Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2007, Page 12

as the Jews say, the godforsakeness of the victims and the godlessness of
the guilty in the human history of violence and suffering.
I remember: in July 1943 in the age of 17, I lay watching bombs rain-
ing down all around me in my home town Hamburg, 40.000 people,
women and children, were killed as a result of that bombing and burned
as result of the firestorm following. Miraculously I survived; to this day I
don’t know why I am not dead like my comrades, friends next to me. My
question in that inferno was not: “Why is God letting this happen?”, but
rather: “Where is God?” Is God far away from us, absent, in his Heaven?
Or, is God among us, suffering with us? Does God share in our suffering?
One thing, it seems to me, is the theoretical question about accusing God
in face of the pains of the victims - this is the so-called theodicy-question
- the other is the existential question about community with God in suffer-
ing. The first question presupposes an apathetic, untouchable God in Hea-
ven, the second question is searching for a compassionate God, “the fell-
ow-sufferer who understands us”, as the philosopher and mathematician
Alfred North Whitehead wrote in his book PROCESS AND REALITY
after his 21-year old son died in a car accident.2
Yes, I also remember the moral catastrophe of my people, the inexora-
ble crime against the Jewish people, which has the name of shame: “Ausch-
witz”. I shall never forget the pictures of the dead in the concentration
camps of Bergen-Belsen shown to us POWs in England in October 1945.
It was so unbelievable, but it was true, the crimes were committed in the
name of my people. I shall never forget the walk through the remnants
and ruins of the death-camp of Maidanek, near Lublin, in November 1961.
I would have preferred to sink into the ground for shame than go on, and
there I became suddenly certain that these murdered people will rise and
live and meet me some day. The horrors over the crimes of Auschwitz had
weighed on me and many other people of my generation in Germany ever
since the end of the war. Much time passed, before we could emerge from
the silence that stops the mouths of people, over whom the clouds of the
victims hang heavy. “Did God let this happen?” - “Where is God?” Is God
2. A. N. Whiteheed, Process and Reality, New York 1960, 532.