God did intervene to protect Jews in the Holocaust
By Lethbridge Herald on April 24, 2024.
Editor:
Al Beeber, in your column of April 12, you wrote, “If there is a god why didn’t that deity intervene when millions of Jews, along with homosexuals and others were being slaughtered by the Nazis?”
Well, he did intervene. Early on in the conflict, he made sure that leaders at the highest levels in the U.S., Britain and France, etc. knew very early in that war what the Nazis were doing and intended to do with those you wrote of.
Through government offices, ambassadorial contacts, embassy personal, secret service networks, informants, etc., many people at the highest levels and downwards in many governments knew exactly what was happening.
And they almost universally chose to keep that information secret and to do nothing.
Then he provided eyewitness testimony from at least two or three, possibly more former inmates of various concentration camps who suffered unthinkable ordeals, and escaped to tell what they knew.
One, for sure, provided extensive notes he had written and managed to conceal during his ordeal.
Generally, government and media personnel who were privy to this information chose not to believe it, to ignore it or to hide it.
It only takes a few moments to imagine some of the things governments could have done.
One of the most obvious would have been to bomb the rail lines and train depots which delivered their human cargo. But generally, these governments at every level did little or nothing.
Then he encouraged hundreds of private citizens in various occupied countries to provide shelter and sustenance to those being hunted by the Nazis, at the risk of their lives.
Further he prompted three or four or more individuals in positions to do so, to save tens of thousands of Jews, homosexuals, etc. because they were in government or other official positions to provide passports, or immigration documents to as may as they could for as long as they could. In other words, there were things that could be done if people were willing to do them.
Also, it is not generally known that in France, for instance, the Nazis were amazed at how readily and how quickly that the French government handed over to them, the Jews living in France at that time.
The willingness of other such occupied countries to act similarly is not generally known and not talked about.
Since the end of the Second World War there have been vast amounts of studies articles, etc. on the Holocaust with much surprising information.
It is more commonly known now that a much higher percentage, possibly 40-50 per cent of the German population who actually know about the Holocaust as it was happening around them but after the war and onward claimed ignorance. Further, the number of Germans actually prosecuted by the allies in Germany in the extermination of those you mentions turns out to be around five per cent (I may have that number slightly wrong. The article I am referencing is not near to hand.)
As the Cold War heated up the Allies needed a stable Germany to counteract Soviet influence and so turned a blind eye to atrocities because many of those active in it, were needed to run German society, economy and government.
These are only some of the facts that contradict your claim.
Cynically, I am predicting that you will not run this letter in this paper. You may be willing or unwilling, but your publishers may interfere. But that would make you complicit in the very processes and thought patterns I have alluded to in this letter. I have in mind Genesis where it is written the thoughts of everyone was only evil all the time.
P.S. In what major northern European country did God move so strongly that only 120 of its Jewish people died in the Holocaust?
Peace.
Bob Derrick
Lethbridge
24-23
So your point is that god chose to intervene in such a way as to doom millions to die at the hands of the nazis? It is hard to see any difference between what happened as a result of godly intervention as you describe and what would happen if there was no god at all.
Humans have free will, and can choose what to do. Sadly, many or most choose the easy way, or even a wrong action. Harold Kushner once wrote of this in an excellent book entitled “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People”, As far back as the Book of Job, in the Bible, and through St. Augustine, the problem of evil has been a huge issue for all humans.
Of course we have free will, we have no choice.
not sure why your comment is negged. if the bible followers do not see it as acceptable, then i guess we can believe that cain slew able not by free will, but by god using him to carry out god’s wishes.
should be abel 🙂
why do I even bother
did your entry get removed?
Not much to add from earlier comments , other than to ask , what exactly is the point of your final PS? That only “120” died is tragic of course, but completely irrelevant to your attempted explanation of a divine intervention by a He /She / It. Perhaps this same persona intervened earlier in humans history proclaiming that humans rather than Neanderthals would “inherit the earth”. Or perhaps “they” sanctioned the colonialism of South America, overseen by the Portuguese and Spanish in their zeal for riches and spreading the gospel to “heathens”?
Good on Al for publishing your letter Bob, your cynicism was completely unfounded and contributed zero toward a better understanding of this mystical entity in the sky.
(Regarding your reference to Genesis, “everyone” was a mere two, who were tempted by a serpent thus infusing all of us with a nasty bout of “sin”.)
perhaps it took god a while to get to sending folk to stop the nazi hate being perpetrated because there were so many others in his ear praying for stuff and winning athletic contests. or, perhaps the reality to date can be summed up by the likes of yeats and russell (note the mention of our lethbridge herald in the following 🙂 :
In 1920 W. B. Yeats published the poem “The Second Coming”, and the final two lines of the first section presented an instance of the saying. Boldface has been added to excerpts:1
Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1933 Bertrand Russell wrote an essay that lamented the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany. The essay appeared under the title “Stupidity Rules” in the “San Francisco Examiner” of California. Russell employed a version of the saying:2
In 1935 Russell’s statement was disseminated via the Canadian newspaper “The Lethbridge Herald” of Lethbridge, Alberta. The phrasing was slightly altered by the movement of the phrase “is that”. The quotation was credited to Russell and was used as a filler item:3
Utter nonsense, Bob. Tell the 6 million Jews who were starved, raped, gassed, burned, shot, skinned and on an on that god intervened on their behalf.
The fact your ilk can make up as many excuses as is necessary to protect your phony baloney beliefs just goes to prove your beliefs are based on fantasy.