First, discuss your reaction to the reading. What questions does this raise for
you? Does it shake your faith in God, or is it simply more confirmation that God does not
exist? Second, can God’s existence be defended in light of such monumental human
suffering? If so, how? If not, why not?
The Nazis murdered almost twelve million people during the Holocaust. Six million were Jews (one and a half
million of whom were children). Political dissidents, Roma, gays and lesbians, and mentally and physically
challenged people comprised the other five million.
They died because of a madman’s desire for ethnic purity. Adolf Hitler wanted to “cleanse” the German
bloodline of “impure” genes, which would enable him to build a master German race – one that would not only
restore Germany’s honor after its defeat in World War I, but also enable them to assume their “rightful” place in
the geopolitical sphere.
Jews were viewed as a “degenerate” race, owing to their supposed genetic inferiority. Hitler authorized a
systematic program of concentration (ghettoization), deportation, and selection. Jews were taken from their
homes and locked inside ghettos where their freedom of movement was constricted and food and medical care
were scant.
The Nazis emptied the ghettos by posting a deportation order, an order demanding Jews to appear to train
station for departure. They were not told their destination, and baggage was limited. We now know they were
sealed into cattle car trains and sent to labor or death camps. Many did not survive the trip. There was often no
food or water available, and the temperatures were often so severe that the sick, elderly, and young did not
make it.
If they survived the journey, they were herded off the train for selection. Healthy adults were selected for labor.
(But this was often a slow death because conditions in the camp were substandard). Pregnant women, sick
people, and children were usually selected for death.
Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was taken to Auschwitz in 1944 at the age of fifteen. He survived the
nearly year and a half ordeal, but his father did not. One of the most horrific events he recounts in his memoir,
Night concerns the hanging of a thirteen-year-old boy. Read the short and tragic excerpt from the required
Wiesel reading above.
Sample Solution