NATIONAL HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY
On 27th January, the anniversary of the liberation of the notorious death factory at Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Red Army in 1945, it will be National Holocaust Memorial Day – the date chosen by the British government for this country to remember the Holocaust and reflect on its lessons. From the outset, NHMD has attracted controversy concerning the focus on the Nazis’ murder of the Jews. As it happens, from the outset, the experience of other victims of the Nazis, and of other victims of other genocides has been an integral feature of educational programmes and events associated with the day.
On one level it is right and proper that National Holocaust Memorial Day should not be confined to remembrance of Hitler’s ‘war against the Jews’. In their pursuit of an Aryan ‘master race’, the Nazis targeted all those segments of society considered sub-human and/or imperfect and in some way – for example, gypsies, lesbian and gay people, the physically and mentally disabled. However, it is essential for an understanding of the Nazi project that no one loses sight of the very particular way in which the Jewish people were singled out: not only sub-human, but also all-powerful: Drawing on the history of the scape-goating of the Jewish people by the church, and on centuries of anti-Jewish propaganda, Hitler demonised the Jews as the alien menace controlling the world that had to be destroyed. The records of the infamous Wannsee Conference that brought together the Nazi top-brass in 1942 say it all in one ordinary sheet of type-script, listing the Jewish population numbers of Europe country by country – including Britain at 500,000 – with the total at the bottom of the list: 11,000,000. The Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ of the Jewish problem was the annihilation of all the Jews of Europe. The number of Jews that were actually killed is important not simply because it was a huge number, but because it demonstrates the horrifying extent to which the Nazis were able to achieve their goal.
Yes, there were other victims of Nazism and there have been other genocides; indeed, we could say that the Twentieth century was a century of genocide: We only have to think, for example, of the Armenians, and the sites of mass-murder in Biafra, Cambodia, Rwanda. And yes, we need to remember them all. But we also need to ensure that we don’t forget – that Britain, Europe, and the rest of the world don’t forget – the particular nature of the Holocaust as a deadly expression of Jew-hatred. The Holocaust – what Jews call the Sho’ah (meaning, ‘devastation’) – was the outcome of centuries of endemic anti-Semitism; and still anti-Semitism remains a malignant menace that must be exposed and challenged wherever it manifests itself. These are the particular lessons that National Holocaust Memorial Day needs to teach.
Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah