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It can fairly be said that no historical account—nor likely any word at all—has ever been written in a truly „disinterested“ fashion, that is, abstracted from, or untainted by, the man who writes, the time and place in which he is situated, and his personal motivations. The question is always, then, how aware he is of his perspective, his own desires, fears, and blind spots. With Jews—more precisely, the esotericists we assess in this study—their perspective and self-awareness is quite pronounced. In their writings on the past, we find a tendency toward what might best be called mytho-history. This term is not meant as a criticism. To the contrary, it is imitable. Such a tradition arose among the Ancient Greeks and Romans, if often imperfectly. Today, we see it appear among Jewish artists and writers. In the end, we might ask what has had a stronger hand in creating the world, in forming the minds and dreams of men and women: the myths of Homer and the Hebrew Bible or the histories of Polybius and Gibbon? To be sure, both have had an impact, but to ask the question is to answer it. Myth has had the stronger hand. It was Homer that Alexander kept under his pillow. It was the image of Christ that inspired Constantine. It is the teachings of the Gospels that are continually invoked to justify social activism and political policy.

Both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament stand as the ultimate examples of Jewish mytho-history. Here, history is developed in a parabolic direction, if based, in part, on actual historical events and settings. History becomes the canvas upon which valuable and instructive parables are drawn. Hence, one might say that these works are something close to “historical fiction” or even fantasy novels or comic books. This is not because Jews are a primitive and superstitious people, prone to believing and promoting fabulous tales. To the contrary, it is evidence of their sophistication. Jews understand these parables to be their story and relevant to every age. Plausibility and historical verifiability are secondary concerns. And it is important to remember that history-writing as we know it today—that is, factual, putatively value-neutral accounts of the past („Wie es eigentlich gewesen„)—was an ideal born with Herodotus, and reborn in the age of Enlightenment. This notion would have been inscrutable to Jewish and Christian propagandists, as well as most in the ancient world. Throughout the Bible, Jews are not merely presenting myth as history; they are presenting it as JEM. This occurs in modern contexts as well, and we find many examples of Jews organizing, whether directly or through proxies, to punish those unwilling to accept canonical accounts. No clearer is this evident than in controversies surrounding the Holocaust.

This study is not concerned with examining, from the perspective of a modern historian, events involving Jews that occurred in Europe during the Second World War. There is a widespread consensus among academically trained, mainstream historians that more than five million Jews perished during the war as a result of shootings, gassings, and forced labor, part of a systematic policy of oppression and even extermination. Historical revisionists argue another story. Our task is different. It is to bring to light aspects of the Holocaust narrative, as it has been articulated through culture, that are parabolic and appear to reference the Bible. In this regard, Eli Wiesel’s „autobiographical novel,“ Night (1960), is paradigmatic.¹ Here, it is unnecessary to question the accepted facts of academic historiography. We do, however, speculate on whether many of these might be emphasized—or, in some cases, combined with invented elements or faulty memories—to complete metaphors or references to scripture and myth. In any event, as in the Biblical stories, we find strong elements of JEM in the Holocaust narrative.

That the most salient and influential Holocaust accounts contain fictionalized elements is something historians have long recognized.² In a passage that might as easily be referring to the Gospels, Holocaust scholar Lawrence Langer describes Wiesel’s famous „eyewitness account“ as follows:

[Night] is ballasted with the freight of fiction: scenic organization, characterization through dialog, periodic climaxes, elimination  of superfluous or repetitive episodes, and especially the ability to arouse the empathy of his readers, which is an elusive ideal of the writer bound by fidelity to fact.³

The biggest clue that Night contains fictive elements—outside of some of the more incredible events and persons—are the clear symbolic allusions that are made throughout the text. At the beginning of his novel, Wiesel describes himself as a young man eager to study Kabbalah. Right away we understand him as having an interest in Jewish mysteries, and an analysis of the symbol-laden Night reveals this to be true, indeed, in ways that the book’s critics and admirers have not fully recognized.

