Noémi and Samu’s Reflections on the Question: Where Was God?

    Before the Holocaust, our family followed the moderately conservative, non-Orthodox Jewish tradition in which my parents were raised. We were not overly religious, but we loved our traditions and the history of our religion—the literature, the songs, the melodies. Being Jewish includes understanding Hebrew, and my parents made sure that this was true for their daughters—teaching Erzsébet and me to read and recite Hebrew prayers.

    Every Friday night our family’s celebration of the Sabbath was the highlight of the week. My mother or grandmother lit the Shabbat candles, and our house was filled with the aroma of freshly baked challah (traditional Jewish bread). My father blessed the bread and wine, and we began our meal. After eating, we sat together in the living room, quietly reading and enjoying each other’s company; Friday evenings were always slow, quiet, and peaceful. Something extraordinary and beautiful—a silent trust and shared affection—surrounded us and filled us with serenity. I felt so protected and loved in those special hours each week—feelings that have stayed with me throughout my life.

    Judaism played an important role in my parents’ lives during their early years, and became especially important to my father when he was a prisoner-of-war (POW) in Russia during World War I. In the POW camps, the guards segregated prisoners by nationality and housed all Jewish prisoners together, so friendships developed between Jewish prisoners from different countries. During those years, my father regularly practiced speaking and writing in Hebrew. Even before that time, religion was important to my father. In fact, when he was in his early teens, my father’s parents decided that he should become a rabbi. However, through a twist of fate, that plan didn’t work out, and my father became a teacher instead. As a teacher, my father remained interested in the history and traditions of the Jewish people. He was also active in the Jewish community, and sometimes served as cantor during Sabbath or holiday services, leading our congregation in singing prayers. 

    My father wanted our family to have a strong Hungarian identity in addition to our Jewish traditions. In the Hungarian school system, all religious schools received government funding in addition to the costs paid by the local congregation. My father viewed himself as a Hungarian teacher employed by both the Hungarian government and the local Jewish congregation and was proud of our assimilation into the broader Hungarian community; he considered our family to be fully Hungarian. On the other hand, my father was also an observant Jew and a Zionist—very much in support of the idea of a Jewish homeland in the Palestine (and of Israel when it was established in 1948). However, he was careful not to be overwhelmed with Zionist ideas because, after all, we were Hungarians first. It’s not surprising that I grew up feeling proud to be both Jewish and Hungarian. 

    Despite our assimilation into Hungarian culture, it was impossible to escape the long history of anti-Semitism in Hungary and throughout Europe. The situation became worse with the rise of Adolph Hitler, the Nazi leader who came to power in Germany when I was ten years old. Growing up in Hungary, I have to say that there was a pecking order of prejudice. Even though my parents did their best to protect me, I was aware that those of us who were Jewish sometimes faced the same kind of discrimination experienced by the Romani people, the traveling gypsies who kept their belongings in suitcases and moved from city to city. As Jews, we encountered prejudice, yet we knew it was even worse for the gypsy families. Although we lived in a smaller city and didn’t have contact with the Romani people, my mom talked with me about how they were mistreated because people saw them as different. My parents taught me to treat everyone with respect, but not all Hungarians had that philosophy.

    My parents worked hard to protect Erzsébet and me from anti-Semitism. Although I wasn’t directly faced with a lot of prejudice, I heard discussions within the family. For example, I heard some of the ridiculous “blood libel” stories claiming that Jews supposedly kidnapped and murdered Christian children to use their blood to make matzo, the unleavened bread we prepare during Passover. Although there was no truth to these stories, some people believed and repeated these lies. I also heard that some people accepted the nonsense that Hitler and other fascists kept repeating—claims of Jewish conspiracies and accusations that the Jewish people were responsible for the German and Hungarian losses in World War I. Sadly, it didn’t take long for repeated lies to become some people’s truth.

    During this time, some of our family members (and many other Jews) discovered that increasing anti-Semitism was affecting their businesses and ability to earn a living. Some relatives who owned a small bakery and grocery store in Budapest told us they were in danger of losing their livelihood because the owner of a competing store regularly stood outside his own store, pointing to their business and yelling, “Don’t go to that store! They are dirty Jews! We sell the very same goods, so you don’t even need to go close to them. Stay away!” I also heard my Uncle Simon talking about the difficulties he was experiencing teaching in a non-Jewish school. Soon after, he was fired from his position, just because he was Jewish. In hindsight, these were all warning signs. Human nature, especially when someone is young, is to hope for the best. Although I handled what I was hearing by trusting it would pass, my parents paid close attention and became increasingly worried about what Jewish families might face next. And then came the Holocaust.

    God is a word, a concept, someone to believe in, or to pray to, or to thank, or to blame. Although I grew up surrounded by religious practices, God wasn’t part of my life during the Holocaust. After experiencing and witnessing so many unbelievable acts of Nazi cruelty and being targeted because of my religious background, you might think I spent time wondering, “Where is God?” 

