Confronting the Silence: A Holocaust Survivor's Search for God

by Walter Ziffer

The life story of a Holocaust survivor: his prewar childhood in Czechoslovakia, his experiences in eight Nazi concentration camps, his liberation and emigration to the USA, and his career as a General Motors engineer, a Christian minister, and a consummate teacher.
For Walter Ziffer, who today considers himself a Jewish secular humanist, life has always been a search for meaning. His compelling and insightful memoir distills the experiences of a remarkable man.
Excerpt:
“There was the sound of shattering glass punctuated by dull thuds. And what came through very clearly was shrill laughter. I did not understand this hubbub. ‘What’s going on, father, tell me?’ ‘Walti,’ he responded quietly and in a shaky voice, ‘I think they are burning our synagogue.’ Turning my face up toward my father’s, I said, ‘Look Tati, the sun is rising.’ To this my father responded with, ‘Yes, Walti, the sun is rising, but our sun is setting.’”

222 pages, Paperback

Published March 6, 2017

Reviews

[Jim Stokely · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful life story. Most great Holocaust memoirs end in the summer of 1945, but this one describes Walter Ziffer's later life and weaves in the effects of having to survive the concentration camps.

[Joshua J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amidst the identity-forming ages of 15 to 18 years old, Walter Ziffer endured and survived a deathly gauntlet of Nazi extermination camps in which fourteen of his family members were murdered among the approximately six million Jews systematically hunted and slaughtered.

After the Soviets smashed down the concentration camp walls and marched on, a young 87-pound Walter slowly emerged. He was a person without means or legal documentation, yet he managed to cross Europe, reach the US, earn four engineering patents, become a professor, and write this vital book.

It has been over four months since I listened to his powerful memoir, and a question posed by Dr. Ziffer still grips me: "Who was the biggest bystander of all?" After reading the crushing first-hand accounts provided by Dr. Ziffer, how COULD we believe that a loving and powerful god exists given the psychological and physical torture encapsulated within the Holocaust? Dr. Ziffer beautifully and courageously confronts the silence of the presumed entity that should have comforted the desperate cries of the innocent.

[William Auman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A harrowing story, well-written but somewhat disappointing in that the events depicted seemed to have led to a somewhat negative impact on the author's faith in the end.

[Bill Linton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the first part of the book recounting Ziffer’s experience as a Jew during the rise of the Third Reich interesting. His description of his later life is rather tedious and boring.

[Heather Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first part is difficult to get through, but it is important to remember history and what those who survived it actually survived. Walter's journey was very different from those of Elie Wiesel and Viktor Frankl. Every time I complain about something, I need to remember these stories and realize that whatever it is I am complaining about is nothing compared to what society will allow. In truth, that reflection would benefit us all...