Peoples Attitude toward Death and God in the Holocaust - Essay Example

Order 214152 Topic: People attitude toward death and God in the Holocaust Introduction: The pages of human history daubed in bloodshed of violence related to World War I & II, Nazi holocaust, genocide of Nanking (in China) ask the crying question. How to make this Planet Earth heaven-like The answer is simple and direct. Eyes full of understanding; hearts full of love and the life refusing conflicts-enough, these alone are enough! One may dismiss this as a spiritual idea, difficult to implement. But that which is not practical can not be spiritual either. God is the giver of life; God is the giver of Death. One is born without one's consent. One is going to die without one's consent. Over this issue God is autocratic and no leniency is shown to anyone. The meaning and impact of death needs to be known from the spiritual aspect to understand its implications properly. The greatest 'incarnation' of genocide-evil ever to be born on this Plant Earth, Adolph Hitler-did he not say when he finally realized that suicide was the only alternative for him, "Brutal force has not won anything durable" Death is the ultimate prerogative of the human being. It is the unavoidable inevitability. Let us understand it from the point of view of action-reaction theory. Every action has the reaction and the intensity of the reaction is in proportion to the intensity of the action. Over this no dispute exists between the scientists and the spiritualists. One of the rare agreements between the two contending forces; the two opposing forces; the forces that normally do not see eye to eye with each other! As per this theory, death happens to one individual or one million individuals at a time, not without a reason. Death is an act of divine retribution. Suddenness involved in the death, one must admit, is the grace of God! Awaiting death is tortuous and leads to serious psychological maladjustments. During war-time, prisoners of war, and the people live in fear of death. Simon Wiesenthal, in his book, "The Sunflower," describes such a situation thus: "And one piece of bad news followed another, each more alarming than the last. Today's news was worse than yesterday's, and tomorrow's would be worse still."(Wiesenthal, 1998, p. 4) The book by Anna Porter deals with the preventive measures to stall holocaust. Many in Israel were jealous of the honest attempts made by Kasztner to save the lives of Jews from certain death in the concentration camps. The man who accused him was Malchiel Greenwad, He "was a disappointed, angry, toothless old man with a black yarmulke and a small beard; his one ambition had been to become a journalist. ...Few people took Grnwald or his frequent outpourings of hate seriously. He was particularly hysterical in his attacks on the ruling Labor Party..." (Porter, 2007, p.375) Kasztner, who negotiated the deal with the Nazis, knew how tough the job was! Porter writes, "Kasztner looked out the window at the bare, grimy bricks of the courtyard. The sun lit up a corner where someone had hung a small basket of blue flowers, now withered. Perhaps the woman who had tended them had been dragged away to the Srvr prison, or Kistarcsa, or was already on her way to Auschwitz-Birkenau. "Because, Herr Hofrat, it was the best I could do. And we have to supply everything: medicines, baby food, blankets if -- God forbid -- winter comes and we are still waiting [for the war to end]Stern nodded."(Porter, 2007, p.203) Anna's book is about tough negotiations of Kasztner to save the lives of Jews and this aspect needs to be viewed from the point of view of political negotiations, for a great humanitarian cause. How can a 14 year old digest the intricacies of philosophical logic related to death The devastating novel by Imre Kertesz, "Fateless" is about the life in concentration camp, of Gyorgy Koves, a Hungarian Jew .He writes, " At the destination station under his feet was the customary crushed stone; and then an immaculate white asphalt road (which) disappeared into infinity." (Kertesz, 1996, p, 61) He is imprisoned in Auschwitz and Buchenwald camps. He has to face two enemies, his own camp-inmates, and those who are in charge of the camp. Surprisingly, he finds the later lenient in their disposition, as for him. In such a grim situation, he finds it difficult to maintain his equilibrium and turns cynical. He fails to understand why fate is so cruel, why things are happening, and the way they are happening. He tries to analyze the reasons, but proper answer eludes him. Boredom and starvation drive him literally mad. But the saving grace is about the goodwill of the guards, whom he describes, as "beautiful" And the observation that "nowhere is a kind of ordered life-style, a kind of exemplary behavior, even an ethic, as important as in captivity. (Kertesz, 1996, p, 100) In a concentration camp, the most unexpected things can happen, and there is no limit to the powers exercised by those who are in charge of the camps. He finds it difficult to establish himself as a Jew. Instead of associating with the fellow Jew prisoners, he begins