Sanctifying God's Name: Maintaining Humanity

            The classic definition of Kiddush haShem, sanctifying God’s name, is sacrificing one’s life at a time of decrees suppressing fulfillment of mitzvot, as Maimonides writes:

When anyone about whom it is said: “Sacrifice your life and do not transgress” sacrifices his life without transgressing, he has sanctified (God’s) name. And if this was in the presence of ten Israelites, he has sanctified (God’s) name in public, as did Daniel, Ḥananya, Mishael and Azarya, and Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues.  These are those slain by the (evil) kingdom, above whom there is no higher level, and of whom it is said: “For Your sake we are put to death all day long, we are considered as sheep to the slaughter.” [Psalms 44:23] And of them it is said: “Gather to Me My faithful, those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.” [Psalms 50:5]

                            Laws of the Essentials of Torah 5:4

            During the Holocaust years, there were Jews who asked the practical halachic question of whether to recite a blessing on sanctifying God’s name before being killed by the Nazis, and if so, what is the proper wording of the blessing. [See Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, Responsa Mimamakim, 2:4]

            However, we can ask if the six million Jews killed by the Nazis simply because they were Jews indeed are to be considered as having sanctified God’s name. The Nazis decreed death for all Jews, and were not interested in forcing the Jews to abandon their religion.

            Rabbi Yehoshua Moshe Aharonson, who survived the forced labor camps and the concentration camps, wrote: “this question racked my brain without relief, while I was still in the Valley of Death of the death camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.” Rabbi Aharonson concluded that the Jews indeed were killed in sanctification of God’s name, since “all the nations of the world clearly know that the Jews are God’s nation, and their oppression and hatred of the Jews stems only from this.”

            The Holocaust was a horrific desecration of God’s name, with God’s nation being trampled, by those who (as it were) said “where is your God?” (Based upon Psalms 42:4. Alshikh comments on the verse: “The name of Heaven is desecrated when it is said to Israel ‘Where is your God?’ that is, why does He not rescue you.”) The very fact that the Jews survived the Holocaust constitutes sanctification of God’s name.

            I heard an interview with a survivor of the death camps, who said that he has overcome all the physical tortures he endured, but what remains with him still, more than seventy years after his liberation, is the emotional – spiritual torture, in particular, the Nazis’ attempt to dehumanize the Jews. The survivor related that on the death march, a woman from a village on the route approached to offer a drink of water, and the S.S. guard told her: “This is not a human, it is a Jew.”

            In my opinion, the greatest sanctification of God’s name during the Holocaust is in the fact that Jews managed to maintain their humanity and the Divine image which is part of them.