The universalisation of the Holocaust undermines the fight against antisemitism

Danny Finkelstein is a wise man. We disagree only on how to benefit from remembering the Holocaust. His article, “It's wrong to say HMD has been diluted”, seemed to take too much comfort in the glossy, generalised national Holocaust remembrance ceremonies we have seen more and more of in recent years.

Necessary, yes, but not sufficient, when you consider what is going on in the UK, and the international moves towards making Israel, the creation and haven of the survivors, a pariah state under threat.

To see the King at Auschwitz brought to mind most fittingly the National Anthem's "Long Live our Noble King" and I am sure the entire Jewish community here and around the world was moved and grateful.

Nevertheless one of the events that started me thinking more deeply about this topic was to see Jeremy Corbyn in the front row of national Holocaust remembrance events and photographed signing the Remembrance Book in Parliament. It put me in mind of Dara Horn's book People Love Dead Jews ( the living, not so much).

For some of us every day is Holocaust Remembrance Day. My earliest memories are of my mother weeping over her inability to get her mother into the UK out of Poland. On my father's side I have been fortunate enough to recover the silver cutlery his sister handed over to a neighbour when the Germans arrived in her shtetl, a tangible souvenir of the many lost on his side too. 

So with some pain I ask myself what they mean when Britain's politicians and leaders support Holocaust remembrance and “never again”. I see ignorance of the history of antisemitism and the mistaken framework that consigns the Holocaust to the past and no continuing threat.

Maybe with good intentions the Holocaust has been globalised: thus, if the Jews were just one of many casualties, it is exceptional to focus on them, and the notion of genocide can be spread far, wide and thin.

It is a start on the slippery slope to Holocaust inversion, accusing Israel of that very crime. To assemble the Holocaust with other genocides reduces its lesson only to that vague word "hatred" and diverts attention away from antisemitism as its root, the hatred fostered by the Church for nearly 2,000 years.

There is no word in our national commemorations of the persecution and expulsion of Jews, the blood libels, pogroms, forced conversions by England, the Middle East and Europe over the centuries, and none about rampant antisemitism in our streets and campuses today.

This is not to say that the loss of Jewish lives is worth more than others. But as Holocaust remembrance widens, we see reluctance to acknowledge the specificity of Jewish suffering, and how the Holocaust differed in execution, collaboration and result from other genocides.

If the Shoah is always marked in tandem with other genocides, it enables the Jews to be overlooked, not mentioned by ITV’s Good Morning Britain or by Angela Rayner in a tweet on the day, and leads to the appalling juxtaposition of the Holocaust and the Gaza war, most shockingly by the Irish President.

For years it has been assumed, without evidence, that learning about the Holocaust prevents lapses into antisemitism. But it does not. That is because the Holocaust has been detached from the rest of Jewish history and used as a lesson in morality and democracy. It is easy enough to present the Nazis as evil and the Jews as innocent victims.

Then the lessons go on to indicate that it was all in the past and that our generation will not be bystanders. That is an absolution and obfuscation. It is this politicisation, dejudaisation and universalisation demonstrated at Holocaust remembrance ceremonies that is so counterproductive.

The late Lord Sacks of blessed memory explained that today's antisemitism focuses on the world's only Jewish state. The lesson to be learned is that it is only a state of one's own with self-defence that stops genocide.

If Israel had existed in 1938 rather than 1948 and had been able to take in refugees rather than being blocked by Britain, how many thousands or millions of lives would have been saved? And the Shoah did not succeed. Jewish history is marked by survival against all the odds, not just victimhood, but success and contribution.

Today we see groups like Hamas entertain ambitions for a new Holocaust. Yet this government, so keen on Holocaust remembrance, has no qualms concerning a partial arms embargo against Israel, an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, going along with the flawed processes of the UN, the ICJ, the ICC and UNRWA. Hololcaust remembrance is ineffective unless backed up by protecting a strong and safe Israel, the real means of ensuring “Never again”.