Where Was God?: The Lives and Thoughts of Holocaust and World War II Survivors

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. He is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and co-author
of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Infl

The Holocaust continues to exercise its grip on the Western mind. How
could six million Jews and millions of Poles, Gypsies, Russians, and
others have died in Nazi extermination camps? Where was God?

That is the question asked by Remkes Kooistra, a Dutch national who
became the chaplain at the University of Waterloo. Kooistra hit on the
idea of collecting survivors’ memories and prefacing these accounts
with a few brief chapters to put the persecution of the Jews, the
chronology of World War II, and philosophy in context. The recollections
work better than the early chapters, perhaps because they encompass Jews
and non-Jews and let individuals speak.

Of Kooistra’s goodwill there can be no doubt. This volume, however,
seems more a personal expiation of the ghosts that haunt Christianity
than a coherent account of a great and terrible era.