to hate them. He lacks knowledge of Hebrew, the language of God, and Yiddish for talking to other Jews and that he feels, is his important undoing. Fellow prisoners are not willing to accept him as Jew and that makes his condition even worse. Behind all these human failings of understanding, the certain fear of death hangs around him and other camp inmates. Being a youth, he is unable to grasp the gravity of the situation. This is the beauty as well as the tragic part of the situation. How strange is the expectation of death Its implications vary from person to person. Only one thing is certain. Nobody wishes to die! One clings on to life even in the worst circumstances. Concentration camp is a de-facto prison. Once out of the concentration camp, psychological rehabilitation is even more difficult. Reconciliation to the changed circumstances is not possible. The tribulations of Koves are not yet over. People in general, instead of being sympathetic, are hostile. When he returns to his place, he finds his apartment is occupied by some other persons. His former neighbors try to console him, tell him to let the bygones be bygones and to begin the fresh lease of life. An intelligent, sympathetic journalist tries to pacify him through the religious alternative, and says that the camps are the lowest circle of hell. He is not a practicing Jew and that turns out to his advantage. His roots are not in the Jewish cultural identities. He is not wanted by the Jewish country; he begins to think about his identity from the point of view of a rationalist. Devoid of sentiments, his life is like the statue carved in alabaster. There is an incident in the novel, when he stands before a mirror and looks at his image. So many horrible scenes relating to the concentration camp pass before his mind's curtain. He stands stiff and observes blankly, devoid of emotions. This is the tragic part of the holocaust. You are dead, even when you are living-no emotions can cheer or influence you, because the fountain of emotions that provides the kick to day to day life is dry. The novel got him the Nobel Prize. In the Nobel Prize lecture, his sums up the be-all and end-all of his life beautifully: "By which I mean that nothing has happened since Auschwitz that could reverse or refute Auschwitz. In my writings the Holocaust could never be present in the past tense." Rabindranath Tagore, another Nobel-prize-winning poet writes about the human spirit thus: " Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free, where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls, where words come out from the depth of truth, where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection, where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit, where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."(Tagore, 1962, p, 27-28.). Conditions mentioned in this poem were absent in the concentration camps, and in the situations that were responsible for the creation of such camps. But worst was to follow in the life of Koves. The experience of freedom where the old lady on a tram turns away from him in apparent disgust at his appearance, but old Mr Steiner "gave me a hug just as I was, in my hat, striped prisoner's coat, and all sweaty."(Kertesz, 1996, p, 184) Even after the physical freedom, mentally he was imprisoned in the cocoon of his thought process, and he could not free himself from it. Time is the great healer they say-in case of Koves, it has not been so, according to his sincere admission. Elie Wiesel survived the horror of the concentration camps in World War II. The conditions in the concentration camp were so grim; he suffers from total loss of faith and candidly admits that three is no chance of regaining it. How human beings can be that cruel to fellow-human beings, if we are all part of the creation of God, seems to be his question. Going by the descriptions given by him, it is difficult to condemn his conclusions from the secular point of view. In such situations, one can get solace, by transcending the mind-barrier which is not an easy achievement for the human being. In the introduction to the book, this observation is worth noting: "How can we explain the hate that burns in so many homes"(Wiesel, 1987, p.3, introduction).About the frequent visits of the journalists, after his release from the concentration camps, he singles out one, "I confided to my young visitor(Israeli-Tel Aviv Paper) that nothing I had seen during those somber years had left so deep a mark upon me as those trainloads of Jewish children standing at Auschwitz Station. Yet I did not even see them myself. My wife described them to me, her voice still filled with horror."