    I can only speak for myself, but when the horrifying actions of the Nazis took over our lives, I wasn’t thinking of God. I didn’t have the energy for prayer or contemplation or holding tightly onto my faith. I might have normally turned to God with thoughts such as, “Please keep my family safe,” or “God knows I’m human and will protect my humanity, even though the Nazis are treating us as worthless.” Such thoughts might have given me solace, but they didn’t come. The horrors surrounding me were too overwhelming.

    During the Holocaust, I was battling to simply survive each and every day. There was no room in my world for thoughts of God. At first, I was too terrified. Then I was completely drained of emotion. My body and my brain were barely functioning due to the lack of water and food. My heart had been broken, first by being separated from my loved ones and then when I learned how their lives had ended in such an appalling way. There is a saying in Hungarian that is commonly used during daily interactions, or sometimes for heavier purposes such as someone in the family being very ill. It translates to “May God be with you.” In Auschwitz, this wasn’t a phrase that any of us used. We had seen so much and had been beaten down so completely that it didn’t occur to us that God might be with us.

    During our time as prisoners, life was so out of order there was no room for anything besides getting through each moment, each hour, and each day. There was so much pain. It felt like we simply existed and had nothing to believe in anymore. I didn’t have the capacity to think clearly let alone to consider profound questions such as “Why is God allowing us to suffer this unbelievable cruelty?” When I learned the truth about the gas chambers and crematoria, I didn’t ask, “Why is God permitting this senseless killing of innocent people?” Every ounce of my energy went to surviving the thirst, starvation, and inhumane treatment.

    After I was free and was able to focus on more than immediate survival, I discovered that many of the traditions that had once been an important part of my life, such as keeping kosher, were no longer a priority for me. Although I grew up in a home where my parents had always followed kosher practices, I learned during the Holocaust that when you’re starving, food is food. In Auschwitz, we were lucky to be fed and there was certainly no such thing as kosher. As a Holocaust survivor I learned that things I had once thought were necessary, like celebrating the Sabbath each week, were not as critical as having food, water, and life. Those are essential. I learned these harsh lessons as I watched people dying all around me.

    After returning to Hungary, as I was attempting to once again lead a normal life, I searched my heart and my head for ways to deal with my complex feelings about God. At first, I just couldn’t find the strength to care about religion. It was too much for me. It felt like that part of my life—the wonderful traditions that I shared with my family—were gone forever. Being a Nazi prisoner pushed me so far away from my previous existence that it took a long time to recover even the simple self-care functions of daily living. Even after I got married, it was a while before I began to think about the traditions from my early life.

    During those first years after the war ended, I didn’t need to look far to find someone who had similar thoughts about religion. My father, overwhelmed by unbelievable heartache, understood completely. He asked everyone to leave him alone on the topic of religion, and I understood and respected his wish. Like my father, I wasn’t yet ready to let religion back into my life. We didn’t want to hear about it. We both found it impossible to make sense of the unbelievable horrors that had occurred just because of our being Jewish, and the reality that no one, not even God, had saved our loved ones. We could not comprehend why so many innocent people were hated, mistreated, and killed because of our background or beliefs.



    Before I returned, my father had spent days walking among the ruins of our bombed home, waiting for word of our fate. In those days he had turned to God, seeking reassurance. He hoped that his prayers would be answered—that his family was safe and would return home. My father used his journal to express his thoughts and feelings, praying for news that we had survived. In the early weeks, he managed to keep hope alive and had faith that we had all been spared. As the wait grew longer, my father was tortured with thoughts about what might have happened to us, the family that he was forced to leave behind.

    After I say my prayers deep from my heart and soul, I trust in your help, dear God!! Please make it so that my suffering, pain and sorrow should end and that I’ll have my dear ones back. I wonder if you have listened to my prayers. Who among my dear ones will I be able to see again? I feel like my heart is breaking, my mind is bursting open, my soul is falling apart. My God, you know how much I love them.

    There were times when his hopes surged after hearing rumors that we had been taken to Austria instead of Auschwitz.

    I hope it is a reality that they have survived. Again, thank you my good God! Thank you, dear God, that it wasn’t Auschwitz. Thanks! Thanks! I got back from the deepest point of hell with the help of this good news. Now I’m able to wait patiently with the knowledge that it’s possible that they survived.

    In those moments, my father was full of hope and felt closely connected to God. In contrast, when my father learned that my mom, my sister, and baby brother might have been killed in the gas chambers, he began to wonder, “Why would God allow the Nazis to kill so many innocent people?” In his journal, overwhelmed with disbelief that they might have perished, he wrote:

    Oh, my God! It cannot be true that my dear ones all disappeared without a trace. It cannot be true if there is a God! Because he exists, they have to be alive! Please, God, give us a chance. My God, give them back to me!

    My father struggled to understand why his tiny son was taken from him asking,

    What is the reason for you to be born and then leave so soon? No! If there is God, it’s not possible! And because there is God, it’s impossible that all three of you are gone! No! A thousand times, no!

    My father found it increasingly difficult to take part in religious services. Even the High Holy Days, traditionally such an important part of my father’s life, brought him pain rather than solace. Yet he still did his best to turn to prayer.

