Holocaust

The Holocaust was the systematic extermination of more than 6 million European Jews, perpetrated [Page 572]by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945. The event is also known as the Shoah or “annihilation” in Hebrew and as Churban or “destruction” in Yiddish. The Holocaust has certain features that distinguish it from other human catastrophes: It resulted from centuries of religious and philosophical hatred of the Jews, and it was implemented as the official policy of a modern state. Perhaps most significantly for how one understands death and the human experience, the Holocaust was an act of mass murder that rested upon a fundamental view of the value of a human being, a view that was in direct conflict with the teachings of Jewish tradition. In the following text, a brief historical background, some historical highlights of the Holocaust, and some ramifications of the Holocaust for understanding death and the human experience are presented.

Historical Background

The hatred of the Jewish people that paved the way to the Auschwitz extermination camp has its roots in the early centuries of Christianity. According to Saint Ambrose (ca. 340–397), it was not a crime to burn synagogues. Saint John Chrysostom (347–407) described the Jews as enemies of God and was among the first to accuse the Jews of deicide. While Saint Augustine (354–430) recognized the Jews as witnesses to the truth of the Hebrew scriptures, he viewed their exile as a divine punishment for rejecting Christianity.

The first large-scale murder of the Jews at the hands of the Christians took place during the First Crusade in 1096, when thousands of Jews were slaughtered in the Rhineland. The widespread slaughter of the Jews continued in England in 1190, in Germany in 1348–1349, in Poland and the Ukraine in 1648–1649, and in the 1880s and 1903–1906 in Russia. Throughout these centuries, Jews were labeled agents of Satan, desecrators of the Host, sorcerers, and vampires. In 1290, they were expelled from England, in 1394 from France, in 1420 from Austria, in 1492 from Spain, in 1496 from Portugal, in 1512 from Provence, and in 1569 from the Papal States. Indeed, Jews were expelled from almost every country in Europe.

With the coming of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, the philosophical anti-Semitism of the intellectuals was added to the theological anti-Semitism of the Christians. Nearly all of the great philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries—including Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, G. W. F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche—delivered diatribes against the Jews. In addition, the advent of modern scientific method brought with it theories that associated character traits with biological origins, from which arose modern race theory. Thus Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg maintained that humanity was being poisoned not only by Jewish blood but also by Judaism because the–ism is in the blood. The Nazis' annihilation of the Jews was based on an all-encompassing worldview that targeted both the Jews and Judaism for extinction. Because the Nazis' chief instigators were thoroughly versed in modern philosophy, science, and cultural history, they were able to use that expertise to suit their own ends. The Holocaust, then, was not the work of lunatics and hoodlums; rather, it was conceived and carried out by some of the world's most highly educated people.

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