(Wiesel, 1987, p.7, Foreword.) He raises rather impossible-to-answer moral questions, and takes one to the conclusion that a thorn has to be removed by another thorn; hate has to be avenged through hate, to redeem the honor. But the most surprising attitude was the response of the Jews in the concentration camps. Why they didn't retaliate Anyhow they were going to die. Why couldn't they kill some German guards That could have set the ball rolling and roused the spirit of Jews everywhere. Desperate situations need desperate remedies. Jews suddenly found themselves in grave situation when they least expected it or were not mentally prepared for it. They faced problems from all fronts, poor food included. They found solace in caring for each other-Religion and Zionism were the only the alternatives and in the predictions that Jewish State, the holy land of their dream, is going to be a reality. Beatings and humiliations were order of the day. Hangings were common, and such incidents took place before the presence of the fathers/children. The ever-present death virtually made the Jewish prisoners, take up to inhuman tendencies. Their mutual disposition became cruel, only self-survival became the issue. Children began to abuse their parents. They forsook God, whom they believed, had brought them to the sorry pass The book "The Sunflower" by Simon Wiesenthal contains a highly surcharging personal note. The horrors of the concentration camps apart, he is grieved and feels a sense of resentment when he sees the graves of the German soldiers inscribed with marking of the sunflowers. He expects that he would be buried in a mass grave and will be soon forgotten. And then a strange incident happens. A dying Nazi soldier asks Weisenthal for forgiveness for what he had done against the Jews. This provocative question initiates the never-ending debate at many major forums. Fifty-three distinguished personalities belonging to all strata of society try to answer this question-the eternal question that confronts humanity, and seeks an appropriate answer. Holocaust Theology by Dan Cohn-Sherbok tries to tackle yet another aspect of the holocaust. How does it stand the scrutiny from the point of view of theology The question is addressed to God directly. 'Where were you during the holocaust' 'What were you doing when millions, including women and children were gassed to death Hanged and mercilessly killed How the evil forces were more powerful than God Dan Cohn sums up the answers of more than 100 Jewish and Christian thinkers. Thinkers-rightly said! All thinkers operate at the mind level. From this level, one can only ask questions and counter-questions. You will not find the solutions, even if you read thousands of such books, full of arguments and counter-arguments. Water flows from the top to the bottom, never from the bottom to the top. From the position of advantage, a strong man needs to pardon the weak and the helpless; whatever is the gravity of his crime. Condoning the weak is dynamic surrender, not to the man who committed the crimes, but to the higher ideal at the transcendental level. It is the question of principle, not a concession to any particular individual. Conclusion: To all the questions raised by the various authors above and for their individual suffering, the future course of action as for achieving peace, the only answer is spirituality. World peace is an attainable reality, if only we cultivate and apply the willpower from within. "The fleshy body is made of the fixed, objectified, dreams of the Creator. The dualities are ever-present on earth: diseases and health, pain and pleasure, loss and gain. When man's desire to live is severely shaken by disease or other causes, death arrives; the heavy overcoat of the flesh is temporarily shedthe activating power of unfulfilled desires is the root or all man's slavery."(Yogananda 1989, p.418) People's attitude towards death and God in the holocaust is no exception to this divine rule. All individual as well as collective calamities related to humanity fall into three categories. a) God-sent, such as lightening, thunder, etc. b) phenomenal such as fire, floods, landslide, wars, attack by hooligans, etc. c) purely subjective such as inertia, lack of faith, insincerity and such other negativities that arise from within and break up one's inner strength. ============== References Cited: Sherbok, Dan Cohn: Book: Holocaust Theology: A Reader Paperback: 400 pages Publisher: NYU Press (February 11, 2002) Language: English ISBN-10: 0814716202 ISBN-13: 978-0814716205 Weisenthal, Simon: Book: The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Schocken; Rev Exp Su edition (April 7, 1998) Language: English ISBN-10: 0805210601 ISBN-13: 978-0805210606 Wiesel, Elie: Book: The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident Paperback: 318 pages Publisher: Hill and Wang (September 1, 1987) Language: English ISBN-10: 0374521409; ISBN-13: 978-0374521400 Kertesz, Imre: Christopher Wilson (Author), Katharina Wilson (Translator) Book: Fateless Paperback: 191 pages Publisher: Hydra Books (October 21, 1996) Language: English ISBN-10: 0810110490 ISBN-13: 978-0810110496 Porter, Anna: Book: Kasztner's Train Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre (Sep 6 2007) Language: English ISBN-10: 1553652223 ISBN-13: 978-1553652229 Tagore, Rabindranath: Book: Gitanjali Hardcover: 100 Pages Publisher: Macmillan & Co.Ltd., 1962. Language: English Yogananda, Paramahansa: Book: Autobiography of a Yogi Hardcover: 512 pages. Publisher: Jaico Publishing House (1989), Mumbai,India. Language:English Read More