A SUNDERED PEOPLE
A reflection paper in Modern Church History
´I am broken by the ruin of the daughter of my people.I am disconsolate; horror has seized meµ (Jer 8:21).These words of Jeremiah perfectly describe what is inside my heart and mind afterviewing two movies on the mass killings of the Jews during the Second World War: (a) TheCross and the Star, and (b) Nazis: the Occult Conspiracy. Such a heart-rending scenario indeedas I muse upon some of the World War Two evils, but mainly on the most despicable genocidein mankind·s history³the ¶Holocaust·,also dubbed as the ¶Final Solution.·Certainly, movies that portray this systematic attempt of wiping out the Jewish raceduring the evil reign of Adolf Hitler can only do as much. But personally, some of these movieshave evoked in me the feeling of compassion and pity towards the victims, at the same timegreat disgust for anti-Semitism or Nazism. But what is my own feeling compared to those of the victims of the horrendous crime? Nothing! The best that I can do is to sympathize andempathize. Watching the film has given me an added look into the real score: from actualholocaust survivors to the antagonists or the anti-Semitic Nazis themselves. The film has mademe imagine the horrors of the holocaust. And it makes me ask, ´Why? Why did it happen?µ Asthis question looms in the fore, it also makes me reflect that life is truly unfair. Sometimes thereare ups and downs; there are moments of peace and, possibly, of revenge. But could vengeancebe truly possible, especially in the realm of an all-knowing God? I am asking this because Idon·t buy the idea that God the Father is avenging the death of His only-begotten Son·s earthly life; that the Jews deserved such a rueful fate under Hitler and his Third Reich. In fact, thereare many unguided minds, even among some Christians, who adhere to this twisted idea of God hook, line and sinker. There are those who think that God can really be harsh when hewants to. This, in fact, can be read in the bible: ´I will take vengeance, I will yield to noentreaty, says our redeemerµ (Isa 47:3). But in my own reckoning, vengeance in this particularcontext of Isaiah is totally out of sync with what happened to the Jews in the 1940·s.I feel sorry for those who think that God might be giving his own people a hard beatingdue to its sinful past. It is because I always maintain that a vengeful God contradicts what theBible teaches of a "merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and
P a g e|
2
Modern Church History
fidelityµ(Ex 34:6). The God who appeared to Moses in Sinai of Old is still the same God whomwe now worship and put our faith, hope and love. To me there is never a God who wreakshavoc and tears his own people apart. God can be firm and just, but he is always a God whoalso weeps for us as we suffer. He sympathizes with us. And definitely God also wept profusely for the Jewish people at that particular point in time.It might be better to formulate the question like this: ´What is the meaning of this?µItcould be that this infamy is the beginning of God·s purifying the Jewish people. I see this as aprocess of cleansingthat makes them undergo what Christ himself experienced. And what aprivilege this is! Just like what some of the most famous saints longed for: to suffer like the way Christ did. I have a reason to believe that this very experience of the Jews under the hands of the Nazis was already alluded to in the Gospelswhen, after Christ·s death, the veil of thesanctuary inside the Temple of Jerusalem was torn in two from top to bottom (Mt 27:51; Mk 15:38; and Lk 23:45). This time, it is a sight of a sundered people; that is, broken into two: (a)those who remained faithful and (b) those who yielded and eventually lost their faith inYahweh.While I was listening to those survivors being interviewed in the film, I admire theirfirmness in God. What great and lasting faith they had! So real was the evil before their eyesduring their struggle but still they looked beyond that. Apparently, the evil that tormentedthem was utterly devastating. But they just did not allow themselves to be broken by it; tosimply surrender without a fight. They fought against a great crisis of faith and identity as apeople. They groaned, wept and writhed. In the end, they remained faithful till they wererescued and were given back their lives. I could just imagine David·s prodigious joy afterslaying goliath³a sweet victory for those who really fought!It is my firm belief that God gave a helping hand to the Jews in the person of theCatholic Church. That·s why I say it is absurd to think of a God who was vengefully punishingthe very race who killed Jesus because God never left them. The twisted minds behind anti-Jewish sentiments were absolutely taken over by the evil spirit. And since God is someone wholets His creation run its natural course, he allowed such an atrocity to happen so that thebrilliance of charity and compassion might outshine it. The Jews who were helped by theCatholics under the time of Pope Pius XII were saved because of their firm faith. They found asafe haven in the Catholic Church. And for those who died nonetheless while keeping theirJewish faith intact, they have done enough to merit his loving embrace in His heavenly abode.But what of those who did not have firm foundation? Whatever happened to those who mighthave been disillusioned by the evil that was the Holocaust? We can never know for sure. But
Search History:
Result 00 of 00
00 results for result for
p.
A Sundered People: A Reflection on the Holocaust during the Second World War
456
Reads
2
Readcasts
0
Embed Views
More From This User
Notes
Load more
