The Problem of Suffering and God’s Existence
Description
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 geo-political 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 was 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.
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?