Is there evidence that the Holocaust narrative more broadly contains JEM? We should start with the name itself, “holocaust.” The term did occasionally appear prior to mid-20th-century accounts, as a reference to various calamities, most often of a military kind. Though with what we know as the Jewish Holocaust, the term is deployed, characteristically, in a conscious, symbolic, and religious manner. In fact, one is now scarcely permitted to use the word except in reference to the suffering of Jews during World War II without risking obloquy. The word „holocaust,“ like the event it describes, has not merely become a proper noun („The Holocaust“); it has become sacred. This is regularly admitted by Jews themselves. In fact, a whole field of theology, “Holocaust theology”—of which Wiesel was identified as a practitioner—has grown out of the wartime experience. The more popular, dramatic, fictive, and JEM-laden accounts of the Holocaust narrative appear poised to comprise future books of the Bible. To be sure, to the extent they will abide, they will abide, not due to their historical accuracy, but due to their mesmerizing JEM.

Surely this word, of all words, would not have been chosen haphazardly. Likewise we suspect similar intelligent and careful choices took place with other terms associated with the broader narrative. The Greek word holokaustos means “burnt offering” or „sacrifice,“ and burnt offerings are a central feature of the rituals described in Leviticus and throughout the Hebrew Bible. There, the term “burnt offerings” is translated into English from the Hebrew word olah (ֹהלָע). Frequently, it describes the burning of livestock animals, such as bulls or goats. It is noteworthy as well that popular Holocaust narratives frequently describe Jews as having been “scapegoated” by Hitler’s regime. Indeed, this particular and repeated use of language is likely a Biblical reference. It refers us, ultimately, to Leviticus and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), where one goat („Azazel“) is to be cast out.⁴

And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. (Leviticus 16:21).

While one goat is killed and burned for Yahweh; another is exiled, sent to die for Israel’s transgressions; the latter will „bear upon him all their iniquities“ (16:22). Yom Kippur is, in fact, the precise reference being made whenever someone uses the term “scapegoat.“ Hence both „holocaust“ and „scapegoat“ have distinct, if related, meanings and connotations. Some animals are consumed by Yahweh (and by extension the Jewish community), while others are demonized and exiled.

The element of fire is a point of emphasis in the broader Holocaust narrative. In Wiesel’s Night, we find a description of a Cassandra-like prophetess named Mrs. Schächter. She is standing in a cattle car full of Jews en route to Auschwitz, when she spontaneously screams,“Jews, listen to me, I see a fire! I see flames, huge flames!” The others in the car consider her mad, as no fires are present. She keeps shouting about this imaginary flames until she is knocked unconscious by a fellow prisoner. This scene is a parable, not an actual event. The woman’s name, Schächter, means “slaughterer.“ As an Ashkenazic name, it carries the meaning of “ritual slaughterer.” The passengers are, symbolically, to be offered as burnt offerings.⁵

Yahweh is a jealous fire god, one who consumes or destroys his offerings, making them „holocausts.“ A close reading of the Hebrew text, as we will explore, suggests Gentiles (symbolized by animals, wheat, bread, oils, or wood) are these offerings. Yet in the esoteric parable of the Holocaust, Jews themselves are being sacrificed. As the Hebrew Bible relays, Yawheh is not above punishing his own people or even his closest child, Judah. That a punishing Yawheh would abandon or even destroy the Jews during the Holocaust is a central theme that emerges in Holocaust theology. And we are reminded of the oft-repeated trope that the Holocaust has come to replace the modern Jews’ religious devotion. Instead of worshiping their god, Jews have come to worship themselves as a burnt sacrifice. That said, assuming that it is, in fact, Jews who are being sacrificed as „burnt offerings“ in the esoteric symbolism of the Holocaust may be incorrect.

