The following are some quotes about Hasidic beliefs concerning the "karma" (they would not use that word) of the Holocaust, as reported by Jerome Mintz in 1968. (Note: most of his sources were themselves Holocaust survivors, attempting to understand this great tragedy within the context of their own theology and culture.)

From the chapter, "The Miztves and the Community," Legends of the Hasidim, pp. 129-133), on how Hasidim see the cosmic impact of the Torah's commandments:

The stakes in fulfilling the mitzves are, however, greater than the fate of a single soul. The least of the laws proclaimed is a vital fiber in the web of community destiny. In his introductory remarks on Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem notes that through the intensification of the belief in the sacred power of the law "every mitswah [sic] became an event of cosmic importance, an act which has a bearing upon the dynamics of the universe. The religious Jew became a protagonist in the dynamics of the world; he manipulated the strings behind the scenes." (Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, pp.29-30.) Neglect of the commandments resulted in exile of the community; continued denial of the tenets by the Jews means additional punishment, delay in the appearance of the Messiah, and prolongation of the exile.

[Quoting one of Mintz's Hasidic sources]:

Every Jew has to feel as if everything depended on him. That means, as it says in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), a person has to think this way: He is on the scale and the whole world is on the scale. And if he does one mitzve he draws the whole world onto the good side of the scale -- himself and the whole world. If he does a bad thing, he has to consider as if he were drawing himself bad and the whole world bad.

[Mintz]: Using the same reasoning, a great number of the Hasidim attribute the cause of World War II directly to the failure of the Jewish community as a whole to keep the mitsves.

As in the ancient past, the problems besetting the Jews can be seen as a purgative rather than a punishment. Seen in this perspective, the deaths due to World War II are a terrible cure for offenses committed against the law.

[Quoting a Hasid from the study]:

Nobody in the whole world has trouble like the Jews because they carry the responsibility for all the world. We have been exiled from Israel, the Temple destroyed. We have lost, not only in a material sense in that we are not in our own land, we have lost our highest standard of life, knowledge of God, and the highest observance of worship that was in the Temple. But, on the other hand, it is not a punishment. It is a clearing, a curing. And this cure is we are supposed to take because we did not observe exactly as we are supposed to all the mitzves [commandments].

{Mintz]: The Hasidim say that the disobedient Jewish community in Europe possessed the power to save itself by mending its ways. During the war the Lubovitcher Rebbe echoed the plea made at other critical moments in Jewish history: if all Israel [the Jewish people] would but keep two Sabbaths holy they would be redeemed. To explain the safety of the relatively impious Jews of the United States, it is said that they were saved because of their charitable works.

Additional explanations

[Mintz]: There is a danger that in this brief explanation Hasidic belief seems too easily to dissolve into a simple structure of magical power based on performance of the mitsves. Hasidic belief and tradition are multi-faceted and there are countless explanatory avenues. While we have noted, for example, dominant themes concerning the cause of World War II, it is impossible to state a single cause for the war upon which every hasid would wholeheartedly agree. There are a great number of seemingly contradictory notions existing side by side which attempt to explain the overwhelming tragedy. It is difficult, for example, for some Hasidim, as well as Jews in general, to accept an explanation of the war which condemns the dead of Europe as being impious and as having been the cause of their own destruction. Some say that the true causes are unknown and can never be known. Some note that Hitler, far from being an agent of the Almighty, had free will to do his evil deeds and is now being punished for his atrocities in the afterlife. In addition to other explanations, most Hasidim also assert that the world is simply following the path already prophesied and that terrible destruction precedes the coming of the Messiah. This necessary destruction would affect both guilty and innocent alike. As when the Angel of Death was loosed on Pharoah's time, forces of evil are sometimes unleased without any restraint.

From Mintz, Jerome, Legends of the Hasidim, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1968. pp. 130-131.

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