Hebrew for Christians Further thoughts on the Shoah...
www.hebrew4christians.com
Cowardice of the Crowd Further Thoughts on the Shoah
Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, was established a national holiday by the Israeli Knesset in 1953. Shoah is the Hebrew word for “disaster” and was the term chosen to refer to the European Holocaust, when six million Jews - including over a million children - were systematically murdered by the Nazis during World War II. May God help us “never forget...”
Yom HaShoah, or “Holocaust Remembrance Day,” marks Israel’s day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews, including over a million children, who perished as a result of the actions carried out by Nazi Germany and its accomplices. It was inaugurated in 1953 and is annually observed on the 27th day of the month of Nisan, just a few days after Passover Week in the spring. In stark contrast to the celebration of freedom commemorated during Passover, Yom HaShoah marks a very difficult time when we revisit specters of absolute evil and again ask haunting questions about the power and presence of malevolence in our world. Often we are left speechless over the cruelty and depravity of human beings. It all seems so inexplicable, so needlessly horrible, so senseless and so vile... We may feel powerless, despondent, or full of indignation, but still we ask ourselves, how could this have happened? In this short article, I want to make the case that the Holocaust was made possible because of human cowardice and self-deception... The systematic, institutionalized, and “politically correct” murder of the Jewish people was made possible solely because people forfeited their God-given responsibility to live as authentic individuals by surrendering their will to “the crowd.” Giving up your identity to join a gang inevitably leads to fragmentation of the soul, potentially inviting in a “legion of demons.” Regardless of whether it’s a gang of thugs running an inner city neighborhood, or the pressure to keep quiet over ethical misconduct at your place of work, or the desire to feel “approved” as a good citizen of the state, or even the pressure to conform to a particular religious group, in either case, “losing yourself” in the midst of the crowd is an evasion, a cop-out, and a desecration of the image of God within you. Indeed following the crowd is a form of slavery where you surrender your freedom for the sake of a supposed sense of security... You become self-deceived because you no longer “own” yourself but became the ward of “another.” Becoming a member of a crowd makes you into a copy or similitude, a shadow rather than a person of substance. 1