HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY EDITION HOW THE JC REPORTED AUSCHWITZ LIBERATION
Last week’s JC featured a picture taken in Auschwitz. The boy whose image was captured turned out to be the father of a reader. In itself, there is nothing remarkable about this — one aspect of our community is defined by our being relatives of Holocaust victims and survivors. But it brings home how recent the Shoah was. On Monday, it will be just 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. It is not a historical event but one within living memory. As the years pass, however, so the number of survivors shrinks. And so, too, the importance of Holocaust Memorial Day grows. If the lessons of the Holocaust are not learned even today, while it is within our collective memory, how much greater the task will be when there are no more survivors. And if Holocaust denial still has an audience today, when there are those alive who can personally testify to its reality, what will happen in the future, when for some it will be just another historical controversy? The lessons of the Holocaust are perhaps more vital now than at any time since 1945. The dangers of verbal — let alone physical — attacks on ‘the other’ should be obvious but are too often ignored. Reemerging antisemitism is one aspect of this but it applies no less to other minority groups. On social media, Jew hate is pernicious and ever present. One mainstream political party is being investigated for institutional antisemitism. This is not a positive ledger. And yet, the very presence of HMD and the wide coverage it receives, is indeed positive. It shows that many people do realise why this all matters, that they are aware of the lesson, and that Britain will never forget.