Conclusion
Hard Questions About the Holocaust
Holocaust. It is a word that has the power to haunt us, perhaps
because it utterly fails to convey the reality of what happened
to the Jewish people in a short five or six years. The Nazi
genocide against the Jewish people defies any and all attempts
to adequately analyze and account for the merciless death of
six million Jewish people. Yet we struggle and search for some
elusive key that might unlock this modern mystery. For the Jewish
people, the Holocaust serves as a stark and lasting reminder of
the precarious foothold the Jewish community holds in this world,
and how quickly the world can turn against us.
Today, attacks on synagogues and the murder of innocent people
simply because they are Jewish are reminiscent of the horrific
events of the mid-20th century, leading up to what still remains
beyond our wildest nightmares. We find ourselves asking a
question we never thought we would have to ask again, “How far
will modern antisemitism go?” Has humanity really learned the
lessons of the past?
For religious Jews, the Holocaust presents its own specific
challenge. How can we claim that God is just, loving, and faithful
to His covenant promises made to His chosen people in light of
the mass murder of 6,000,000 Jewish people?
For believers in Jesus, whose faith also rests upon the promises of
those same Hebrew Scriptures, the Holocaust poses a particularly
piercing indictment. For it was “Christian” Europe (and America)
who, with some notable exceptions, either stood idly aside or else
actively collaborated with the Nazi murderers.
36 | Never Again: A Holocast Remembered