The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors

by Reeve Robert Brenner

The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors reveals the victims' frank and thought-provoking answers to searching questions about their Was the Holocaust God's will? Was there any meaning or purpose in the Holocaust? Was Israel worth the price six million had to pay? Did the experience in the death camps bring about an avowal of faith? A denial of God? A reaffirmation of religious belief? Did the Holocaust change beliefs about the coming of the Messiah, the Torah, the Jews as the chosen people, and the nature of God? Drawing on the responses of seven hundred survivors, Reeve Robert Brenner reveals the changes, rejections, reaffirmations, doubts, and despairs that have so profoundly affected the faith, practices, ideas, and attitudes of survivors, and, by extension, the entire Jewish people. Many survivors carried their deepest secrets and innermost beliefs silently, from internment to interment. But Brenner's quest provided the impetus for many survivors to end their silence about the past and come forth with their feelings. In poignant vignettes scattered throughout the book, their answers to these profound questions are offered, disclosing ardent, overpowering passions and sensibilities.

Genres: Holocaust

311 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2014

Reviews

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

For this book, Brenner surveyed hundreds of Holocaust survivors living in Israel, trying to answer the question: how did the Holocaust affect survivors' belief and Jewish observance? Was there a massive loss of faith, or did most people retain their pre-Holocaust values?

The answer is somewhere in between- although most people were roughly similar before and after the war, there was modest movement in the direction of less observance and less religious belief. For example, 45 percent of Brenner's sample was minimally or not at all observant (performing five or fewer of twenty Jewish rituals listed) before World War II; 50 years later, 57 percent fell into this category. Similarly, there was a modest increase in nonbelief: 26 percent of survivors classified themselves as pre-Holocaust atheists or agnostics, a number that increased to 31 percent over the following decades. The percentage of survivors describing Judaism as the "only true religion" decreased from 41 percent to 36 percent. In all of these categories, there was a stronger swing away from religion right after the Holocaust, and a partial shift back towards religion in the following decades.

In addition to survey results, the book contained lots of written individual responses, showing the diversity of opinion among survivors. I do wish, however, that the book had contained more tables; Brenner relies heavily on narrative to describe his statistical findings, which I sometimes found confusing.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author is my grandma’s friend, but that has nothing to do with my opinion of the book. It is entertaining and informative and deeply sad. I quite liked seeing the statistics of how the Holocaust survivors though about religion, and the stories of the terrible things they went through.