Mick Hartley

Holocaust Memorial Day without the Jews? Jake Wallis Simons at the JC – This was the year the Jews were told ‘the Holocaust is not about you’:

But the Good Morning Britain presenter talking of the deaths of six million “people”, not the Jews? The deputy prime minister Angela Rayner lighting a candle for “all those who were murdered”, not the Jews? This was another order of insult. We saw it all over, from Sarah Champion MP to Justin Trudeau, from the councils of Bury and Cambridge City to Humanists UK, who tweeted their sorrow for “all the victims of genocide”. At the Lowestoft Council wreath-laying, Jews were not invited to lay a wreath. These people might as well have just spelled it out. Listen up, Jews. Stop whingeing. The Holocaust is not about you.

Only it is. That’s the whole point. The fetish for deracinating the Shoah from its victims is nothing less than a fresh attempt to erase us. This year, we were told, Holocaust Memorial Day commemorated not just the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz but also the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia. To which I say: Why can’t the Bosnians – and the Rwandans, Cambodians and Darfurians, for that matter – have their own ceremony?

If people want to observe a “Genocide Memorial Day”, that’s fine. But this year proved that relativisation has always been the prelude to erasure. The smarmy ecumenicals have been picking Jewish pockets of our anguish, then telling us that we never owned it in the first place. […]

In 2025, mourning the Holocaust has become a vehicle for undoing the Jews. When the Irish president took to the stage in Dublin and proceeded to defile our pain by dragging it through the rubble of Gaza, he was echoing an ancient precedent. Norwich, 1144: The Jews killed little William. Berlin, 1934: Die Juden sind unser Unglück. Dublin, 2025: It’s sad about the Holocaust and everything but what really matters is Gaza. Especially the children.

Several Jews turned their backs on Higgins and were manhandled and ejected. We were left with certain questions. As the security guards dragged a Jewish woman – a historian of the Shoah at that – from a ceremony to mourn her dead, did they not sense a certain irony? What to make of the fact that two Holocaust survivors, Tomi Reichental and Suzi Diamond, had begged Higgins not to bring Gaza into his speech and were ignored? And where is all this leading?

I’m dreading next year. Like I said: is there a point to Holocaust Memorial Day any longer? The King’s visit to Auschwitz was immensely meaningful, of course, as were the many local ceremonies. But perhaps we should focus our energies instead on Yom Hashoah, the Israeli springtime commemoration, which remains – shock horror – solely about the Jewish genocide. Perhaps it is time to defend our right to mourn.

It's Holocaust Memorial Day. Not Genocide Memorial Day. The clue's in the name.