Perhaps it was almost inevitable. The Holocaust, once universalised to make an uncaring world give a damn about what the Nazis did to the Jews, is now being used against us to the point where we have now seen Jews dragged out of a Holocaust Memorial Event which attacked Israel.
How many times will we see over the next few days the libel that the Jews are doing what the Nazis once did? That Jews are the new Nazis? For some, at least, this leads to the sick conclusion that Hitler was correct in his desire to wipe out Jew – yes there is a social media hashtag trend which proclaims #HitlerWasRight. And it is always worse after Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), not better.
Howard Jacobson famously asked more than a decade ago, ‘When will Jews be forgiven the Holocaust?’. He noticed how people were rejecting ‘the burden of guilt by turning the tables on those we have wronged and portraying ourselves as the victims of their suffering’. I don’t know if this is inevitable, but I do think we need to fight harder against it.
There isn’t a better illustration of how the Holocaust has been perverted than to see what happened in Ireland on Sunday. A President accused of antisemitism giving a speech at a Holocaust event leading to Jewish people being violently dragged out of the room.
Nicole Lampert
If the organisation which calls itself Holocaust Education Ireland actually cared about Holocaust education, it would not have invited Irish President Michael D. Higgins to give the keynote speech at its HMD commemoration. This is a man who has long had an obsession with the Israel Palestine conflict, who presided over conspiracy theories that the Israeli embassy had leaked his correspondence with Iran (when Iran had itself published the material on social media) and whose country has become one of the most antisemitic places in Europe where Hamas and Hezbollah flags are happily flown in public spaces.
This is why the small embattled Jewish community in Ireland asked that his invitation to speak at the event be rescinded. When they were rebuffed, well-known Irish Holocaust survivor Tomi Reichental, made a personal plea to Higgins not to mention ‘international politics’ saying ‘It should be strictly about the Holocaust and the small minority of Jewish people who are living here, that they should be protected’.
If the organisation which calls itself Holocaust Education Ireland actually cared about Holocaust education, it would not have invited Irish President Michael D. Higgins to give the keynote speech
What arrogance – what a betrayal of those who were murdered in the Holocaust – that Higgins should deliberately ignore these wishes. And how telling it is, that no one from Israel was allowed to speak at the event.
It is no wonder that by the time the phlegmy President had spat out his thoughts about Gaza and asked, ‘how can the world continue to look at the empty bowls of the starving?’ at least four Jewish people stood up and turned their backs to him. This is their democratic right, and as quiet and as stoic as any act of defiance can be. They didn’t shout and scream they simply turned their backs.
Screenshot: RTE
Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina with Holocaust survivors Suzi Diamond (third left) and Tomi Reichenthal (fourth left) as they arrive at a Holocaust Memorial Day event at the Mansion House
But that was too much for some in the Holocaust lecture. First one visibly pregnant Jewish woman was dragged away and behind her came an Israeli university lecturer called Lior Tibet who was pushed to the ground and then pulled out of the room.
‘It is our event to commemorate,’ Lior said after. ‘How am I, as a Jew, being kicked out of my own event?’
Does the Holocaust still belong to the Jews? I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve been told Jews need to stop selfishly hogging the Holocaust. Keir Starmer may have pledged that every child will learn about the Holocaust but our Holocaust education is a failure when I find a note in my son’s schoolbook saying ‘the Holocaust didn’t just happen to the Jews – gay people, the Roma and black people were also victims’. Holocaust education has miscarried when I have to explain to my son’s history teacher that the Holocaust is the word only for the genocide of the Jews which was a specific plank of their policies she was meant to be teaching and there are other words to use about the Nazi crimes against other minorities.
How can our children possibly learn the lessons of the Holocaust when it becomes so universalised that it is about all minorities, all genocides, to the point that sometimes the Jews are left off the lists of Holocaust victims?
I look outwards to the wider uncaring world; one in which even as our children learn more about the Holocaust that we ever did, we see antisemitism is rising. But I look inwards to our community too and say we need to demand that the Holocaust should be taught properly.
We need to explain the specificity of the industrialised murder of Jews which makes it different to any other genocide. And we need to be teaching about antisemitism on Holocaust Memorial Day because no one else appears to be willing to do it.
The Holocaust message of ‘Never Again’ has never felt more pertinent when we see synagogues being firebombed, Jewish people being physically attacked and we all feel the drumbeat of rising hatred. It appears no one but us is listening to that lesson.
- Nicole Lampert is a freelance journalist
