The ultimate question is: where was God at Auschwitz? For years I sought
refuge in Buber’s image of an eclipse of God. This image, still
meaningful in other respects, no longer seems to me applicable to
Auschwitz. Most assuredly no redeeming Voice is heard from Auschwitz, or ever will be heard. However, a commanding Voice
is being heard, and has, however faintly, been heard from the start.
Religious Jews hear it, and they identify its source. Secularist Jews
also hear it, even though perforce they leave it unidentified. At
Auschwitz, Jews came face to face with absolute evil. They were and
still are singled out by it, but in the midst of it they hear an
absolute commandment: Jews are forbidden to grant posthumous victories to Hitler.
They are commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish.
They are commanded to remember the victims of Auschwitz, lest their
memory perish. They are forbidden to despair of man and his world, and
to escape into either cynicism or otherworldliness, lest they cooperate
in delivering the world over to the forces of Auschwitz. Finally, they
are forbidden to despair of the God of Israel, lest Judaism perish. A
secularist Jew cannot make himself believe by a mere act of will, nor
can he be commanded to do so; yet he can perform the commandment of
Auschwitz. And a religious Jew who has stayed with his God may be forced
into new, possibly revolutionary, relationships with Him. One
possibility, however, is wholly unthinkable. A Jew may not respond to
Hitler’s attempt to destroy Judaism by himself cooperating in its
destruction. In ancient times, the unthinkable Jewish sin was idolatry.
Today, it is to respond to Hitler by doing his work.
“Jewish Faith and the Holocaust: A Fragment", Emil L. Fackenheim (1968)
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