"Why did God let the Holocaust happen?"

Since it's Holocaust Memorial Day in Europe and I am an Ambassador for the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET), I thought today would be an appropriate time to answer the above question. I've been asked this question a few times, most frequently when I visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps in Poland, as part of my work as an Ambassador for the HET.

I'd like to start this post by directing you to this post over at GotQuestions? They have answered (with reference to Bible verses) the above question for the most part and since they've done it so well, I won't spend time repeating what they've said here. Instead I will summarise (and you can read in its entirety and and check the references) and I'll add what that post didn't say.

In short:

• God's permission is not the same as God's approval. Just because something bad happens, doesn't mean God approves of it
• We will never understand God's plans because we do not have infinite knowledge like He does. His knowledge includes possibilities, past, present and future
• Humans are sinful and pursue sinful, selfish desires. They have the choice to turn from this but many do not. The sinful actions of the Holocaust therefore rest with those involved, who made that choice - not God
• God is just and thus those involved in the atrocites will be punished accordingly
• One good thing to come out of the Holocaust was the establishment of Israel as a nation for the Jews, fulfilling prophecies in Ezekiel 37 and Matthew 24

To add a little more:
The key issue here is free will. Sin exists in the world and it always will. God gave us free will (that's a whole post in itself) so that we could choose to love and follow Him, as opposed to being robot-style humans 'programmed' as it were to love God because He made us that way.

Due to free will, people can do disgusting acts like the Holocaust. God can intervene, but if He did this all the time we'd have 2 problems:

1. This would remove free will. No one would ever get round to actually doing something against God, because He'd always stop them
2. We would stop helping ourselves because we would expect intervention from God all the time. A bit like a superhero situation.

We need to turn from evil and choose good for ourselves and try to convince others to do the same. My last thought on the issue is that when I was at the camps, I felt closer to God. It sounds strange, but it is the eeriest, scariest, quietest, most frightening and morbid place I have ever been, even without prisoners and SS officers. I realised the cruelty of man and the contingent, fragility of life. That brought me closer to God. It made me realise that He is the only way.

If we are saved, if we believe and trust in Jesus Christ and follow Him, life on earth is as bad as it will ever get for Christians. One day we will join our Lord in the place He has prepared for us (John 14:2-4)