Josh Glancy in the Sunday Times talks to Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg:
When I first met and interviewed Goldberg, a few years ago, he seemed quite relaxed about the state of the world. His early experiences still haunted him, but he’d had 80 years to process it all. His courtesy and gentility struck a sharp contrast to the dehumanising cruelty that blighted his childhood.
Yet when I visited Goldberg for tea on Tuesday, he was visibly anxious. In his hands was the printed text of a speech he was due to give to parliament the following day, before Holocaust Memorial Day this coming Saturday. He crumples and folds the paper nervously.
The source of his agitation is not difficult to discern. Antisemitism, often called the oldest hatred, certainly one of the most resilient, has slithered out from its cave and into the daylight once more.
Amid all the torrid debate about a war in the Middle East, permission has been given for deep prejudices and resentments to become public once more: blood libels have been trumpeted on marches through central London; Twitter threads have been issued about Jewish financial puppetry and TikTok memes about hooked noses and “the real Nazis”. Spikes in antisemitism always accompany conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, but the discourse around this war is unlike any other.
Goldberg may be about to turn 94, but he still sees and absorbs it all. His antennae for hatred, which helped keep him alive in the most vicious of environments, remain carefully honed.
“When I came to this country, back in 1946, there was hardly any trace of antisemitism,” he tells me. “I thought I was living in paradise. Politicians were going around shouting at the top of their voices ‘never again’. I didn’t dream that I would ever see a situation like that we are faced with now.”
Unlike Lily Ebert, the 100-year-old Auschwitz survivor who has become a surprise TikTok star, Goldberg doesn’t use social media. But his lifetime of technical expertise — he helped create some of the first colour televisions — gives him a sharp understanding of how it all works. He is appalled by the recent effusion of hate.
“I think these websites are brainwashing young minds,” he says. “A good proportion of youngsters are so addicted to this website that it becomes their only source of news. The fact that people can hide their identity while spouting poisonous views, conspiracies, antisemitic language, and they can do it to millions of people. It’s a power that used to be unthinkable.”
It’s often been said that antisemitism is like a lingering virus that resurfaces whenever the body politic is run down or unwell. Goldberg views it as a symptom of society’s deeper malaise. “Although at the moment, we are primarily concerned about antisemitism, it’s not going to stop there,” he says. “It never does. It’s like a disease, it spreads. These websites will affect the fabric of our democratic society.” …
Goldberg is one of our last survivors and works closely with the Holocaust Educational Trust to share his experiences and his message of tolerance. The power of his testimony, delivered in a calm, heartfelt manner, is quite extraordinary. But in the face of today’s viral hatred, he feels quite overwhelmed.
“I’m a drop in the ocean,” he says. “I’ve spoken to many thousands of youngsters. They listen to me, they send me heartwarming messages. But sooner or later, what I said can be drowned out by the lies they hear daily.”
Goldberg and other survivors have done their best, but even though it is on the school curriculum, Holocaust awareness is a problem: a 2021 survey found that 52 per cent of British adults were not aware that six million Jews were killed by the Nazis.
Yet amid his anxiety, Goldberg has cause for hope. “I’m convinced the majority of British people are still as they used to be, people with sympathy, with the ability to distinguish between good and evil,” he says. “The majority of people in this country are not Jew haters, but they are often our silent supporters. And all that it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to stay silent.”
Passion and rage over what is happening in the Middle East is inevitable. With the world’s only Jewish state engaged in a brutal war in Gaza, with all the deep and tangled connections between Jewishness, Zionism and Israel, it is sadly also inevitable that the line into antisemitism will be crossed.
But Goldberg demands that we do better. He demands that people don’t fall into the lazy trap of using Nazi slurs against Israel. “Those who do this are either morons, or have been brainwashed to actually believe this to be true,” he says.
Walking through this thicket requires nuance and it requires sensitivity. Rejecting antisemitism can, in certain circumstances, require courage. Yet Goldberg’s long life, his appalling memories, the six million he left behind, his brother Herman, they call upon all of us to give this issue the care and concern that it merits. The alternative is too awful to contemplate.
Mick Hartley 