Where Was God?

When Army Maj. Gen. Sidney Shachnow, a child survivor of the Holocaust, questions God, he is in good company.

Questioning God in the face of evil is as old as the Bible, as the story of Job attests. But the savagery of the Holocaust places the Nazi brutality in a category by itself.

This week, as Jews and non-Jews observed Holocaust Remembrance Day--Yom Hashoah--the questions were especially urgent, the darkness ever-present, the silence aching: Why did 6 million Jews, 1.2 million of them children, and others perish in so great an evil? Where was God?

The questions are particularly troubling for Shachnow, who no longer sees himself as an observant Jew. Born in Kaunas, Lithuania, he and his family were rounded up in 1941 with other Jews in the Kouno ghetto. His father escaped, but Sidney, then 7, was imprisoned three years in a Nazi forced-labor camp. His mother was sent to a concentration camp. Of 220,000 Lithuanian Jews, 96% lost their lives. Shachnow and his parents survived. After being liberated by the Soviet army, the family was reunited and immigrated to the United States in 1950. Later, Shachnow enlisted in the U.S. Army as an infantryman and rose in the ranks.

He was commanding general in Berlin during the Cold War, protecting Germans from the Soviets who liberated him. He resided in the home that had been used by Hermann Wilhelm Goering, second in command to Hitler. Shachnow also served as commanding general of U.S. Army Special Forces Command, Airborne (the Green Berets) at Ft. Bragg and saw action in Vietnam and in the Middle East during Operation Desert Storm. He retired in 1994.

This week, Shachnow flew from his home in North Carolina to participate in Yom Hashoah observances here. In an interview, he was asked about God and the Shoah, the preferred Hebrew word for the Holocaust. Shachnow, who at 66 retains the bearing of a professional military man, said he still wonders where God was--not the god of abstraction but God the intervener, the miracle worker. Where was the God so palpable that walls tumbled at the sound of trumpets and evildoers perished beneath the thunderous judgment of cresting waves?

The Times shared Shachnow’s comments with several Jewish leaders. Here is their colloquy.

Shachnow: “I’m not really that observant. I was a very observant Jew. But, you know, to be a religious individual takes extraordinary faith. My faith was challenged after the war, when I started asking questions and the rabbis never gave me an answer that I could sink my teeth into. We’re the chosen people. Why . . . is everybody screwing with us? Why are we so despised? Why did it [the Holocaust] happen?

“There were philosophical answers I never understood. Instead, I thought, where was God during that day? Most of the victims were innocent children, women. They really hadn’t had any opportunity to do any real sinning. Was God asleep during that period?

“I always felt if there was ever a time for God to reveal himself--I mean, you go back to the Old Testament and even to the New Testament, there are all kinds of miracles and revelations. And my point was, ‘Hey, this is a great opportunity, God. Step forward! Show us that you’re there.’ Nothing happened.

“You know the old saying that you’ve never found an atheist in the foxhole. When I was in combat, God knows I prayed to God, and as soon as the danger was over I was asking him all kinds of questions and I wasn’t getting too many answers.”

Rabbi Marvin Heir, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles: “Yes, there are many miracles told in the history of the Bible and biblical literature. But there are also some fundamental principles, which I think the general has overlooked. . . . The Bible is very clear that the magical staff that God instructed Moses to use, that would ultimately be the instrument to split the sea, lost its power very soon after the battle with Amalek (Exodus 17:9). We find that Moses was instructed to take the staff with him, but the staff played no role and lost its juice. That was God’s way of saying: In the history of the world, it’s not going to be that way anymore. There are going to be seas that men will have to split. . . .

“One would also have to entertain the notion of what does it take to awaken man? Do I have the ultimate answer why 1.5 million children were exterminated in the Holocaust? I do not know. It is a legitimate question to say: Where was God? [Given that there were historical events that presaged oppression of the Jews], what would be considered a legitimate warning for mankind? The ultimate question here is one of response. Did man respond rapidly enough to all those warnings? Is it not fair to say that man bears a tremendous amount of guilt for not doing the right thing despite ample warnings. . . . That also has to be put into the question of the dark years of the Holocaust. It is not fair for man to duck and sweep all the garbage in God’s direction. . . . Any survivor, one like the general, I never question their right [to ask]. Job questioned God. . . . But when we discuss the issue, it should be discussed fairly. It should not be an emotional situation where fairness is not given to God’s defense.

“I’m not in any way justifying that it was good what came out of the horrors of Auschwitz. . . . But I would hope we would be objective enough to say if you consider how low in status Jews were during the years of the Holocaust, and then to remember in 1948 there would be a Jewish state, one would have to say that it was amazing that from such darkness the sun shined again.”

Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, senior rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, a Conservative congregation: “We are raised with the notion that God is superman. . . . When you say where is God, you’re not asking the next question, which is very important. In Judaism every individual is created in God’s image. . . . We are co-creators and co-responsible. We are allies of God. The question now is, where was godliness in the Holocaust? Where is it today? . . . In my own theology, I substitute the word “godliness” for God, because I find wherever God is used as noun he becomes a person, a thing, an object or a son, and that to my mind becomes idolatry.

“I find godliness has all the attributes which my people and other people have ascribed to God, and which we are obligated to imitate. When we are callous, when we turn our back to the pariahs, when we allow homelessness and brutality to exist, we betray the image of God within us. . . .

“We have to behave in godliness. We do that with our mouths, minds, legs and hands. . . . It’s a pity that good people like the general are raised with an expectation that is illusory and therefore will end in disillusion. . . . The question is, do you have an ethical and sophisticated conception of God to make you understand what the world is--and what the world ought to be?

“I know what happened at the Holocaust. There were political, economic, social and cultural reasons that allowed the Holocaust. The important thing is: How did we respond? How did the churches, synagogues, states and individuals respond? I find good people who act in an altruistic fashion even in the blackest time. . . . We must not forget the evil, but we dare not forget the good. The good is that spark of divinity.”

Zev Garber, professor of Jewish studies at Los Angeles Valley College and a Holocaust authority: “God’s language is the language of silence. I think that was the condition in Deuteronomy 30, when you have the incredible statement where God brings life and death, curse and blessing. Choose life so you can continue. Having said that, the very same passage says the command is not in heaven, as the Torah is not in heaven. . . . The text says the command is very near you. It is in your mouth. . . . That is where you begin with the response to the question of faith after the Shoah. If Judaism’s understanding is a partnership with God, then God is restricted by choice of both heaven and Earth. Man has free will. For man to have free will means that God, you butt out when it comes down to man’s determination, his fate, for better or for worse. It’s one way of suggesting that Judaism as a religion is a religion of accomplishment and achievement. . . . The Jew has got to see this as a sign of seeking life under all circumstances, including the Shoah. It’s not a question of where is God anymore. The question is, where is man?

“It’s OK to question and to deny. That’s my understanding of Judaism, and its greatest strength. We’re permitted to deal with issues like the Holocaust. In Exodus 22 Moses gives the word. People respond, ‘We shall do,’ ‘We shall understand,’ ‘We shall hear and we shall listen.’ ”

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Stammer can be reached at larry.stammer@latimes.com