The Holocaust: Spiritual Voices

One of the foundations of the Jewish faith is their belief in a covenantal relationship with God. The belief that as long as they live their lives in a good and proper way, according to what God asks, that God will, in turn, protect and keep them. It is this very foundational belief that makes us wonder how any Jewish person could maintain their faith in God during a time as horrific as the Holocaust. If God was supposed to protect the Jewish people and keep them safe, then where was He while Jews were being shipped out and slaughtered like cattle during World War II? Etty Hillesum, in her diaries and letters, tells us where God was and shows us how it was possible for Jewish people to retain faith in God during one of the most horrific times in human history.

The easiest thing to believe about anyone experiencing anything so traumatic as what happened to millions of Jews during those years in the mid 1940's is that they would feel that God had forsaken them. After all, what kind of loving God would allow his people to be persecuted in such a way? What kind of God would allow his beloved people to suffer so greatly? Some might, perhaps, assume that the whole ordeal was a test of faith. But others, like Etty Hillesum, saw things a little differently. She did not believe that God had forsaken her, nor did she believe that God was testing her. Rather she believed that the events sweeping across Europe were out of God's hands and that God could not help His people on His own: "But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that You cannot help us, that we must help You to help ourselves." (Etty, 178) Etty seemed to believe that even God was endangered by the eviction and slaughter of the Jewish people and that it was up to them to keep themselves and God strong: "You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last." (Etty, 178) Etty, unlike other individuals of the time, didn't see the plight of the Jewish people as a failing of the covenant between God and His people. Rather, she saw it as a call to the Jewish people for renewed faith and strength in and for God.

In addition to the phenomenal amount of faith she had in God and in her need to help God to help the Jewish people, Etty also felt that it was the duty of herself, and others like her, to not only see and hear what was happening to the Jewish people, but to speak and write about it as well. She said: "One always has the feeling here of being the ears and eyes of a piece of Jewish history, but there is also the need sometimes to be a still, small voice. We must keep one another in touch with everything that happens in the various outposts of this world, each one contributing his own little piece of stone to the great mosaic that will take shape once the war is over." (Etty, 48)

Etty's strength of faith is what allowed her to endure and survive as long as she did through the horrors that she saw and experienced, but I believe it was her need to be a "still, small voice" that actually gave her the will to use her spiritual voice. Thus, Etty spent a great deal of her time at the work camp Westerbork writing and speaking to God as well as writing letters to her friends and companions outside the work camp. She wrote to express her faith and love toward God. She wrote to discuss God's plan for her people and for herself. And she wrote so that the history of the Jewish people would never be forgotten.