Went To An Interesting Veterans Day Presentation

[Justin]

A local community college had a Veteran's day presentation that i went to this morning. The guest speaker was a Holocaust survivor. He told of his and his family's experiences during the Holocaust and the great number of loved ones he lost in the four years he was in various slave labor and concentration camps. He also told how even today certain mundane things can trigger horrible memories and about how some things nearly everybody takes for granted he views with suspicion and discontent. For example he views people in uniform with suspicion since his youth was filled with people in uniform doing horrible things to him and his family and many others around him. He says he can't help feeling like this so many years afterward. Another example was he doesn't like to say goodbye even to his wife while she leaves for half an hour to go grocery shopping. He related this to a particular incident involving him and his parents when they first got separated in the first camp. He says he sometimes feels silly but can't shake the feeling that maybe this person won't ever be coming back. I thought it was very interesting and i really enjoyed it, especially little things like this. He really gave an understanding as to what he went through and still lives with all these years later.

 

Towards the end of his speech he got to talking about God. He said it has been nearly 70 years since his liberation and he still cannot understand why God allowed all that suffering and the many millions killed. He said his earthly father would walk through fire and storm and do everything he could for his children yet his heavenly father looked the other way. He made this a major point for the last few minutes of his presentation, saying this was one of the biggest problems he's had to live with since the war. He never came right out and said it but i would guess the man is agnostic at least because of what happened to him. Now, i live in the asshole of the Bible Belt and keep this in mind when i say this next little bit. 6 or 7 people asked him questions when he was done speaking and i kid you not, every damn question focused on his shaken faith and what he said about God. Nothing pertaining to what the hell the man endured, you know like loosing two thirds of his family, the nightmares he is troubled with still to this day or anything actually important. Several people tried to word their questions in such a way to try and force him to say he held on to hope in God during his time in the camps, but he did not take the bait. One woman asked if he thought anything good came from the Holocaust. I suppose she was wanting to hear him say i now believe in god or whatever but i chuckled at his response. "Do i think anything good came out of this experience, well, this may seem egotistical of me but I'm standing here now before you aren't i?" I just thought it was incredibly disrespectful of these people to get hung up on what he said about God. It's like the very second he said it they turned off everything else and just focused on that.

 

All in all i enjoyed the presentation and really enjoyed him throwing their christian bullshit right back at them.

[kolaida]

Wow, some people just don't get it. But of course they are gonna ask because all they can think is there has to be SOME way to justify why God let THAT happen.  And then they naturally focus on God since they probably see it as something they have in common with the speaker (the supposed belief in God- they certainly don't have the Holocaust in commong or anything similar) and wanna be THE person to help him right on his path.  I don't know, it'll be good when society finally progresses to a point where God can not be mentioned and it be perfectly natural, but it probably won't happen for awhile.  I'm glad you enjoyed the speech, though!  

[rach]

 One woman asked if he thought anything good came from the Holocaust. I suppose she was wanting to hear him say i now believe in god or whatever but i chuckled at his response. "Do i think anything good came out of this experience, well, this may seem egotistical of me but I'm standing here now before you aren't i?" I just thought it was incredibly disrespectful of these people to get hung up on what he said about God. It's like the very second he said it they turned off everything else and just focused on that.

.

 

I wish I could have been there for the speech it really sounds interesting.  Christians have been taught that "all things work together for good" (Romans 8:28) and that "God is good all the time all the time god is good" (cutesy saying).  There is a lot of pressure to take any event however horrific, and believe that it somehow was for the greater good.  My family's accident was three decades ago.  Every day I still wake up wondering if it is just a nightmare, or if I died along with the others and this is really hell or purgatory that I am existing in.  I would have given anything at all to prevent what happened there just was nothing I or anyone could have done.  Same as with this man who lost everything because of other peoples' evil choices.  There is a lot of pressure by religious people to say that somehow things worked out for the best.  I would never, never say that.  The best was when my family was a live, when I was not traumatized, when I was not having nightmares every night.  It seems like that was a whole other world.  Sure there have been some good things as a result.  I have met and befriended people I would never have known otherwise.  But like I said, the longing for the life I could have had if it weren't for the stupid accident is just unbearable.  Sometimes I'm glad that I at least survived, sometimes I feel like I survived at too high a cost. 

 

Another thing is that obviously the Holocaust is very faith-shaking.  There was no intervention from heaven when psychopath Joseph Mengel was cutting inside of people's bellies without having given them anesthesia.  There was no intervention when he tried to sew two little kids together and make "conjoined twins."  When I was in the Christian religion it was implied that God was a protecting god.  He is El Shaddai 'All-Sufficient, All-Bountiful One'.  Interestingly to quote from Wikipedia "  there are two words in Hebrew that could be the origin of Shaddai: "shada" and "shadad" meaning to nurture and destroy respectively."  The Holocaust shows us graphically that whilst there may be a living god, and I believe that there are indeed living gods, we have to change our framework of what we are expecting from him.  No matter how innocent we are, he either won't or can't protect us from all tragedies. 