In the Holocaust narrative, we find a salient crematorium, furnace, or oven motif. This strengthens the connection to the symbol of fire and the theme of consumption. And this, too, may have a Biblical connection. The Book of Daniel depicts the so-called Babylonian Captivity, when, after the destruction of the First Temple at the hands of the Bablonians, surviving Jews were exiled to the foreign empire. Babylon will eventually be overtaken by Persia, leading to the Jews‘ release from captivity and the building of the Second Temple. The overall „moral“ of Daniel—which included visionary and apocalyptic writing and the famous story of the „Lion’s Den“—is the rewarding of steadfastness, as well as calculated negotiations, as Jews live as „strangers in a strange land.“ In the third book, three Jews are placed into a furnace for their refusal to bow to king Nebuchadnezzar’s golden statue. The statue, through a metal or color symbolism, appears to be a reference to a solar god, akin to Apollo. (Many historians argue that the Book of Daniel was not written during the Babylonian captivity at all, but likely as an esoteric parable during the Maccabean revolt against the Syrian Greeks. So perhaps Apollo is precisely the god the author is thinking of.) When the three Jews are in the furnace, a fourth figure also appears next to them, described as having “the appearance of a son of the gods” (Daniel 3:25). To Nebuchadnezzar’s astonishment, the Jews emerge from the furnace unscathed. The word for furnace, only appearing in Daniel and ostensibly of Aramaic origin, is attun (אַתוּן). In the Biblical Hebrew, the same word, with a different vocalization, means “she-ass,” athon (אָתוֹן); in Modern Hebrew, it may also mean “she-ass“ or “mare.” Donkeys, among other livestock animals, are references to non-Jews. Possibly, there is a play on words here, and the furnace, like the „Den“ in Daniel 6, is a vaginal reference, with a Jewish “fire” inhabiting it. Indeed, often in JEM, fire is a sexual metaphor akin to „burning passions.“⁶ „Consumption by fire“ is a metaphor of sexual interaction with Aryans. With this in mind, we may find it unsurprising that the original Yiddish version of Night describes Jews racing off to Wiemar to rape German “shiksas” after the liberation of  Buchenwald. In the French and English versions, this confession or fantasy of rape is softened to “sleep with girls” and with “no trace of revenge.”⁷ Perhaps such details corroborates a narrative subtext of the Eastern Adonis returning to the Aryan Venus after his time in Hades.

In the end, this “miracle”—or sleight of hand—in which the Jews emerge unharmed from the furnace, is part of a psychological campaign on the part of Yawheh to demoralize and psychologically dominate Nebuchadnezzar. The king will famously go insane for seven years before finally submitting to the Jewish god. Again, Jews, like Yahweh, are suggested in this parable as the element of fire and are thus spared by him. In some profound and seemingly deliberate sense, the Holocaust becomes a repetition of this parable. As in Daniel, Jews were cast into a furnace and emerged, as a people, alive. The Holocaust narrative, precisely like the legend appearing in Daniel, becomes a parable of Aryan malevolence, Jewish indestructibility, and Jewish resurrection. In both narratives, Jews are inextinguishable and indomitable; they rise from the fire unscathed, and with greater power and resolve. In other words, they are a dying-and-rising god. On a deeper level, Jews are understood as fire itself. They thus become the natural inhabitants of the furnace; they are drakes, salamanders, and Mulciber.⁸ Satan (שָׂטָן) is a Jewish figure as much as is Yawheh. In other words, whether one accepts God or Christ or rejects him—that is, „turns to the Devil“—one cannot escape the Jews. This is the Caducean phenomenon.

