The ‘Gaza genocide’ claim is a blood libel, says Simon Schama

He said the issue should be confronted in schools and universities, adding: “We will not have our job done until anybody uttering the notion that Israel is committing genocide is made to be ashamed for doing so.”

Schama acknowledged the civilian suffering in Gaza, saying Israel’s military campaign had “inevitably involved many innocent, Palestinian civilians in catastrophic tragedy and bloodshed.

“The enormity of one child’s life lost is a tragedy. But what Israel has done in Gaza is not a genocide.”

More than 500 people attended the HET Appeal Dinner at the Hilton Park Lane, raising £1.5 million for the charity. The evening was compered by broadcaster and journalist Natasha Kaplinsky OBE.

Schama, a professor at New York’s Columbia University, also warned about what he described as a growing wave of Holocaust jokes, Nazi imagery and hostility towards Jews.

He cited a kickboxing match in Florida during which a large swastika was unfurled, and an inscription near his Columbia campus which read “kill a Jew, and go to heaven”.

During a football match involving London school JFS in Norfolk, he said, supporters of the opposing school performed what he called the “Auschwitz hiss” — mimicking the sound of a gas chamber — “and everybody was laughing as they did it”.

He also criticised the growing prominence of neo-Nazi figures in public life, citing Nick Fuentes and the media attention given to him.

“This is something absolutely horrifying,” Schama said, warning that Holocaust education faced a period in which it would have to contend not only with denial but with the trivialisation of Nazi crimes.

“We are in a very, very dark place where we are now,” he said.

Schama also criticised comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, describing the suggestion that “Zionists” should be excluded from mourning the Holocaust as a “shocking and outrageous, vile, obscene falsehood”.

He stressed that while teaching young people about the Shoah was vital, they should also learn about the breadth of Jewish history and culture.

“When people think of Jews, talk to us, have dinner with us, I don’t want them to see Jews as either a victim or a bully,” he said.

“We are greater and grander, more beautiful. We have done more profound things in the history of humanity,” he said, calling for Jewish history, not just the Holocaust, to be included in school curricula.

He described Jewish history as “one of resilience, of cultural joy, of creativity” and “the beautiful sign of humanity”.

The evening also paid tribute to HET members who died over the past year, including Manfred Goldberg MBE, Harry Olmer BEM and Harry Spiro BEM.

Guests included Education Secretary Lucy Powell, Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden, Women and Equalities Secretary Bridget Phillipson, Security Minister Dan Jarvis, and other MPs and peers.

Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Matt Jukes, broadcaster Nick Robinson and diplomatic representatives from Israel, Poland and Germany also attended.

Karen Pollock CBE, chief executive of HET, opened the evening by highlighting the continuing importance of Holocaust education.

“We equip them with facts,” she said of the young people who take part in the charity’s programmes.

“At a time of rising antisemitism,” she added, Holocaust education “does not end in the classroom” but empowers young people to “stand up and be counted” even when it is difficult to do so.