Jews are being erased from the Holocaust by the very people saying ‘never again'

Yahoo

28-01-2025

It's almost unbelievable, but Jews are being written out of the Holocaust story.
Even that one day of remembrance could not go unmolested. At least Good Morning Britain apologised for its broadcast with anchor Ranvir Singh and a reporter at Auschwitz. In the original clip on Holocaust Memorial Day, Singh said: 'Six million people were killed in concentration camps during the Second World War as well as millions of others because they were Polish, disabled, gay or belonged to another ethnic group.'
As the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and others pointed out, the word Good Morning Britain was struggling to say was 'Jews'. The next day, Singh went on air again: 'We said six million people were killed in the Holocaust, but crucially, we failed to say they were Jewish. That was our mistake for which we apologise.' Fair enough, but evidence of this marginalisation of the 'Jewishness' of the Holocaust can be found in many places and in many forms. It's almost impossible to tell when this is inadvertent or when it is genuinely nefarious. In the worst cases, it's clear that the same people who are happy to accuse Jews of weaponising the Holocaust are themselves weaponising it against Jews.
Unsurprisingly, Students for Palestine led the way in this regard. Their Holocaust Memorial Day statement wasn't exactly focused on those six million Jews murdered in the name of anti-Semitic mania. 'From the Reform Party to the Trump Administration to Zionism, any form of white supremacy must be torn down by any means necessary… we cannot allow the Holocaust to be weaponised as a tool to inflict violence onto the Palestinians as it has been by the Zionist entity.' I'm sure the Zionist entity was grateful for the group's thoughts at that difficult time.
What happened at Good Morning Britain was not an isolated incident. Even the European Commission's official statement neglected to mention Jews. Perhaps the most darkly comic moment came towards the end of BBC One's hour-long special on Monday, where after a succession of stories of commemoration, the BBC – unable to resist some vox pops with Gen Zers in a field – shoehorned a young man wearing a keffiyeh into the discussion so he could mention Islamophobia. It spoke of that refusal to take the Holocaust for what it was and what it means today. If you unfocus Jews as the victims of the Holocaust, then you can't understand how it could happen. To equate it with a current war or with other iterations of racism or prejudice is absurd and immoral. It's not 'My Grievance Day', it's Holocaust Memorial Day.
Angela Rayner posted a picture of herself accompanied by the words, 'Tonight, I'm lighting a candle to remember all those who were murdered just for being who they were, and to stand against prejudice and hatred today.' It's the horrible ambiguity of such a statement that is so unsettling. You can see this as a universal message of solidarity or you can see it as cowardly, and by not mentioning the Holocaust itself, who died in it and why, it looks like a cop out. Many will look at a statement such as this and assume – rightly or wrongly – it is designed more in the interests of placating voters hostile to Israel than remembering the mass of Jewish dead.
Jeremy Corbyn chose Holocaust Memorial Day to muse on the dangers of fascism in Tribune. It will not have gone unnoticed by critics that among references to the 'growth of far-Right populism' and 'anti-migrant rhetoric', there was not a single mention of the possibility of anti-Semitism existing on the Left. I'm sure there are Jewish people who remember his time as leader of the Labour Party who feel like they are being trolled.
Perhaps the saddest exhibition of such diversion came in Dublin, where the Irish president, Michael D Higgins, chose a Holocaust Memorial Day event to discuss – against the explicit wishes of the organisers – the hostage exchange and ceasefire in Gaza. Some attendees turned their backs while two women were forcibly removed by security, one shouting, 'How am I, as a Jew, being kicked out of my own event.' Contrast the approach of Higgins (who has form when it comes to Israel) with that of King Charles, who took the trouble to go to Auschwitz and exhibited the dignity the occasion merited.
The final word falls to the pro-Palestinian activist who left a placard on the Kindertransport statue at Liverpool Street Station on Holocaust Memorial Day. The message equated the 1.5 million Jewish children systematically murdered by the Nazis with the suffering in Gaza. If I were Jewish, I'd be tempted to wonder what the value of this day actually is, since if it continues to be steered away from commemorating Jewish suffering it will, almost incredibly, become a nexus for anti-Semitism. It's an inversion almost too distasteful to contemplate.
It's not that Gaza or any other conflict should not be discussed in earnest (though try finding someone who is willing to apply the same zeal over Sudan or the Uyghurs) but that to press that button again and again on this one day is like gaslighting an entire community at the moment of their greatest trauma. For the bad faith actors, that is exactly the point.
In some of these examples you can almost smell the caution, the trepidation about giving Jewish people their unarguable place at the heart of this remembrance, as if – perhaps subconsciously – to do so would offend or alienate too many to make it advantageous. That is anti-Semitism by stealth, a creeping vine that obscures the truth for convenience's sake. 'Six million Jews' might put viewers off. 'Six million people' sounds more universal. But the Holocaust isn't universal. It existed in a context that is increasingly being ignored.
It's no good blithely brandishing the sentiment of 'never again' while erasing Jews from the Holocaust. Decoupling this singular Jewish experience from Auschwitz is precisely how 'never again' becomes just 'again'.
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