Where was god
Where was god is a book by Pope Benedict XVI. (with contributions by Elie Wiesel , Władysław Bartoszewski and Johann Baptist Metz ), arose from a speech given on the occasion of the visit to the former Auschwitz concentration camp on the western edge of the city of Auschwitz on May 28, 2006 as part of the apostolic trip to Poland from May 25 to 28 2006.
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Pope Benedict points out that the use as a German concentration camp and extermination camp during the time of National Socialism made Auschwitz in occupied Poland a place of horror and an accumulation of crimes against God and man with no historical parallel. He had already visited the memorial twice, on June 7, 1979 as Archbishop of Munich and Freising together with the then Pope John Paul II as part of his pastoral visit, and in 1980 together with a delegation of German bishops.
The Pope emphasizes that he stands in Auschwitz as the son of the German people, “a people over whom a bevy of criminals with lying promises, with the promise of greatness, the re-establishment of the honor of the nation and its importance, with the promise of well-being and had also gained power through terror and intimidation, so that during the twelve years of the Nazi dictatorship the German people could be misused as an instrument of anger, destruction and rule ”.
He situates Auschwitz and the theodicy Question three Bible passages: Psalm 44 , the book of Daniel and Psalm 23 are an answer to the question "Where was God?" Enter.
Psalm 44
Where was God in those days and why did he keep silent about all the terrible events? How could God tolerate this triumph of evil, this excess of destruction? Benedict refers to Psalm 44 , where in verses 23 to 27 the cry of distress of the suffering Israeli people in extreme distress of captivity and enslavement by the Babylonian foreign rule is described. He goes on to describe the impossibility of looking into God's mystery and judging God's actions and history. In the end, in such moments of absolute powerlessness, the only thing left for man is the urgent cry to God not to forget his creatures.
This cry is directed at the human heart at the same time, in order not to remain in the mud of selfishness at a time when God's name is used to justify blind violence against the innocent. However, this violence will not bring about peace, it will only produce violence in turn. The God of Christians is a God of reason and love, but not a reason of neutral mathematics.
Memorial stones
Benedict describes the memorial stones with inscriptions in many languages and highlights some of them in particular.
Using the memorial stone in Hebrew , he explains that the rulers of the Third Reich wanted to exterminate the Jewish people as a whole . With the extermination of the people, the belief in a monotheistic God should also be dead once and for all, disappear from the map of history. The rule should only belong to the "strong", precisely to themselves, who knew how to usurp control over Europe for a short time. The aim was to replace the Jewish roots on which the Christian faith is based by a new self-made belief in a strong Aryan race . The decision was made through the Poles in Wannsee to initially exterminate the country's spiritual leadership. The remaining parts of the people should be enslaved. Gypsies are as "in the Nazi ideology , nation, state resistant been considered" people wander across the individual nations and live in them. The members of this people were declared to be useless elements of world history and classified as despicable parasites , advertised for extermination in the concentration camps. The Russian memorial stone is particularly tragic , as the Russians, with millions of deaths, helped liberate other peoples from the tyranny of the Nazis, while at the same time being enslaved by the dictator Stalin and communist ideology. The Germans who were deported to Auschwitz at that time would have been regarded by Nazi propaganda as the dregs of humanity . Called Edith Stein , who do not bend the evil of power, but a witness of truth and goodness has become.
Book Daniel
The Pope compares the situation of the prisoners in Auschwitz with the three young men Schadrach, Meschach and Abed-Nego from the book of Daniel. In the face of the threat of the Babylonian furnace, they courageously replied to King Nebuchadnezzar that only their God could save them from the furnace and the violence of Nebuchadnezzar. But if he did not, they would still not worship the golden idol statue of the king that he had erected for the whole people ( Dan 3: 17-18 EU ).
Psalm 23
In Auschwitz, humanity crossed a dark ravine. Benedict closes his chapter with Psalm 23 , which is a funeral prayer of Jews and Christians.
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In the book three other authors bring smaller treatises about Auschwitz: The Jewish writer Elie Wiesel and the Polish historian, publicist and politician Wladyslaw Bartoszewski , both survivors of the extermination camp, as well as the German theologian Johann Baptist Metz , who repeatedly spoke of a memoria passionis , a memory of suffering , has published.
Re-encounter with Auschwitz
Wiesel (in contrast to Metz) makes no reference to his quote about Auschwitz and Christianity. On the other hand, he writes about the current silence of Auschwitz, which is a silence like no other. Josef Mengele's ramp in Auschwitz, the place where the SS doctor, who was convinced of the Aryan racial doctrine, stood and decided between life and death, was the culmination of evil . Over a million people were murdered here in the short period of five years. One of the few straws, writes Wiesel, that made him endure this torture was the Shema Yisrael , the central creed of the people of Israel: Hear Israel, God is our God, God is one. With his last breath he wanted to proclaim his belief in the only God to this unworthy world . The theodicy question does not arise for him as a devout Jew and member of a unfortunately tried and tested people. At no time did he have doubts that God exists in the midst of the world's suffering and that he is not dead. Wiesel's reflections end with poetic words from the Talmud : the silence was such that the animals stopped bleating, the dogs barking, the wind blowing, the sea moving, the birds singing. The whole universe held its breath in anticipation of the divine word.
Reflections by a former Auschwitz prisoner
Bartoszewski reports how in September 1940, as an 18-year-old prisoner with the number 4427, he was standing with another five thousand Poles at the roll call center at Auschwitz I. The so-called free world was not interested in the extermination camps. In September 1941, Zyklon B was tested on sick Polish prisoners. Poles and Russians were considered subhuman by the Nazis , while Jews were just vermin . On December 10, 1942, when half of the prisoners were still alive, the Polish government-in-exile submitted an unsuccessful request to the Allies to put an end to the mass murder.
Auschwitz: an indispensable place for a Christian talk of God
Johann Baptist Metz, fundamental theologian and Karl Rahner student, addresses the theodicy question. He refers to the well-known saying by Elie Wiesel:
The thoughtful Christian knows that it was not the Jewish people who died in Auschwitz, but Christianity.
Metz argues that Christianity can only stand up to this sentence if the experiences from which it comes are not ignored. The positive metaphors of God, which emphasize the Christian God as the God of love, fail to recognize that for centuries the churches have also portrayed a gloomy image of God. Metz recalls that the Czech philosopher Milan Machovec asked him how a Christian could still pray after Auschwitz. His answer was that one could pray to Auschwitz because there was prayers in Auschwitz - to the singing and shouting of the Jewish victims - and because [people like] Father Maximilian Maria Kolbe had prayed there.
literature
- Where was god - The speech in Auschwitz , Herder Verlag Freiburg, 2006, ISBN 978-3-451-29368-9
Individual evidence
- ↑ Where was God? The speech in Auschwitz , Herder Verlag, Freiburg 2006, p. 11.
- ↑ Where was God? The speech in Auschwitz , p. 12.
- ↑ Where was God? The speech in Auschwitz , p. 28.
- ↑ ibid. P. 44