The wrong priorities for Shoah memorial

Lord Wasserman is right

( JC, March 3): Westminster is not the place for another Holocaust memorial. We already have in this country about 10 Holocaust memorials and centres, in Newark, Hyde Park, the Jewish Museum, the Imperial War Museum and elsewhere. None has prevented the recent rise in antisemitism and attempts to delegitimise Israel.

We should be asking why some students, who have studied the Holocaust at school, seem not to have made the connection between that event, and Jewish people and their state today. As a recent House of Commons review put it, “too many young people have far too superficial an understanding of the causes, nature and consequences of the Holocaust.”

Another piece of sculpture and an exhibition centre in Westminster are likely to be the target of graffiti and will need to be protected by a barri- er, hardly the image one would want. Some of the millions set aside for it would be better spent on improving Holocaust education in schools, and on preserving the memories of the survivors. back to his home in St John’s Wood, some 15 miles from where I lived. Perhaps I thought he could be a useful contact.

It was a journey of complete silence from him. He never thanked me for the ride, and when I asked about meeting the PM, the reply was swift: “Why on earth should the Prime Minister want to meet you,” he asked, scathingly.

Well, his boss later proved that he did. Mr.Wilson and I met perhaps a dozen times. He even came to a celebration of my programme You Don’t Have To Be Jewish.

Talking of which, Kaufmann came on to that programme to plug a book he had written about Israel. “Why another book about Israel,” I asked. “Because there hasn’t been one before,” he answered. I then proceeded to name a list of respected authors, ranging from Abba Eban to Harold Wilson himself. He got up and walked out of the studio.

Michael Freedland, Bournemouth, BH1