The BBC has been forced to apologise for “incorrect wording” of its Holocaust coverage which failed to say Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
Several broadcasts marking Holocaust Memorial Day referred to six million people murdered by the Nazis but did not state the victims were Jewish.
BBC News reader Martine Croxall said in one broadcast: "Today marks Holocaust Memorial Day. A day for remembering the six million people who were murdered by the Nazi regime over 80 years ago.”
BBC World News presenter Matthew Amroliwala and Breakfast host Jon Kay introduced bulletins on their shows with the same scripted line.
A BBC Radio 4 broadcast also omitted the word “Jew”.
French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy accused the corporation of “Holocaust erasure” and said the error was “shameful and disgusting”.
Karen Pollock CBE, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said the BBC’s choice of wording was an “abuse of the memory of the Holocaust and an insult to victims and survivors”.
The HET chief executive went on: “Any attempt to dilute the Holocaust, strip it of its Jewish specificity, or compare it to contemporary events is unacceptable on any day. On Holocaust Memorial Day, it is especially hurtful, disrespectful and wrong.”
Historian Sebag Montefiore also condemned the script: “BBC News repeatedly described the Holocaust without mention[ing] the victims were Jews... The BBC has had to apologise repeatedly for its faked facts and bad reporting… Now again it has apologised because 'it failed to use the word Jews.'”
Meanwhile, Danny Cohen, former BBC director of television, said the "failure" marked "a new low point for the national broadcaster.”
“It is surely the bare minimum to expect the BBC to correctly identify that it was six million Jews killed during the Holocaust. To say anything else is an insult to their memory and plays into the hands of extremists who have desperately sought to rewrite the historical truth of history's greatest crime.
“This will be very painful to many in the Jewish community and will reinforce their view that the BBC is insensitive to the concerns of British Jews.”
Conservative peer, Lord Pickles, co-chair of UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, former UK special envoy for post-Holocaust issues and former chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, said: “This is an unambiguous example of Holocaust distortion, which is a form of denial.
“This kind of obfuscation was common during the Soviet control of parts of Europe. For the BBC to use it today is shocking. They should be fighting Antisemitism, not aiding it.”
The controversy over the HMD coverage comes after a series of antisemitism scandals at the corporation.
Last month, outgoing BBC director-general Tim Davie ordered all staff to undertake training on antisemitism, which employees will have six months to complete.
Responding to the backlash, a BBC spokesperson said: “In the news bulletins on Today and in the introduction to the story on BBC Breakfast there were references to Holocaust Memorial Day which were incorrectly worded, and for which we apologise.
“Both should have referred to ‘six million Jewish people’ and we will be issuing a correction on our website.'
“Holocaust Memorial Day takes place every year on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.”
Tuesday morning’s BBC programming commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day, the corporation went on, adding: “the Today programme featured interviews with relatives of Holocaust survivors, and a report from our Religion Editor.
“In both of these items we referenced the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. The Chief Rabbi recorded the Thought for the Day.
“BBC Breakfast featured a project organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust in which a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust recorded her memories.”
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