History

From what I’ve understood about the Holocaust, there were some Jews whose lives were spared, at least temporarily, in exchange for them working to manufacture various items for the Nazis. What they were manufacturing in some cases were items the Nazis needed in order to murder other Jews. Many Jews ultimately survived the Holocaust this way. Was this work that these Jews did forbidden by Jewish law on the basis that they were contributing to the murder of their fellow Jews?

Dear Rabbi, This is so embarrassing. We are horrified and don’t know what to do. We are not Jewish. We are Catholic, but most of our close friends are Jewish. We are strong supporters of the Jewish people and the state of Israel, where we have been. We have attended the bar and bat mitzvahs of the children of our friends. We have been to Passover seders. Some of our friends consider us honorary Jews. We have a beautiful 19-year-old mentally challenged daughter who lives with us. She doesn’t appear visibly handicapped. Anyone who meets her might think she is smart by the way she talks. She has been with us to the Sabbath and holiday meals of our friends and to bar and bat mitzvahs and Jewish weddings and to Israel too. And she has Jewish friends she hangs around. We live across the street from a public park. Recently, an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protest rally was staged at this park. We were at work during the day when it happened and would probably not have known about it if not for what happened with our daughter. It was a day she had off from her job at a restaurant. She saw the rally outside the window and became curious. She walked across the street into the crowd, not knowing what she was getting into. All the organizers wanted was a body and perhaps someone noticed her naivety. They gave her a Palestinian flag to wave and a sign that read “Free Palestine” under the guise of it being a human rights cause. Just as luck would have it, a reporter snapped a photo of whom he perceived was a beautiful young woman with an eye-catching smile at that very moment. That photo appeared on the front page of our local newspaper. The picture has apparently gone viral on social media. She does not have the mind to comprehend the situation in the Middle East, no matter how much we try to explain it to her. She has no recognition that those people or their cause are bad. She does not understand the implication of what she did. All she understands is that she was on the front page of the paper. And she is proud of her 15 minutes of fame. Wherever we go with her in public now, strangers are approaching us and saying they recognize her from the news. She wants to be wanted, and when someone put her in the spotlight, it made her feel important. We are in shock.