The Jews of the Holocaust, as an image, become something akin to the condemned sinner in a fiery Christian Hell. The burning of the unrighteous found in the Gospel of Matthew also appears as a rehearsal of the ritual sacrifice described in Leviticus. Here goats are separated from sheep. „And before him [the Son of man] shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd divides his sheep from the goats“ (25:32). The goats, on Christ’s left side, are sent into “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels“ (25:41). The sheep on Christ’s right, enter the kingdom of heaven. It seems possible Wiesel is referencing this passage in Night, when SS officers direct weaker inmates on their left toward the crematorium, while sparing the healthier ones on their right for work.⁹

The Holocaust narrative, to the extent it was consciously developed in a parabolic direction, has another important layer, beyond the elements of „fire“ and „burnt offerings.“ This has to do with the metaphor of “the camp.” The settings of the Holocaust, Leviticus, and much of Exodus are camps­—and for the sacrificial livestock involved, “death camps.” As in Exodus, the Jews in the Holocaust narrative have once more become travelers, exiles, and refugees. In the beginning of Night, Wiesel’s father relays a false rumor that they are being transported to “Hungary to work in the brick factories.”¹⁰ This seems to be an allusion to the Israelites being forced to make bricks for the Pharaoh and suggests that the persecution and flight described in Exodus was on Wiesel’s mind.¹¹ This would be fitting. The Israelite camp is a central feature of the Exodus story. For Holocaust parabolists, the Jewish internment camps of World War II, which were expanded across Central Europe in territories occupied by the Third Reich, may have matched an existing Biblical metaphor. Parabolists like Wiesel would have naturally seized upon the camp of the wandering Israelites in the Hebrew Bible as an obvious parallel.

Exodus 12 describes the famous (or notorious) „passover“ episode that precedes Israel’s flight from Egypt. Yahweh strikes down the firstborn of every family in the land. „There was not a house where there was not one dead“ (12:30). Israel alone is exempted from the scourge, as they have followed Yahweh’s instructions to sacrifice a lamb and smear its blood on the top and sides of their household door frames.  This outrage is the last straw for the Pharaoh, who summons Moses and releases him and Israel from Egypt to serve their god in the wilderness. Yahweh has, in effect, terrorized the  population of Egypt until the Pharaoh relented. But there is another level to this. The subsequent chapter reveals that the passover lamb has acted as a scapegoat, a substitution for Yahweh’s blood lust for all firstborn, including Israel’s. Ominously, Yawheh declares to Moses: “Consecrate to Me every firstborn male. The firstborn from every womb among the Israelites belongs to Me, both of man and beast” (Exodus 13:2). We tend to understand these „sacrifices“ to be metaphorical: the firstborn of Israel will be set apart for service to Yawheh. But here we should remember that the tribe of Israel is largely non-Jewish, with the Judeans being the only official Jews. Hence, Yahweh’s command may signal the continuance of his bloody acts in Egypt. As it concerns beasts, however, Yawheh is referring to actual sacrifices, as animals are consecrated specifically to him.

In the Holocaust narrative, on the other hand, Jews become the sacrificial lambs. Thus, in this mythos, do we find a reversal of the metaphors in Leviticus and Exodus? Here again, we encounter the central dilemma of Holocaust theology: Why did the Jewish God allow the Holocaust to happen? Jews understand Yahweh as behind everything that happens, good and bad. So he must have actively consumed his own people? Or is it ultimately still the Gentiles being scapegoated?

The general psychological objective of the Holocaust narrative parallels that of Jesus Christ’s suffering and crucifixion. In fact, this is a connection Holocaust theologian Ignaz Maybaum makes explicit in his book The Face of God After Auschwitz (1965): “In Auschwitz Jews suffered vicarious atonement for the sins of mankind.”¹² He additionally compares Auschwitz to Golgotha, the site of the crucifixion. With both the crucifixion and Holocaust narratives, the Aryan audience is obliged to feel contrition and sorrow for a Jew who has suffered and died because of the Aryan’s own transgressions. Like Christ, Jews have gone to „hell“ and risen. Important here is that Christians do not view the crucifixion as an indictment of Pharisees or Romans so much as an indictment of themselves. The Christian sees Christ’s death as atonement for the Christian’s own sins.¹³ Christ suffers for us. This „guilt complex“ is, in fact, a consistent quality in tragedies ancient and modern—the audience is the one who suffers…