It is no secret that antisemitism has exploded. But this oldest of hatred’s has now become so potent that this Holocaust Memorial Day was spent having to remind people that the Holocaust was the murder of six million Jewish men, women and children.
Jews are being omitted – accidentally or otherwise – from the narrative. Our national broadcaster, the BBC, referred to six million “people”, without being specific about who these people were. A council in Hampshire remembered the “12 million people killed in the Second World War” without mentioning Jews. A community event in Bolton opined about Gaza.
The BBC issued a belated apology but British Jews can’t shake the question – why is this happening so frequently?
The painful reality is that the Holocaust is being distorted, rewritten and universalised before our eyes.
It should go without saying that there is a clear consensus amongst leading historians, authorities and museums that the Holocaust refers specifically to the murder of six million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazis and their collaborators. The Nazis’ aim to wipe out the Jews was referred to as their "Final Solution to the Jewish question”.
The Nazis set about isolating Jews, barring them from certain professions, forbade them from marrying non-Jews, stripped them of their citizenship, assets and rights. They forcibly removed them from their homes and put them into ghettos, worked them to death, imprisoned them in horrific conditions and eventually, as we know, murdered them in their millions. Shooting them into pits and ravines across Europe and eventually building purpose-built killing centres to murder them in an industrial way. Their devotion to ideology was such that they analysed genealogical records to determine who had Jewish blood.
So when we talk about the Holocaust, we are talking exclusively about Jewish people. That is not "Jewish supremacy” – it is a matter of historical record. And I am sure I am not alone in saying that Jews would rather not have been singled out in this unique way.
Of course, to understand the Holocaust, and history, we must acknowledge the appalling nature of Nazi ideology and recognise the full breadth of their crimes. Whilst their primary goal was the annihilation of every Jew, they targeted other groups for persecution and even mass murder – Roma and Sinti targeted for genocide; Soviet Prisoners of War, Gay men, disabled people, Black people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Trade Unionists, political opponents and Poles. We ensure that young people learn about and understand all of this.
These stories of persecution must be remembered. By talking about different victim groups, by understanding their specific experiences, that is how we understand history and understand experiences of all those persecuted under the Nazi regime.
Today there are attempts to undermine, obfuscate, and distort the Holocaust. There are those who genuinely do not understand what the Holocaust was and those who understand it and choose to abuse it.
In a world where antisemitism is allowed to run rampant, it has somehow become controversial to tell the truth; to be honest that the Holocaust was the systematic and state-sponsored attempt to annihilate the Jewish people. It happened, and could only happen, on the back of millennia of antisemitism. We often hear well-meaning people talk about why the Holocaust is important, and one reason often given is “because it could have happened to me”. But the Holocaust was not an example of people against people, or an example of good vs evil. Jews were not crammed into gas chambers because they were people; people were crammed into gas chambers because they were Jews.
It matters not because it puts Jewish suffering above other suffering and not because Jews want sympathy. It matters because it is the truth. And it was a unique event that happened in a specific time and place, to a specific group of people. To say otherwise is a cynical and sinister attempt to deny and remove victimhood from Jews.
Clarifying what the Holocaust was should not lead to me being labelled a Holocaust denier, a war criminal or Jewish supremacist. But that is exactly what happened to me in the sewers of social media this Holocaust Memorial Day. Left unchallenged, there is a very real danger that this hardline fringe narrative will seep into public consciousness and become normalised.
Every time that the Holocaust is diluted, each and every time that the specificity of the Jewish experience is ignored or denied, it is an abuse of the memory of the Holocaust, an insult to victims and survivors, and makes it ever harder to combat anti-Jewish racism.
Karen Pollock is chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust
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