Liviu Librescu: Holocaust Survivor & Campus Hero & Why this happened?

From Time Dispatch

The puny human mind looks upward and begs for an answer that doesn't come to the question, "Why?" If everything were explicable there would be no need for faith.

AND YET coincidence, it has been said, is God's way of staying anonymous. By coincidence this past weekend was the occasion of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Where, one might ask, was God when the Nazi henchmen were gassing the Jews in Bergen-Belsen, in Treblinka, in Auschwitz? Some of those who answer that God was nowhere to be found end up like Itzhak Zuckerman, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, who said bitterly: "If you could lick my heart, it would poison you."

Others have said that God was there there, in the gas chambers, cradling the dying. Evidence for the latter view comes from Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, where -- as Devorah Ben-David, co-founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum, reminds us -- liberators found a scrap of paper with a prayer on it:

"Lord, remember not only the men of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted upon us. Remember rather the fruits we have brought, thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown out of this. And when they come to judgment, let all the fruits we have bourne be their forgiveness."

Those most agonizingly seared by yesterday's massacre at Virginia Tech may be, for now, inconsolable. Let us hope their hearts eventually heal, and that someday they find solace in the fruits of their suffering.