Who said, regarding the Holocaust, where was God?, and was answered
with, Where was man?  Where is it written?  Was it Martin Buber, and if
so, what is thew reference?
Thank you.


Was it Buber?

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 12 Feb 2006 16:53 PST

socrates,

Nice to see you back, after all these millenia!

The question of "Where was God" is an old one for Jewish philosophers,
harking back to the Lord's apparent abandonment of the Jewish people
during their enslavement in Egypt in Biblical times.

I came across many references in scholarly works to the dual questions
of "Where was God?"  "Where was Man?" in regards to the Holocaust. 
However, not a one of them actually cites a source for the question,
but merely treats it as a commonly-asked set of questions.  Notably,
all the uses of the two questions are of fairly recent vintage.

The earliest actual use of the dual questions that I came across was a
newspaper article from 1978 that attributes it not to a professional
philosopher, but to a classroom discussion between students and a
teacher, as the ninth-graders prepared to watch a documentary program
on the Holocaust.

Will that citation do?

pafalafa-ga

This may be of interest to you:

"Emmanuel Levinas, the Lithuanian born Jewish philosopher who himself
was a prisoner of war near Hanover, Germany was greatly concerned with
the relationship between ethics and the Other. Identity stems from
one's encounter with alterity. He views the Holocaust in terms of a
crisis in ethical relations. He asks, not 'Where was God? Rather, the
question for Levinas is, Where was man as an ethical being, during -
and after the Shoah?"

http://www.remembranceandhope.com/articles/berger.html

According to http://www.exeterpress.co.uk/HolocaustIntro.htm

It was Chief Rabbi of Great Britain Immanuel Jakobovits who replied,
"Where was man?" The question is a generic one of Jewish philosophy. I
hope this helped.

Hans Kunk in "Credo:  The Apostles Creed Explained for Today" said
"Was God at Auschwitz?  If God is God: all-powerful, all-knowing,
all-good and loving, present everywhere, then of course God must have
been at Auschwitz!  ?But how could God have been at Auschwitz without
preventing Auschwitz??	 ?How could God have ?looked on? when the gas
streamed out and the cremation ovens were burning??*

Also

The Thologian Eugene Borowitz (1924-2000) said 
 Any God who could permit the Holocaust, who could remain silent
during it, who could ?hide His face? while it dragged on, was not
worth believing in. There might well be a limit to how much we could
understand Him, but Auschwitz demanded an unreasonable suspension of
understanding.
In the face of such great evil, God, the good and the powerful, was
too inexplicable, so men said, ?God is dead.?

Are either of those what you are looking for?

Juz Me.

Ooops.. sorry.  That's Hans Kung.