was God? (Pensacola, Fla.: Mt. Zion Publications, 1998), 1, his emphasis.

²²⁸ An excellent, systematic, and judicious summary of Jewish religious responses to the Holocaust is provided by Barry Leventhal, “Theological Perspectives on the Holocaust,” Mishkan 6, no. 7 (1987): 10–48. For a representative sampling of essays, cf., e.g., Steven L. Jacobs, ed., Contemporary Jewish Religious Reponses to the Shoa, Studies in the Shoa (Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1993); Bernhard H. Rosenberg and Fred Heuman, eds., Theological and Halakhic Reflections on the Holocaust (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1992); and see also the works cited in the following discussion, as well as those listed in Brown, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood, 232–33 (under the rubric of books on “Jewish piety during the Holocaust”).

²²⁹ Steven T. Katz, “Jewish Faith after the Holocaust: Four Approaches,” in Encyclopedia Judaica Year Book 1975/6, 93, cited in Leventhal, “Theological Perspectives,” 18.

²³⁰ See Yosef Roth, “The Jewish Fate and the Holocaust,” in I Will Be Sanctified, ed. Rabbi Yehezkel Fogel, trans. Edward Levin (Northvale, N.J.: Aronson, 1998), 49–60.

²³¹ Ibid., 51.

²³² Ibid., 54.

²³³ Cited in ibid., 56.

²³⁴ Cf. also Katz, The Holocaust: Where Was God? who devotes a chapter to the question of “What Sin Was God Judging?”

²³⁵ Aviezer Ravitzky, “The Messianism of Success in Contemporary Judaism,” in Encylopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 3, Apocalypticism in the Modern Period and the Contemporary Age, ed. Stephen J. Stein (New York: Continuum, 1998), 223 (the article runs from 204–29).

²³⁶ Cited in ibid.

²³⁷ Cited in ibid.

²³⁸ For the historical background, cf. Leni Yahil, The Holocaust, trans. Ina Friedman and Haya Galai (New York: Oxford, 1990), 67–72; for the response in the press, cf. Herbert Freeden, The Jewish Press in the Third Reich, trans. William Templer (Providence: Berg, 1993), 117–28.

²³⁹ Freeden, The Jewish Press in the Third Reich, 117.

²⁴⁰ See further, ibid., 117–18.

²⁴¹ Ibid., 119.

²⁴² This is one of the primary arguments of Katz, The Holocaust: Where Was God?

²⁴³ Jewish Wisdom (New York: William Morrow, 1994), 306. His concise discussion concerning “Jews and God after the Holocaust” (ibid., 303–15) is relevant to our topic here.

²⁴⁴ “Eichmann’s Victims and the Unheard Testimony,” Commentary 32 (December 1961): 515, cited in Leventhal, “Theological Perspectives,” 26.

²⁴⁵ Based on insights from the psalms, we see that this was the typical reaction of an Israelite stricken with a severe illness, especially if the illness proved agonizing or debilitating; see Michael L. Brown, Israel’s Divine Healer, Studies in Old Testament Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 119–49, with extensive references.

²⁴⁶ From The Holocaust Kingdom: A Memoir, cited in Leventhal, “Theological Perspectives,” 16.

²⁴⁷ “Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity, and Modernity after the Holocaust,” in Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era?, 34, cited in Leventhal, ibid., 28–29.

²⁴⁸ For a recent Orthodox rejection of the judgment theory, see Rosenberg and Heuman, Theological and Halakhic Reflections.

²⁴⁹ This, of course, bears at least some resemblance to the biblical story of Job; for an overview, see Brown, Israel’s Divine Healer, 165–81, with references to other important studies; see also R. Dedmon, “Job as Holocaust Survivor,” Saint Luke’s Journal of Theology 26 (1983): 165–85, although I would take exception to some of the author’s positions on the Book of Job. Note also the title of the recent book by Alan Berger, Children of Job: American Second Generation Witnesses to the Holocaust (Albany: State Univ. of New York, 1997). On the subject of the Holocaust followed by the “resurrection” of the State of Israel, cf. the brief observations of Rabbi Abraham R. Besdin, “The Holocaust and the State of Israel: Are They Related?” in Rosenberg and Heuman, Theological and Halakhic Reflections, 137–43.

²⁵⁰ As expressed chillingly by Yossel Rakover, the fictional—but deeply real and thoroughly representative—victim of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising created by Zvi Kolitz, “It is not true that there is something beastly in Hitler. He is, I am deeply convinced, a typical child of modern man. Humanity as a whole has spawned him and reared him, and he is the frankest expression of its innermost, most deeply buried wishes.” See Zvi Kolitz, Yossel Rakover Speaks to God: Holocaust Challenges to Religious Faith (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1995), 14.

²⁵¹ It is true, of course, that one of the daily prayers of an observant Jew includes the petition for repentance (the fifth benediction of the Shemoneh Esreh), in which God is asked to “turn us back,” “draw us near,” and “cause us to return.” Nonetheless, the emphasis in Jewish teaching on repentance is clearly on human responsibility, while traditional Judaism’s evaluation of the nature of man is far more positive than that of Messianic Judaism and Christianity.

²⁵² See 2.15 on the uniqueness of the message of forgiveness and salvation through Jesus the Messiah.

²⁵³ Cf. Louis A. Berman, The Akedah: The Binding of Isaac (Northvale, N.J.: Aronson, 1997); Aharon (Ronald E.) Agus, The Binding of Isaac and Messiah: Law, Martyrdom, and Deliverance in Early Rabbinic Religiosity (Albany: State Univ. of New York, 1988).

