“Was the Holocaust Punishment for Sin?”

Jewish Victims of Fascism (1957) by Will Lammert, Berlin, Germany

“WAS THE HOLOCAUST PUNISHMENT FOR SIN?”

…Whatever the variation on this theme of Holocaust-as-punishment, let’s be clear: these theories are ignorant, repulsive and wrong.

Ignorant because no human being knows the mind of God. Repulsive because they take six million innocent martyrs – including 1.5 million children – and turn them into culprits responsible for their own deaths. Wrong because they ignore the most basic fact of all, which is this: the majority of German Jews survived Hitler, even though, of course, huge numbers perished.

…The people who did not escape were, among so many other millions, the Hassidim and ultra-religious Jews of Poland who had no idea Hitler had signed a secret pact with Stalin to partition Poland. They had no inkling of Hitler’s plan to invade via blitzkrieg on September 1, 1939, and that they would be caught in his web.

Are we to believe that these Jews, who were devout and pious, with Jewish names, who observed the minutiae of Jewish law pertaining to kashrut and the Sabbath and prayed thrice daily for the Jewish return to Zion were punished with extinction while the “sinful” culprits of German Jewry mostly survived? And what of the more than one million children who were gassed and cremated, who were utterly innocent? The theory of the Holocaust-as-punishment is not just abhorrent. It is factually absurd.

…I don’t know why God allowed the Holocaust.

Nor do I care. Any explanation would not minimize the horror of it. Nor would it bring back my six million murdered Jewish brothers and sisters. Indeed, asking for an answer is itself immoral insofar as it is an attempt to reconcile ourselves with the irreconcilable.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/columnists/no-holds-barred-was-the-holocaust-punishment-for-sin-313760

—Shmuley Boteach, “No Holds Barred: Was the Holocaust Punishment for Sin?” The Jerusalem Post (May 30, 2013)

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It’s been said that the Jews of Jesus’ time were punished for rejecting Jesus and for killing him.

It’s a plausible theological argument from the Christian point of view—the Second Temple was destroyed around 70 CE, never to be rebuilt, and the Jews were exiled from their land. Today Al Aqsa stands on the site of the Second Temple ruins, and Al Aqsa isn’t going to be demolished anytime soon to make way for a Third Temple.

There’s also the Parable of the Tenants, which Jesus pointedly throws at the chief priests and Pharisees:

“What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?” They answered him, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.” (Matthew 21:40-41)

Even more tellingly, Jesus laments over Jerusalem: “The days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” [italics mine] (Luke 19:43-44)

It’s been said that the long exile of 2,000 years was God’s punishment of the Jews for their rejection of Jesus and that the state of Israel was God’s restoration of the land to the Jewish people. Both arguments are shaky, theologically speaking.

It’s difficult to hold the many generations of Jews over 2,000 years responsible for the rejection of Jesus. I mean, seriously? God is punishing them over a 2,000-year period for the sins of their ancestors?

Trouble is, this way of thinking condones the persecution of the Jews by the Christians, not to mention the culmination of this oppression in, horror of horrors, the Holocaust. The Christian persecution of the Jews should be roundly condemned, more so given the historical perspective we have now.

It’s a particularly difficult argument—not to mention exceptionally offensive—to say that the Holocaust is God’s punishment visited upon the Jews because of the crimes of their ancestors 2,000 years ago. No wonder that when Mel Gibson filmed Caiaphas declaring, “His blood be on us and on our children,” both Jewish and non-Jewish groups, including Roman Catholic priests, pressured him to cut the scene out of the release version.

The Holocaust should not be theologically condoned but rather condemned, especially by Christians, who were the principal executors of this abomination.

Besides, what is the value of professing a belief that incites discrimination, harm, violence, and hatred against the Jews?

We add that Christian Europe, which discriminated against the Jews and persecuted them, laid the social and cultural groundwork for the Holocaust, although we also affirm that it was Adolph Hitler and the Nazi ideology that was by far primarily responsible for the genocide.

It’s also an implausible theological argument to say that the state of lsrael is God’s restoration of the Promised Land to the Jews. Really, what did the Jews do in recent history to receive this “reward”?

It’s best, in my opinion, to understand the current conflict as the development of uniquely historical events, including the Holocaust, and to leave God out of the explanation, except in the very broad sense of God's solicitude over humanity. I don’t believe we should imagine God taking sides here.

In this respect the YouTube video below is informative and enlightening. It explains what happened—how the state of Israel came into being—and leaves God out of the picture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXfuqUhzESg&feature=youtu.be

—Free Documentary History, “How Britain Started the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” YouTube video, 52:35 minutes, March 3, 2021