Memorial Day

► Melanie Phillips (‘Proposed Holocaust memorial is a tragic betrayal of the dead’ – JC February 10) is entitled to her opinions. But she is not entitled to distort the facts about this year’s online Holocaust Memorial Day national commemoration as she did in last week’s JC.

Contrary to her assertion that “there was no mention of the genocide of the Jews other than two fleeting references in personal messages from Michael Gove and Keir Starmer”, in fact the Commemoration included powerful contributions by Holocaust survivor, Martin Stern MBE, an archive film about the Holocaust narrated by Sir David Suchet, readings by faith and political leaders from the diary of Julius Feldman, a Jewish man who was murdered in the Holocaust, illustrated sequences about Irmina, a bystander to the Holocaust, a speech by the Chief Rabbi, and the Jewish memorial prayer, recited so movingly by Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg BEM.

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, an independent charity has and will always ensure that the Holocaust has primacy on Holocaust Memorial Day.

For Ms Phillips to suggest otherwise appears to be ideologically driven distortion which disrespects the memory of the murdered six million European Jews. HMD also shows how the actions that led to the Holocaust have been repeated in more recent times in other places and against other communities.

Recognising this does not diminish the significance of the Holocaust or of modern day antisemitism — rather, it enhances our understanding of how to prevent it happening again.

Olivia Marks Woldman Chief Executive

Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

► I was surprised to read in Melanie Phillips’ article in last week’s JC that the National Online Commemoration for Holocaust Memorial Day had contained almost no reference to the Holocaust. I watched the Commemoration and I was impressed with the sensitive way the broadcast discussed the genocide in Darfur, 20 years on this year, while, very properly, maintaining its focus on commemorating the Holocaust — the attempt to destroy and murder all the Jewish people in Europe.

There are some things, like its scale and the depth of the hatred in the ideology behind it, about the Holocaust which are unique, but there are also stages of genocide, such as dehumanisation, which are shared with other pieces of history, and indeed the present. It’s so important every generation understands and learns from that.

For me, this year’s online Commemoration was very moving, struck the right balance and certainly gave the Holocaust the centrality it demands.

Julie Siddiqi MBE

Interfaith Consultant and Equalities Campaigner

► Melanie Phillips is 100 per cent correct. The proposed monstrosity is a vanity project, obviously promoted by our “leaders” who see themselves as having a role at future ceremonial events there. It will do more to incite anti semitism, given its dominance of a treasured small, open space, than to stem it.

It is unsurprising that the leadership of the Board of Deputies refused to debate it without any consultation with its deputies because it accords with the virtue signalling at which it excels. Nothing better demonstrates the Orwellian absurdity of the Holocaust memorial industry than a Welsh politician, Julie Morgan, at a Holocaust memorial event she hosted to commemorate the gypsy and traveller community, when she somehow omitted any mention of Jews.

She thinks that Holocaust memorial should encompass all atrocities of varying degrees perpetrated against any particular group.

As Melanie pointed out, it is a denial of the uniqueness of the Holocaust, which was the attempt to wipe out an entire ethnic group, the Jewish nation, and consigning it to memory.

Maybe the JC could conduct a survey to find out whether the community supports it or not. Stephen Green

NW6