But then, why did so many faithful European Jews, who believed in Hashem and the Chesed of Abraham, were gassed, while it was secular Israeli Jews imbued with the socialist ideology of David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir, many of them having little faith in Hashem, who survived another attempt to wipe out the Jewish people ? Doesn't this fact suggest that the survival of the Jews essentially depends on their ability to defend themselves militarily rather than on their strict religious observance ?
No I think you are looking at the situation the wrong way. Look at the shaky ground that the Jews in the secular state are living in. This is not the 'Jewish state' which we have longed for, our parents had dreamed about. The current state is a bolshevik hell-hole which will not stand as it is. This state of Israel is a wicked state which is oppressing its Jews in order to keep the nations happy.
The Germans killed religious and irreligious Jews. There was no separation between the two. This is what happens when the Jewish people fall from the level which Hashem wants us to be at, to be the light unto the nations. During the 1920s-1930s the Jews in Germany were assimilating at an incredible rate. This did not prevent the German pigs from hating us even more. Antisemitism is a disease which has no rational explanation. They hate us if we are rich, if we are poor, if we are powerful, if we are powerless, if we are chosen, if we are assimilated. This was how King Achashveras and his henchman Haman were. The majority of the Jews in Shushan WERE NOT religious Jews. Most of them wanted to attend the party of the King, where they would be led down the path to destruction.
There are many good explanations of why Hashem allowed the Holocaust to happen. For some people it distanced them from him, for others it brought them closer. Hashem has become upset at his people, when this happens he allows the nations to smack us, and it is hoped that this will bring us back.
I feel that understanding this relationship with Hashem is essential to understanding Jewish history.
Please look at the material on Aish.com to learn some insights into the question 'Why the Holocaust?' @
http://www.aish.com/ho/http://www.aish.com/ho/i/God_Is_Not_a_Babysitter.htmlhttp://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/108398/jewish/Belief-After-the-Holocaust.htm.
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Faith versus tragedy
The conflict between tragedy and faith is not new. Anybody knowledgeable in Jewish history will realise that our people have undergone the most terrible persecutions and genocide at the hands of many oppressors. The believing Jew of 1940 knew about the pogroms, crusades, destruction of the Temples, he read out aloud on the Seder night, “In each generation they rise over us to destroy us”, and yet it did not shake his faith. Anti-Semitism was nothing new.
The same method by which the Jew of 1940 knew about the past and yet kept his faith could be employed after the Holocaust. The philosophical question of “Shall the Judge of the earth not do justice?” applies just as much to the seemingly meaningless suffering of an individual as to that of six million individuals. If it could be dealt with on an individual basis before the Holocaust, it could be dealt with in the same way afterwards. The difference is one of quantity, but the quality of the question remains the same.
In truth however, Hitler’s Final Solution was something novel in that few people believed that in the 20th Century, when civilisation had reached its intellectual and ethical peak, such genocide was conceivable. Public consensus, supported by the media, reassured us that we could no longer return to the Middle Ages. However, the philosophers and poets of Berlin, with their fine manners and high society, turned into the world’s greatest murderers. The Holocaust was not only perpetrated by monsters, but connived at by an entire nation numbering close to one hundred million people.
The world was silent. One may add, not only silent but on the whole passive, sometimes comfortable with what was taking place, and happy that it was not they, only others, who were carrying out the atrocities.
If anything the story of the Holocaust shows clearly that man may not rely upon his own intellect and his own feelings for righteousness and justice. Those with the highest diplomas and university degrees were often accomplices, if not direct perpetrators, of cold-blooded murder. Man must be accountable. The command, “Thou shalt not kill”, must be premised on “I am the L–rd your G–d.”
