The vice president of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT), Lord Pickles, has told the JC that he intervened to stop it from using text relating to Gaza on an invitation to an event last year.
Similar action by the trust this year saw it forced to issue an “unreserved” apology after the JC revealed that the group had mentioned “devastating violence against Palestinians” in the text of the official invitation to next year’s Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony.
Some Holocaust survivors and their descendants who spoke to the JC had accused HMDT of trivialising the memory of the Holocaust.
Pickles said he didn’t believe it was the intention of HMDT to “undermine the Holocaust” – and the staff were “decent people” – but he criticised a “benign woke-ism” within the organisation that resulted in actions which outraged many in the Jewish community.
In an interview, revealed that “last year, they were having a similar kind of dilemma in their language” but “through persuasion”, and after his direct intervention, the text relating to Gaza was not used.
He told the JC that: “You can’t do the Holocaust-light. You can’t water down the Holocaust.”
Pickles acknowledged that HMDT have “been extraordinarily good in getting out into different communities. They’ve been extraordinarily good in engaging, particularly with Muslim women. I understand all that, and I can understand the angst that people feel.”
But continued to say that: “If we’re to hold on to the uniqueness of the Holocaust, we must recognise that comparing the Holocaust with any genocide and being particularly careless about the use of the word genocide, we’re doomed. And remembrance is doomed.”
However, Pickles, who also serves as the UK’s Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust issues, did not call for a change of leadership at HMDT and said chief executive Olivia Marks-Woldman and chair Laura Marks were both “fantastic to work with”.
“I don’t think it’s a systemic problem that can’t – with support and working together – be resolved”, he said, adding: “I think it would be wrong for us to assign motives to the leadership of the trust, that it’s all part of an agenda, and it’s all about diluting the Holocaust.”
Survivors of the Holocaust, and the Rwandan, Darfur and Bosnia genocides, January 24, 2024 (Credit: Sam Churchill/the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust)
HMDT’s mission statement says the groups purpose is to: “promote and support Holocaust Memorial Day as the UK’s national day to commemorate the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution of other groups and in genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur; to encourage people to learn lessons from the past and take steps to challenge hatred and persecution.”
The former Conservative cabinet member did, however, say that he thought more could be done to emphasise the uniqueness of the Holocaust: “The trust does have a responsibility for subsequent genocides, but the Holocaust Remembrance Day is very special. I’m really happy that they do something about Srebrenica in July and I’m happy they do something about Rwanda, but they should be separate.”
He continued: “Clearly there are similar traits you can see, but the Holocaust was unique. Everything from railway timetables to the production of killing agents to the manufacturing to the exploitation of their possessions. There hasn’t been anything like it before and thank God.”
The former communities secretary said he thought that HMDT’s “apology was sincere, it was fulsome”, adding: “I don’t think they intended to shock in the way that they did and I think it was an important wake-up call.”
The veteran politician urged the organisation to “have a clear set of guidelines for people setting up events in January” for Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations up and down the country.
“No one can afford a repeat of what happened,” he warned.
In a statement, HMDT told the JC: “We are grateful to Lord Pickles, our honorary vice president, for his support for our work over many years, and his valued contributions and now during this very challenging time.”
