God in Auschwitz

Etty Hillesum, a Jewish young woman imprisoned at the Nazi prison camp, Auschwitz,  once wrote concerning God:

“There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there, too. But more often stones and grit block the well, and God is buried beneath. Then he must be dug out again”.1

In 1943, at the age of 29, and near the end of her life, she wrote: 

“You have made me so rich, O God; please let me share Your beauty with open hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with you, O God, one great dialogue. Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised toward Your Heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in bed and rest in You, O God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer. Amen.”1

Certainly this was a profound statement made by a woman who endured one of the most horrific human tragedies in all of history. Pope Benedict XVI comments on Etty:

"At first far from God, she discovered him looking deep within her ...In her disrupted, restless life she found God in the very midst of the great tragedy of the 20th century: the Shoah. This frail and dissatisfied young woman, transfigured by faith, became a woman full of love and inner peace who was able to declare: “I live in constant intimacy with God”1

In this documentary of Auschwitz, a survivor tells of the unimaginable horrors of what seems to have been a living hell. 

2

Elie Wiesel himself comments, in his own documentary accompanied by Oprah, where he entered Auschwitz for the last time, 

"You see, we did not live with death...we lived inside death."

3

One cannot help but to relate the retched occurrences in this camp, and in many other camps like it, to hell itself, a location quite real, where death is experienced. And while certainly no earthly place can replicate hell in its intensity, elements of hell in an earthly measure can, in many of their aspects, be found. Constant fear, isolation, dehumanization, torture,  noxious fumes, exhaustion, and the deprivation of every essential human need seem to resemble in many ways the descriptions of hell as experienced by various saints and mystics throughout the centuries. 

Yet, there is a distinction between hell and Auschwitz, despite that perhaps a tad of its torments were brought into that small location in Poland. The difference? One's soul was not damned, though it seemed the rest of him were. When literal survival relied upon a self focused interest in keeping oneself alive to the detriment of another's life, (for what you had meant that another had not), and cruel treatment increased an internal pain which incurred a natural and intense sense of injustice and might so easily lead one a consuming hatred with little effort, man was still in possession of his free will. Man still possessed the ability to receive grace. And, "where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more." Romans 5:20.

It is evident through the lives of known several saints, and through the writings of Etty Hillesum, that this place of hell served as a purifying fire which stripped oneself of all...disposing one to a nakedness before God. 

One saint, who died in an Auschitz gas chamber, was Edith Stein, or Sr. Theresa Benedita of the Cross. 

Pope John II wrote concerning her: 

"Learn from St. Thérèse to depend on God alone and serve Him with a wholly pure and detached heart. Then, like her, you will be able to say ‘I do not regret that I have given myself up to Love’." 4

"Edith Stein was arrested by the Gestapo on 2 August 1942, while she was in the chapel with the other sisters. She was to report within five minutes, together with her sister Rosa, who had also converted and was serving at the Echt Convent. Her last words to be heard in Echt were addressed to Rosa: "Come, we are going for our people." Together with many other Jewish Christians, the two women were taken to a transit camp in Amersfoort and then to Westerbork. This was an act of retaliation against the letter of protest written by the Dutch Roman Catholic Bishops against the pogroms and deportations of Jews. Edith commented, "I never knew that people could be like this, neither did I know that my brothers and sisters would have to suffer like this. ... I pray for them every hour. Will God hear my prayers? He will certainly hear them in their distress." Prof. Jan Nota, who was greatly attached to her, wrote later: "She is a witness to God's presence in a world where God is absent." On 7 August, early in the morning, 987 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. It was probably on 9 August that Sister Teresia Benedicta a Cruce, her sister and many other of her people were gassed. When Edith Stein was beatified in Cologne on 1 May 1987, the Church honoured "a daughter of Israel", as Pope John Paul II put it, who, as a Catholic during Nazi persecution, remained faithful to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ and, as a Jew, to her people in loving faithfulness." 5

This last phase of her life was to her, a complete abandonment to Christ. 

Another saint who offered this devastating suffering as an opportunity to love, was St. Maximilian Kolbe. When Nazis had rounded up the Jews to be exterminated, a man was selected and called out, "Please! I have a wife and children." Saint Maximilian offered to take his place. And, laughing, the Nazi offered allowed this. Two weeks in a small room with 10 other men, slowly dying of starvation, St. Maximilian heard many confessions and ministered to his brother victims.  He was the last of them alive, and was said to calmly raise his arm for the deadly injection which killed in August 15th, the feast of the Assumption of Mary.


Is it possible that joy can be found in such suffering? You tell me. Man gave his life for his brother, and in doing so, loved and redeemed to God the souls of tormented humanity. A woman finally consummated her love of  God by offering the cruelest of tortures. And another found Him in the silence, and discovered that not the deprivation of man could suffocate the immense existence of God who loves despite present existence.



In the words of a certain Karol Wojtyla:  

 "Be not afraid." 

......"and no one will take this joy from you".....

1 Benedict XVI, Pope. "GENERAL AUDIENCE." General Audience of 13 February 2013 | BENEDICT XVI. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 13 Feb. 2013. Web. 19 Apr. 2017.

2 Day in Auschwitz || Amazing Documentary. YouTube. YouTube, 04 Aug. 2015. Web. 19 Apr. 2017.

3 Winfrey & Wiesel Auschwitz Full Movie. Perf. Oprah Winfrey and Elie Wiesel. N.d. Winfrey & Wiesel Auschwitz Full Movie. Shelly Faust, 25 Aug. 2014. Web. 17 Apr. 2017.

4 Paul, John, II. "HOMILY OF JOHN PAUL II FOR THE CANONIZATION OF EDITH STEIN." 11 October 1998, Canonization of Edith Stein | John Paul II. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 11 Oct. 1998. Web. 19 Apr. 2017.

5 "Teresa Benedict of the Cross Edith Stein (1891-1942) - Biography." Vatican. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2017.