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The Silence of Pius XII: Second Thoughts
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13292 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1987 |
4,297 Words |
| Author
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Robert Herrera
Robert Herrera is professor of philosophy at Seton Hall
University and author of Camps of Fire: Studies in Christian
Mysticism. |
The Holocaust is an enigma and unique novum in history. Its possibility, as Emil Fackenheim has suggested, is accepted solely because of its actuality. It is a moral and intellectual outrage generated by a world dominated by the logic of destruction. It submits the human to mutilations scarcely imaginable in better times, providing a glimpse into the demonic. As Francois Mauriac has noted, "Since the Holocaust in Europe . . . nothing in the world would be the same as before, for the world had been shaken to its very foundation."
This may seem an exaggeration. History presents us with a depressing multiplicity of examples of human cruelty on a vast scale. The present century has witnessed the slaughter of Armenians, the massacre of Ukrainians, and uncounted millions purged in the People's Republic of China. The Holocaust is not unique if only the numbers of slain are considered, no matter how impressive the toll. What does make the Holocaust unique is that the Jews were slaughtered simply for being, not for doing. Race became both an ontological category and an ideological justification determining who was to live and who was to die. As Norman Cohen indicated, though only about a third of the civilians killed by the Nazis were Jews, the Jews held a unique position among the victims:
Other people were marked out for decimation, subjugation, and enslavement . . . the Jews were marked out for extermination. They were not simply killed or worked to death; they were humiliated, hunted, and tortured with an intensity of hatred which was reserved for them alone.
The Holocaust is a Jewish phenomenon. It is, like the crucifixion to the Christian, the paradigm and exemplar of tragedy. In spite of the distaste caused (especially in Christian circles) by occasional stridency and media overkill, the unique horror of the Holocaust justifies the concern and the passions it keeps alive. For the Jew the Holocaust is a contemporary event--it is now! This is scarcely to demote to second-class status those non-Jews who suffered and died under the Nazis. They share fully, as individuals, in the outrage, horror, and martyrdom. But the uniqueness of the Holocaust--its corporate nature--leads to the paradox that today's un-persecuted Jews is more linked to it than the non-Jewish martyrs of the camps. Because of this, the Holocaust can best be understood through the optics of Judaism.
The role of Christian anti-Semitism in preparing the way for the depredations of national socialism has been often noted, at times tendentiously. One Orthodox rabbi
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