[amateur]

Rach, I am so sorry to read above what you went through.

 

In my opinion, only people that survived the Holocaust (or anything else horrific) have a right to say what the supposed meaning of it is.  I want to word this right.  I've head xians who are way too young to have been around during WWII say things about how we don't know the "big picture" of things, so obviously god had some type of plan with the Holocaust.  I find that absolutely disgusting.  Unless YOU were a victim of the Holocaust, you are not entitled to say what god's plan about it was or what its supposed meaning was.  I have read stories of Holocaust survivors, and some became atheists and others had their faith strengthened.  They EARNED their opinion, either way, because they lived it and survived it, and suffered huge losses and pain beyond what most of us can understand.

 

No matter what I read about the Holocaust, or school shootings, or young women being kept as sex slaves for ten years, no matter how it affects me when I read about it or see it on tv (and I will usually end up crying), I respect whatever the survivors have to say about their experience, how they got through it, how it affected their faith, if their faith got them through it or if they lost it, or whatever they used to focus on to keep them same through the experience.  People need to write and record these stories so they are not forgotten.  But I know that whatever I read or see is only a pale, pale shadow of the horrors they have actually lived.  And I have absolutely NO RIGHT to tell them what it meant or what they should or should not believe in, and I have NO RIGHT to question what helped them through it or any meaning, or no meaning at all, they found in it.  

 

I'm glad this man will still go out and talk about his experience, even in places where I bet he knows he'll get beat over the head with xian platitudes.

[Kaiser01]

I once had a Christian youth pastor tell me the holocaust was a miracle because without it there would be no Israel.

 

No joke. No he wasn't trolling, he is just insane  conservative Christian.

[rach]

I once had a Christian youth pastor tell me the holocaust was a miracle because without it there would be no Israel.

 

No joke. No he wasn't trolling, he is just insane  conservative Christian.

Pastor would be singing a different tune if he had been one of Mengele's test subjects. 

 

So what if Israel were created or not?  At a cost of truckloads of emaciated dead bodies and mutilated research victims, the cost was too high. 

[Justin]

 

 

 

I have read stories of Holocaust survivors, and some became atheists and others had their faith strengthened.  They EARNED their opinion, either way, because they lived it and survived it, and suffered huge losses and pain beyond what most of us can understand.

 

 

I have read far more accounts where they lost their faith than the other way around.

 

I recently saw this quote, "if there is a god, he will have to beg my forgiveness". This was found scribbled on a wall beside a bed in a concentration camp.

 

 

 

[amateur]

Justin, yes, I too have read more accounts of people who lost their faith after surviving the Holocaust.  I was just trying to make the point that it is not up to ME to decide who or why someone should strengthen, question, keep, or lose their faith after surviving something horrific.  And it is not up to ME to condemn someone who chose something different than what I think makes more sense.  They are the one who lived through unknowable horrors and I respect that and I respect however they chose to survive.

 

I think it's sad that the people who asked questions of the Holocaust survivor in the story above seemed to want to push some big-picture god-meaning on what he lived through.  They should have respected his feelings at being ignored by his god at the worst point of his life.

[rach]

I would like to mention something I found interesting because I have been learning more about Mengele "the Angel of Death" doctor who ran experiments on concentration camp victims.   He was a Jekyll, Hyde type who could be nice to you one day and butcher you the next.  Here is a quote describing him:

"He was capable of being so kind to the children, to have them become fond of him, to bring them sugar, to think of small details in their daily lives, and to do things we would genuinely admire.... And then, next to that,... the crematoria smoke, and these children, tomorrow or in a half-hour, he is going to send them there. Well, that is where the anomaly lay."

 

When I read this I thought also of the bible, of Yahweh, how he cannot ever make up his mind whether to bless or curse and constantly ends up doing both. 
 

[Justin]

Justin, yes, I too have read more accounts of people who lost their faith after surviving the Holocaust.  I was just trying to make the point that it is not up to ME to decide who or why someone should strengthen, question, keep, or lose their faith after surviving something horrific.  And it is not up to ME to condemn someone who chose something different than what I think makes more sense.  They are the one who lived through unknowable horrors and I respect that and I respect however they chose to survive.

 

I think it's sad that the people who asked questions of the Holocaust survivor in the story above seemed to want to push some big-picture god-meaning on what he lived through.  They should have respected his feelings at being ignored by his god at the worst point of his life.

 

Yeah, that is something i wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. I think people who survive something such as the holocaust have more of a right to an opinion than the rest of us do.

 

It was sad, and i knew as soon as he first brought god and his faith into it that most of the audience was lost right there. After it was over people were walking out and talking amongst themselves about it. I passed one woman who said something about god could have stopped the Flood but didn't, meaning he could have stopped the holocaust but didn't for it was his will just like the flood. I didn't say anything but i stopped and turned around and glared at her and made it a point for her to see me glaring at her. I had that "you dumbass, heartless bitch" expression on my face. She'd been dead if looks could kill.

[amateur]

^^^"Most of the audience was lost right there"  You summed it up beautifully!