As most of you know, I have been working on a historical novel about my grandmother’s efforts to help her two Jewish cousins escape Nazi Germany when Hitler came to power.
In this book, I have tried to balance depicting the ordinary and the extraordinary.
My characters were ordinary people—intelligent, educated professionals, but in many ways, ordinary, hard-working citizens. They were not famous or especially heroic. They went to work each day and did their best to contribute in their unique ways to the lives of others.
What was extraordinary was the chain of events that came to Germany and tore away at the fabric of their lives.
I chose to write the book as historical fiction because I can’t know enough about them to write a full historical narrative of their lives. I only know them by the letters I possess that form the skeleton for the book, and a few things that my librarian friend in Berlin has chased down about them.
To create full portraits, I have had to use my imagination to create scenes in which they think, act, and interact. I do this so that you, the prospective reader, can come to know them and, hopefully, care about them and their plight.
The manuscript has been in the hands of my copyeditor for a few weeks, which has given me some time to step away from the details and think about the larger spiritual and existential elements of their story.
My characters were not highly religious Jews. They were fully assimilated Germans and seemed to have focused more on their work than their faith. I understand this from my own experience, having been raised by a secular Jewish father.
For modern Jews, especially of the more liberal or reformed category, faith is a very earthly, ethical matter.
The reform synagogue my grandparents attended when my father was a boy, and where he was confirmed (reformed Jews do confirmation instead of bar mitzvah), is still going strong in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
On their website, I found a tab about the concept of “Tikkun olam, a Hebrew phrase which literally means ‘to mend/repair the world.’”
My friend at the Jewish Federation and Holocaust Museum in San Antonio confirmed that Tikkun olam is still a strong guiding principle for many practicing Jews today. They are not focused on relief from suffering in the afterlife, but on making things better here and now.
I believe this probably aligns with the way my Jewish characters in Germany from 1933-1942 thought about Judaism as well. I created several scenes in the book to portray the tension between Jewish identity, Jewish practice, and a secular environment under Hitler that became increasingly hostile toward both.
I also asked my Jewish German scholar friend Stephan (who has read the manuscript and is contributing a fascinating epilogue to the book) to weigh in on this question:
How would these largely secular, assimilated Jewish Germans have interpreted God’s role–or lack of it–in the terrible events happening to them? I don’t believe my characters were atheists, but they weren’t highly religious…As a person of faith who has studied the Jewish portions of the Bible, I am troubled by the question, Why didn’t God rescue his people from this madman as he rescued them from Pharaoh, or from Haman, or other evildoers throughout their history? Would my characters have been asking these questions, do you think?
Here is a portion of his very thoughtful response:
In my experience, there were two main approaches to faith during and after the Shoah. There were those who sought solace in their faith and those who broke with their faith in the face of their experiences…Religion, apart from kosher dietary laws, no longer played a role. I wouldn’t describe [your characters] as atheists, though. Perhaps they went to synagogue on the High Holidays. At least, that’s how I imagine their lives and their Judaism.
I don’t think they questioned the Eternal One, but rather believed in human reason. Unfortunately, like millions of other people, they were betrayed by humanity. The Shoah showed what humans are capable of and what they can do to other people. And in the case of Nazi Germany and its allies, this affected all social milieus. In just a few years, the Nazis had managed to firmly anchor the image of the “Jew” as the enemy…
This is powerful and very helpful.
Since I am the Scripture Comes to Life girl, I’ve been asking the Lord to show me in Scripture how to understand the perspective of these German Jews in the 1930’s and 1940’s who sought refuge from the horrors of Hitler’s National Socialism.
He led me to Psalm 22, a Psalm of David which many consider a Messianic psalm prophetically describing the agony of Christ on the Cross. You may want to open your Bible and study it with me as I summarize. Recall this familiar first verse, which Jesus quoted in his final moments:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
The psalmist laments of his loneliness and torment as he cries out to the God of his ancestors and hears no reply. Even so, as Stephan boldly inferred about my characters, the suffering one does not question the Eternal One. The psalm continues,
Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises.
In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
There is solace and hope here in recalling the history of God’s deliverance of his chosen people.
But this poet is in great pain, so he releases more lament, depicting the array of torments, persecutions, and mocking inflicted upon him by his enemies.
And then, another pause to remember where his help comes from, and call for high praises to be lifted to him:
But you, LORD, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you.
You who fear the LORD, praise him!
Whatever befalls him, David stays rooted in the knowledge that at the end of every day, he is foremost a worship leader! And however things look to the natural eye, he trusts that God hears and will respond:
For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
Verses 27 and 28 strike at my heart when I think about the Holocaust, World War 2, and the world yet to come. We haven’t seen it yet, but God will keep his promises to the Jews first, and then to all the nations:
All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations will bow down before him,
for dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations.
That calls for a Hallelujah!
Not long ago I attended a talk by a 95-year-old German Holocaust survivor named Eva Balcazar. Just after Kristallnacht, the Nazis’ first open, widespread pogrom against the Jews, her family escaped to Ecuador.
Eva tells of how Jewish refugees were welcomed there. At that time, Ecuador had little industrial, scientific, financial, or educational infrastructure to build a country upon. They believed that Jewish immigrants would provide much-needed expertise and initiative, because this has been characteristic of Jews throughout their history. Those Jewish immigrants indeed helped to build the economy of Ecuador in hundreds of ways.
Eva’s story, which sprang out of tragedy, is quite inspiring in the end. First of all, she survived to tell the story! Secondly, it is a story of redemptive gifts of energy, knowledge, and initiative contributed by Jewish refugees after they were rescued.
This doesn’t explain anything about why the Holocaust happened, or why so many others did not survive. And it doesn’t justify a single evil action on the part of the Nazis.
It is simply one of many examples of how God sometimes takes evil perpetrated by people and turns it into something good. (For more on this concept, see this 2020 blog called Good Uses Evil for Good.)
I agree with the psalmist and my friend Stephan. It is tempting to say that either God doesn’t exist or that he didn’t care enough about his Jewish people to deliver them from the grip of one of the most evil tyrants who ever lived.
I don’t know how to answer these questions fully, and I don’t think any of us will until we are on the other side.
But I cling to the belief that even with our unanswered questions, we can say, “If God be for us, who can be against us” and even death doesn’t separate us from his love (Rom.8:31; 38).
The Ancient of Days will bring justice for his afflicted ones (Dan. 7:9).
Even when we don’t understand…we can join with other like-minded people and endeavor to do good and repair the world in big and small ways.
