Reflections on the Reality of Evil

by Jim Holbrook

There is a street in the city of Maastricht in the Netherlands where 50 Jews lived in August 1942. Gentiles on the street stood by as they watched their Jewish neighbors being taken away by the German SS and Dutch police. To put names and faces to these victims of the Holocaust would individualize their lives and deaths, so they are not mere statistics.

However, the “what” and “who” of the Shoah are widely known. The “why” is the stumbling stone. We need to address the “why,” even if the “why” cannot be answered.

We can analyze the various “bystander” theories and show that no theory explains the enormity of the evil of the Holocaust—not the fear of personal reprisal; not reluctance to get involved; not anti-Semitism; not follow-the-crowd; not the seduction of a messianic leader; not the need for a scapegoat; not the banality of evil; not that humans are inherently disinterested in the fates of others; etc. Our failure to explain why these Dutch Jews died should be a warning that we can’t guarantee a Holocaust will happen “never again.”

Even the US was complicit as a bystander. We did not allow Jewish refugees to emigrate here to escape Nazi persecution. We forcibly turned away those who tried, sending them back to their deaths. We did not publicly acknowledge Germany was murdering millions of people. President Roosevelt chose not to bomb the death camps, which would have disrupted industrialized mass murder, making it more difficult and expensive for the Nazis to kill millions more.

It is possible to compare the rape and slaughter of innocents in Nigeria today, for example, to the Holocaust, but I think the Holocaust is different, not just in the number and the diversity of the victims or the nationalization and industrialization of mass murder.

I think the Holocaust forces us to address the undeniable reality of Evil (with a capital E). Does Evil exist in me as part of my creature hood? Are humans inherently evil and, therefore, willing and capable of doing great Evil? Does Evil exist as a cosmic reality separate and independent from and co-equal with Goodness? Why did an omnipotent God not prevent the Evil of six million murdered Jews?

When we stare into the abyss, the Abyss stares back.