Video from The Office of Rabbi Sacks
"This video is part of a series of videos produced by the Office of Rabbi Sacks in partnership with the Holocaust Educational Trust. For further videos and information, please visit www.RabbiSacks.org/Holocaust. This series has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Richard Harris." from video introduction
Rabbi Sacks saw firsthand the Death of the Holocaust.
Where was God during this genocide?
The Problem of Evil and The Holocaust is often used as reasons for dismissing God.
Rabbi Sacks points out that God gives us freedom and never takes it back.
“As early as 1929 [Hitler] had publicly proposed that 700,000 of the ‘weakest’ Germans be ‘removed’ per year.”
Ideas have consequences. Nietzsche was the John the Baptist of this Aryan anti-Christ, and the German race were to be the Übermenschen, while the Poles, the Jews, and the disabled were the Untermenschen.
With the distraction of the Polish front the “domestic nightmare could begin; the fog of war would cover a multitude of sins at home. . . In August 1939 every doctor and midwife in the country was notified that they must register all children born with genetic defects — retroactive to 1936. . . . In September the killing of these ‘defectives’ began. In the next few years five thousand small children were killed. “As soon as the Polish campaign was under way, a number of adult patients deemed the least ‘fit’ were put on buses for these ‘transfers.’ The places to which these poor souls were transferred would murder them. “Hitler’s memo on this subject was postdated September 1, to coincide with the beginning of the war. The rationale given for the killings was that the patients were taking up medical facilities and beds that should be used by soldiers wounded while fighting for the fatherland. “The lessons learned in murdering these helpless patients helped the Nazis streamline their killing and cremation methods, which would culminate in the death camps, where hundreds of thousands and then millions of innocents were killed.” (Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy)