‘I truly thought that anti-Semitism was over... I was wrong’

IT IS tempting to think of the Holocaust as only of historic interest. The footage is in black and white. The perpetrators are (almost) all dead. Unspeakable and evil as it was, we have learnt the lessons. We have moved on.

If only that was true.

The last death camps were liberated just 74 years ago, in 1945. That is within living memory for many – and, of course, for the remaining survivors who bear witness to what happened.

The Holocaust shows how, and how quickly, a seemingly normal society can change. It shows us that our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, in Germany and wherever the Third Reich governed, were capable of pure evil.

That is one reason why Holocaust Memorial Day is so important – because as the survivors pass on, we need to retain a collective memory of what happened on European soil so recently.

But there is a deeper issue. Were those older generations, in those countries, uniquely capable of such evil?

As a Jew, I grew up almost entirely unaware of anti-Semitism. It was indeed just history to me. My grandmas told me stories of pogroms in Poland and Lithuania. One kept a suitcase packed and stored in a cupboard “because you never know when we might have to leave”. I thought she was living in the past, that the Holocaust had somehow forced an end to anti-Semitism.

But I was wrong.

It was arrogance for me to assume that my generation, alone in history, was cured of that virus. Anti-Semitism is not called “the oldest hatred” for nothing. And slowly, I started to see it – and to experience it. A comment about being a “Jew boy”, not really British; a snide remark that we Jews stuck together and really ran the country. But I didn’t think too much about it. Half a dozen stupid remarks in 40 years is hardly a torrent. That was then.

This, though, is now – when I have to block 2,000 people because otherwise my Twitter feed would be an even greater cesspit of anti-Semitism than it is. When people openly tell me that I should be in the gas chambers and that my children will not live to adulthood because Hitler’s work will be finished; when I am told I am running a Jewish paedophile ring; when I am said to be a paid agent of Israel, a foreign agent in a foreign land.

Yes, it’s just words. But the people who send such words are real. And my office has to have guards due to the threats.

Most of those who choose to attack me as a Jew on social media have one thing in common: they describe themselves as supporters of Jeremy Corbyn.

If Mr Corbyn had taken real action, had attacked them with vigour and with purpose, things might be different. But he has not. Ever. He has chosen not to. Is it any wonder I am scared of what may come, if he ever takes power?