The present time is one of remembrance. Sixty years ago, on 27 January 1945, the Red Army liberated the concentration camp at Auschwitz. This camp symbolizes the cold-blooded and brutal annihilation of Europe's Jews carried out by the Nazi state in its racial madness. We remember with shame what took place "in the name of the German people". We note in a spirit of mourning and rage the fact that it took place.

Pope Benedict XVI., who visited the jewish community in the synagogue of Cologne on 18th of august this year, said:

"In the twentieth century, in the darkest period of German and European history, an insane racist ideology, born of neo-paganism, gave rise to the attempt, planned and systematically carried out by the regime, to exterminate European Jewry. The result has passed into history as the Shoah. The victims of this unspeakable and previously unimaginable crime amounted to seven thousand named individuals in Cologne alone; the real figure was surely much higher. The holiness of God was no longer recognized, and consequently contempt was shown for the sacredness of human life.

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, in which millions of Jews - men, women and children - were put to death in the gas chambers and ovens. I make my own the words written by my venerable Predecessor on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and I too say: "I bow my head before all those who experienced this manifestation of the mysterium iniquitatis." The terrible events of that time must "never cease to rouse

consciences, to resolve conflicts, to inspire the building of peace" (Message for the Liberation of Auschwitz, 15 January 2005). Together we must remember God and his wise plan for the world which he created. As we read in the Book of Wisdom, he is the 'lover of life'(Sap 11, 26)"

"For many people � as Johann Baptist Metz points out � Auschwitz has long since moved beyond the reach of living memory. Yet the anonymous consequences of such a disaster are not lost on anyone. The theological question after Auschwitz is not only: Where was God in Auschwitz? It is also: Where was humankind in Auschwitz? I would like to say what it is that I have always found particularly moving and disquieting about the situation 'after Auschwitz'. What I am getting at is the unhappiness, the desperation of those who survived this disaster. I am referring to the fact that not a small number of the survivors have since taken their own lives. Evidently their desperation at the loss of humanity was too much for them. But how can one believe in humankind or even in ... humanity after having been forced to experience in Auschwitz what 'human beings' are capable of? How can one then continue living among human beings? To some extent, Auschwitz lowered the threshold of metaphysical and moral shame between human beings .. It is not only individual human beings, but also the idea of the human being and humanity that is at stake here. Only few people link Auschwitz to the current crises of humanity, such as the growing deafness toward general and major moral claims and value judgments, the loss of solidarity, cynical and self-interested conformism, the growing refusal to attach any moral perspective at all to the human ego etc.. Aren't these all votes of no confidence in the idea of the human being and his or her moral capacity? The human species has not only a surface history, but also a deep history, and that would appear to have been profoundly damaged by disasters like Auschwitz."

Where was God, where was humankind in Auschwitz?

"In Auschwitz, our civilization experienced a shocking confrontation with the abyss of its own potentials" - the German bishops said in their declaration of January 25, 2005 - "The shocking scale of the evil perpetrated in Auschwitz holds us captive to this day. ... Some of those who only just managed to escape the national socialist machinery of annihilation � such as the Viennese psychologist E. Frankl and the writers Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Paul Celan, Imre Kertosz, Louis Begley and Cordelia Edvardson, have created in their works a window through which future generations can not only gaze into the abyss of human existence, but also identify possible ways of engaging with ... Our people have taken a long time to face up to the responsibility for the monstrous crimes committed by Germans in the name of Germany." We should ask both the culprits and their political leaders, as well as those who just went along with it, or just looked the other way, and ourselves as Christians "whether the persecution of the Jews might not also have been promoted by anti-Jewish prejudices that were alive in the hearts and minds of a number of Christians." In his acknowledgement of the guilt of the Catholic Church on 12 March 2000, Pope John Paul II said: "Let us pray that, in recalling the sufferings endured by the people of Israel throughout history, Christians will acknowledge the sins committed by not a few of their number against the people of the Covenant and the blessings."

And what about God? In 1967, Metz was asked by the Czech philosopher Machovec, whether Christians could still pray after Auschwitz. Metz replied: "We can pray after Auschwitz, because people prayed in Auschwitz" . And Elie Wiesel has asked the question: "How can anyone in the age of Auschwitz and Majdanek calmly claim that Our Father in Heaven is great, just and merciful? How well do we understand the hero of our story who does not manage to speak the words: You loved us with a great love ..'

A great love � and Auschwitz? Eternal mercy � and Bergen-Belsen? How can the believer speak these words without them becoming a lie? There are two possibilities. Either prayer sticks to the present, staying close to the real and the concrete, or it is something merely abstract. As Jews, we believe that it is timeless, and yet still part of life as we live it ... One million Jewish children were martyred and thrown into the flames alive, and 'You chose us from among all the peoples '? Yes, let's say it loud and clear: How should we continue to pray after all that has happened? How can people turn to God, when His ways seem to us darker, His face more turned away and concealed than ever before.

We shouldn't say God has nothing to do with it. That would contradict everything that Judaism symbolizes. Through the good times and the bad, God participates in the fate of human beings. Anyone blessing Him for Jerusalem and not questioning Him about Treblinka is simply a hypocrite. God wishes to be there at the beginning and at the crucial end of our actions. He is both the question and the answer. Here lies a trap, because as little as one can make sense of Auschwitz with God, one cannot make sense of it without Him. So the question arises of whether we should serve Him or refuse to serve Him. But to pray on as if nothing had happened would be sheer cowardice. Does God call on human beings to be cowards? This is the core of the problem, assuming that we decide to stick with Him, with God."

At another point he confesses: "It is probably possible to live, or at least to exist, without hope and without truth, but it is not possible to do so without prayer, because prayer is a dynamic urge to turn both inward and outward, a path toward life."

In Yosl Rakover's "Turning to God" the author recalls the flight of a Jew from Spain whose wife and child were lost at sea. He calls out:

"God of Israel, I have fled here so that I can serve You without impediment: so that I can do Your bidding and sanctify Your name. Yet You do everything to make me stop believing in You. In case You think that You will succeed in diverting me away from the straight and narrow path with these temptations, I call out to You, my God and the God of my parents that it will be to no avail. Though You may insult me, chasten me, take away from me the dearest and the best of my worldly goods, and torment the life out of me � I shall always believe in You. I shall always love You, always � in spite of Yourself.

And those are my last words to You, my angry God: It will do You no good at all. You have done everything to lead me astray from You, to make me stop believing in You. But I shall die just as I have lived, as an unfailing believer in You.

Praise be in all eternity to the God of the dead, the God of vengeance, truth and judgment, who shall soon reveal His face once again to the world, and with His almighty voice shake it to its foundations.

'Schema Israel! � Hark, Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One! Into Your hands, o Lord, I offer up my prayer!"

Where was God in Auschwitz? Where was humankind in Auschwitz? How can we commemorate, how can we pray after Auschwitz?

My predecessor as the bishop of Aachen, Professor Klaus Hemmerle, once said on an anniversary of the Reichspogromnacht, the night on which Nazi criminals set fire to synagogues, desecrated Torah scrolls, demolished Jewish businesses and homes, and transported Jews to the concentration camps: "They set fire to my God's house."

"They set fire to my God's house
- and it was my people who did it.
They took it away from those
who gave me the name of my God
- and it was my people who did it.
They took their houses away from them
- and it was my people who did it.
They took their worldly goods, their honor
and their names away from them
- and it was my people who did it.
They took their lives away from them
- and it was my people who did it.
Those who call out the name of the same God
remained silent on the matter
- yes, it was my people who did it.

Some say: Let's forget about it and have done with it.
But the forgotten returns to catch us unawares.
How should forgetting put an end to things?
Should I say: It was my people who did it, not me?
- No, that's what my people did.