The Holocaust must never be forgotten
The youngest survivors of the Holocaust, born in the last stages of the Second World War, are now in their seventies. For decades they have testified as to what happened to them and their families, but they will not live forever. And as they pass away, there is a risk that what they saw is forgotten. That would be a disaster for mankind.
The Holocaust, whose victims are officially commemorated today, is the instructive story of an advanced society nursing ancient hatreds that, magnified by propaganda, resulted in the deaths of six million Jews. The Germans were ordinary people who murdered ordinary people. Understanding how that could possibly happen is critical to ensuring that it never happens again – even though, for all the warnings from history, it still does.
There have been other slaughters, but the Holocaust is the template by which they are all defined. Even so, some insist on declaring pointedly that Holocaust Memorial Day is not only about Nazi persecution, as if placing emphasis upon the Jews does a disservice to victims of other genocides. It is akin to saying that Remembrance Sunday shouldn’t be solely about the First World War when no one thinks that it is – and yet neither could any reasonable person doubt the centrality of the trenches. So why omit a reference to the Jews when discussing the Holocaust?
Out of ignorance, or insensitivity perhaps. But also, sadly, for political reasons. Israel was created, in part, as a response to Jewish suffering under the Nazis – and anti-zionists have to recalibrate the Holocaust to blunt that justification. The lies run from “some Zionists collaborated with Hitler” to “what happened to the Palestinians was just as bad as what happened to the Jews”. History is always being contested and rewritten. As those who actually saw it die out, so the truth loses its voice. And the worst liars – the neo-fascists who want us to believe that the Holocaust never happened – await the chance to speak unchallenged.
That is why the memory of the Holocaust must be preserved with dedication and reverence. Books must be written, films must be made; school children must know. We owe it both to future generations and to the dead, who have a right to be remembered accurately. As the survivor Elie Wiesel wrote: “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”