Can anyone believe in God after the Holocaust?

Judaism

“Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes saw, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but make them known unto thy children and thy children's children.”

Deuteronomy 4:9 · JPS 1917

Jewish responses are many, and they argue with each other. The philosopher Emil Fackenheim, a refugee who came to Britain in 1939 after being held in Sachsenhausen, proposed a “614th commandment” to add to the Torah's 613: Jews must not hand Hitler a posthumous victory by giving up Jewish life. Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, in Faith After the Holocaust (1973), drew on hester panim, the hiding of God's face. A God who gives people real freedom, he argued, must sometimes hold back, even from the cruellest, and so the responsibility is ours.

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira taught his students every Sabbath in the Warsaw Ghetto. His sermons were buried in a milk can and found after the war, published as Esh Kodesh (Holy Fire). He taught that God weeps with His people in hidden places. Some, such as Richard Rubenstein, concluded that the traditional God of history could not survive Auschwitz. Many survivors simply went on keeping the Sabbath and raising children, which was its own answer.

Christianity

“The Church… decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

Nostra Aetate 4 (1965) · Vatican English text

Christians have had to face what centuries of church teaching against Jews made possible. In 1965 the Catholic Church's declaration Nostra Aetate rejected the charge that the Jewish people as a whole were guilty of Jesus's death, and condemned antisemitism. In 1998 the Vatican's document We Remember called Catholics to repent of the failures of Christians during the Shoah. In March 2000 Pope John Paul II led a public prayer asking God's forgiveness for Christians' sins against the Jewish people.

Protestant churches have done similar work. Lutheran churches have rejected Martin Luther's writings against Jews, and in 2019 the Church of England published God's Unfailing Word, which admits that Christian contempt for Jews helped prepare the ground for the Holocaust.

Islam

“For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.”

Qur'an 5:32 · Pickthall (1930)

The Qur'an's teaching that saving one life is like saving all of humanity (5:32) is also found in the Mishnah, the same saying engraved on Yad Vashem's medal for rescuers. Albanian Muslim families who sheltered Jews often described it simply as their duty to a guest and their word of honour. Muslim communities in Britain now take part in Holocaust Memorial Day, and Muslim speakers have stood beside survivors in schools. Remembering is part of standing against all hatred, including hatred of Jews.

Without religion

For many people, the Holocaust ended any belief that history is guided by a loving God. The Italian chemist and survivor Primo Levi, a secular Jew, is reported to have said that because there was Auschwitz, there could be no God. The philosopher Hannah Arendt, watching the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, wrote of “the banality of evil”: great crimes carried out by ordinary officials doing their jobs. Humanists stress that remembering is a human duty, and that prejudice must be challenged long before it turns murderous.

Sikhi

Sikh teaching holds that standing up for another people's right to live and worship is a sacred duty. The ninth Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, gave his life in 1675 defending the freedom of Hindus who were not his own community. Sikh soldiers served in large numbers in the Second World War. Sikhs pray for sarbat da bhala, the good of all, at the end of every Ardas.

Hindu traditions

Hindu communities in Britain mark Holocaust Memorial Day alongside other faiths. Many Hindus draw comfort from the Bhagavad Gita's teaching that the true self cannot be destroyed: weapons do not cut it and fire does not burn it (2:23). The Roma, among the Nazis' victims, descend from people who left India around a thousand years ago, a link many Indian and Roma groups now remember together.

Beyond the Abrahamic faiths

Jehovah's Witnesses were sent to the camps for refusing to give the Nazi salute or serve in the army. About 1,500 of them died. People of every faith and none are among the Righteous Among the Nations. What they shared was not a creed but the decision, at risk of their own lives, not to look away.