    For a few weeks I went to the synagogue on Friday night. Now even if someone would try pushing me in the door, I wouldn’t go. I can’t! I can only cry and mourn. I suffered a lot during the Holy days. I didn’t pray much and I didn’t go to the synagogue either. I simply can’t go. I can’t stand it anymore! Since then, I haven’t returned to the synagogue, but I pray even more at home.

    And once I finally told my father the truth—that our dear ones had perished in Auschwitz—my father did his best to make sense of what had happened within the context of his lifelong beliefs.

    All of us must be sinners to have this unbelievable punishment. Those who already came home alive, were they better people than all of you? No!!! I can’t believe it! No, it can’t be! It must have been some other reason, something which we can’t understand. We are not smart enough to understand or judge God’s ways. But I can’t resign myself to the fact that my loved ones are gone. I don’t want to. I can’t believe it because I don’t want to believe that this horrible thing—losing all of you—could be true!

    His thoughts then turned to trying to understand why God would allow a kind, loving woman like my mother to be taken far too soon.

    My God, you looked on when this dear person was killed. You know, my God, what kind of human being she was! And they killed her. Why didn’t you give a suffering man a chance to love and to take care of those dear ones who became mine—because you let them be mine? I trusted you my God!

    And finally, deep into his grieving, my father’s despair turned to anger.

    Where is God, the caring God? Nowhere! There is no justice. There is no God in the meaning we were taught—the God who takes care of every individual, who saves the good people and destroys the wicked, evil ones. So my dear wife, my Juliska was wicked? She was evil? Whom did she hurt? She, who herself was full of goodness!! The loving mother, the most beautiful symbol of a loving wife. And twelve -year-old Erzsébet and six-month-old Gabi, what were their sins? Why did they have to be killed? They had no sin. They did nothing wrong. And the fact that they were destroyed leads to the conclusion that there is no caring God. It’s a dogma, a myth. Life after death and all this kind of talk, I don’t believe in it! We were happy here on earth; only this life is true life! Those who tell us the opposite are just speaking of a hypothesis. Religions and their teaching only mislead people, making people less alert, acting as a painkiller, making people forget the real problems, making people blind! Who made this happen? Where is the caring God? Where is God? Nowhere!

    You can see how those months of hope and grief were an intensely complex time for my father, a man who had always found comfort in his religious traditions. His parents had raised him surrounded by Judaism with a plan that he would become a rabbi. Although my father’s life went in a different direction and he became a teacher of history and religion, he was always a devoted member of the synagogue and Jewish community.

    After the war, there was a huge transformation in my father—his new life was completely foreign from what he had known before the Holocaust. He didn’t want to hear about religion. He wasn’t willing to go into a synagogue, nor did he have any interest in celebrating the Sabbath or any Jewish holidays. He gave no thought to keeping kosher. As he grieved, my father insisted that he wanted nothing to do with God, claiming that there was nothing he could believe in anymore.

    When Ernő and I were married in Szeged, my father was unable to attend our wedding, but he seemed relieved that we were married by a rabbi. Perhaps that was the beginning of opening his heart back to the religion he had cherished for years. And religion slowly returned to my life, too, in part because Ernő’s work as a cantor kept me connected to the synagogue—at least until the Communists closed all of Hungary’s places of worship.

    I gradually saw my father soften his position when some of his friends—a group of men who were also deeply shaken by the Nazi atrocities—began to gather for prayer. Although they initially avoided synagogue services, they were finding their way back to religion. These friends decided to create their own small synagogue in someone’s home. It was very primitive, but it was a place where they could pray together. They begged my father to join them, especially because they were concerned about his deep depression. Although they understood my father’s changed views on religion after he lost his beloved wife and children, they believed that a return to prayer would help him heal. At first my father didn’t want to have anything to do with their prayer services and repeatedly urged them to leave him alone. But eventually he relented and joined them. My father had a beautiful tenor voice, so he became their unofficial cantor, leading his friends in prayer. It was a small, informal congregation hidden from the Communists and from any Hungarian Nazis who might be watching. I have no doubt that this prayer group created a sense of belonging and reconnection that helped with my father’s recovery.

    It took some time, but my father and I were eventually ready to speak about and rekindle our precious memories of religious life before the war, particularly those special evenings our family spent together celebrating the Sabbath. And slowly our lives once again included religion—but with some major differences. The biggest change was that we no longer had our loved ones with us. Our family was no longer whole. Also, the Nazis had stolen the religious items used by our family for generations—symbols of our religious and family traditions connected to wonderful memories of family unity.

    I’m happy that I can now say that the Nazis didn’t triumph in killing my faith in God or stealing my Jewish identity or the beliefs with which I was raised; they simply put them on hold for a while. Just as my nose, my ears, and my hands are part of me, the same is true with my Jewish roots and faith. Can I change my nose or my ears or my hands? No. They are part of who I am. In the same way, being Jewish is who I am and who I always will be. My faith had been a guiding light for me and, once I recovered from the trauma of the Holocaust, it returned. And my faith remains unchanged to this day. I cannot, would not, and will not shy away from the fact that I’m Jewish. Although my views on God and religion became more complicated after the Holocaust, the Nazis didn’t succeed in robbing me of my religion or my religious traditions. I’m proud to be Jewish, and that will never change.