²⁵⁴ The Hebrew hurban (or horban) means “destruction” and refers specifically to the destruction of the First and Second Temples; hence the reference here to the “third hurban.”

²⁵⁵ Katz, “Jewish Faith after the Holocaust,” is quoting here from Maybaum’s book The Face of God after Auschwitz, 36. Some Jewish readers may not know that “Golgotha” refers to the place of Jesus’ crucifixion (it was also known as Calvary).

²⁵⁶ Katz, The Holocaust, 65.

²⁵⁷ Basilea Schlink, Israel, My Chosen People: A German Confession before God and the Jews (Old Tappan, N.J.: Chosen, 1987). See also idem, For Jerusalem’s Sake I Will Not Rest (London: Marshall Pickering, 1969); note that this was written shortly after the Six Day War; for her autobiography, see idem, I Found the Key to the Heart of God: My Personal Story (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1975). The above three books are available from Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, 9849 North 40th Street, Phoenix, AZ 85028-4099.

²⁵⁸ According to S. T. Lachs (to Matt. 27:35), “The condemned were crucified naked, and the executioners were allowed to divide their clothing and property among them” (Rabbinic Commentary, 432, with ref. to Artemidorus Daldianus, Onirocriticus 2.61). Also commenting on Matthew 27:35, Strack and Billerbeck note that, “Das Verteilen der Kleider setzt voraus, dass Jesus unbekleidt gekreuzigt worden ist. Das entsprach auch judischer Sitte” (“The dividing of the clothes presupposed that Jesus was crucified naked. This also corresponds to the Jewish setting”), with reference to m. Sanhedrin 6:3; see Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (München: C. H. Beck, 1924), 1:1038. Note also that Melito of Sardis, who died around 190 c.e., wrote, “He who hung the earth [in its place] hangs there, he who fixed the heavens is fixed there, he who made all things fast is made fast upon the tree, the Master has been insulted, God has been murdered, the King of Israel has been slain by an Israelite hand. O strange murder, strange crime! The Master has been treated in unseemly fashion, his body naked, and not even deemed worthy of a covering that [his nakedness] might not be seen. Therefore the lights [of heaven] turned away, and the day darkened, that it might hide him who was stripped upon the cross” (Pass. 96–97, cited by Gerald G. O’Collins in Anchor Bible Dictionary 1:1012). See further Brown, Death of the Messiah, 2:952–53.

²⁵⁹ Joel Marcus, a Jewish Christian scholar, makes a similar point in his short collection entitled Jesus and the Holocaust: Reflections on Suffering and Hope (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 15: “No, I do not really know what the Holocaust was like. I don’t know what it’s like to see my child, or my parent, or my friend swept off to death or murdered before my eyes (God grant that I may never know). But neither do I know exactly how a crucifixion feels. Yet on Good Friday one says something about crucifixion. And in the fiftieth year after the end of the Holocaust, one says something about the Holocaust. And when those two things come together, one tries, however inadequately, to say something about their mysterious relation to each other.”

²⁶⁰ This is Brown’s “free rendition” of Pseudo-Manetho (third century c.e.), Apotelesmatica 4.198–200; see Death of the Messiah, 2:954, with reference also to Martin Hengel, Crucifixion, 9.

²⁶¹ Elie Wiesel, Night, trans. Stella Rodway (New York: Hilland Wang, 1960), 75–76.

²⁶² I think of the words of Charles Wesley from his celebrated hymn “Arise, My Soul Arise,” in which one stanza describes the Messiah’s wounds as actually offering prayers of intercession of lost sinners: “Five bleeding wounds he bears, received on Calvary; They pour effectual prayers, they strongly plead for me. Forgive him, oh forgive they cry, forgive him, oh forgive they cry, nor let that ransomed sinner die.”

²⁶³ While it is true that Germany has become much less militaristic since the Holocaust, the nation has certainly not advanced morally or spiritually since that time. Just think: For more than forty years, the nation was divided into East and West, the Eastern part being an atheistic police state; racism is rampant throughout Germany today; neo-Nazism is rapidly rising again; the post-Kohl government refused to invoke God’s help in the oath of office; sexual promiscuity and alcoholism are rife in the land. Sadly, Germany has not experienced moral or spiritual healing through the Holocaust. (The interested reader might want to hear a message I preached in Duisberg in 1995, entitled, “Who Will Weep for Germany?” available through ICN Minstries.)

²⁶⁴ See further Isaiah 10:5ff., especially vv. 5 and 12: “Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath! … When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say, ‘I will punish the king of Assyria for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes.’ ” Zechariah 1:14–15 says, “Then the angel who was speaking to me said, ‘Proclaim this word: This is what the Lord Almighty says: “I am very jealous for Jerusalem and Zion, but I am very angry with the nations that feel secure. I was only a little angry, but they added to the calamity.” ’ ” In point of fact, the nations among whom the Jewish people were scattered were promised especially severe judgment, while our people were promised ultimate preservation: “ ‘I am with you and will save you,’ declares the Lord. ‘Though I completely destroy all the nations among which I scatter you, I will not completely destroy you’ ” (Jer. 30:11).

²⁶⁵ Cf., e.g., Eugene J. Fischer, Faith without Prejudice: Rebuilding Christian Attitudes toward Judaism (New York: Paulist, 1977), and note also the relevant works cited above, n. 169.

²⁶⁶ For the difficulties of dealing with the history of the Holocaust even in the former West Germany, see Richard J. Evans, In Hitler’s Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (New York: Pantheon, 1989).

Brown, M. L. (2000). Answering Jewish objections to Jesus, Volume 1: General and historical objections. (177). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.

Why did God allow six million Jews to die in the Holocaust? Before I could even think about believing in Jesus, I need an answer to this question.