There is a rallying cry in American politics so popular it has become almost a cliché. Supporters are invited to affirm their loyalty at a critical moment because it matters that they vote — for JFK or LBJ, Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan — “now more than ever”.
I grew up in the Church of Scotland, learning the story of the Jewish people as one of the most inspiring, moving, tragic and yet life-affirming stories of all mankind. I also learned in the Church of Scotland that every sermon needs a piece of scripture, every address needs a text, every speech needs a theme. And my text is that rallying cry from American politics: Now More Than Ever.
We need the Holocaust Educational Trust — now more than ever. We need to remember the unique, unspeakable evil of that crime — now more than ever.
We need to stand together against prejudice, against hate, against the resurgent, mutating, lethal virus of antisemitism — now more than ever.
The Holocaust Educational Trust was established a quarter-of-a-century ago by men and women who knew that, unless future generations were taught about the Holocaust and inoculated against the virus of antisemitism then prejudice could recur. They feared that the full hideousness, the full horror of the attempt to eliminate the Jewish people would, over time, as events swirled and new crimes were committed, gradually be effaced. And that would mean the erosion of one of our society’s moral defences.
They had a further objective. They wanted to ensure that Holocaust deniers would be permanently excluded from civilised discourse. They agreed with Simon Wiesenthal, that the Holocaust was not just a crime against the Jews. It was a crime against mankind. They recognised that to question that crime, to relativise it, to reduce its significance, was to become an accomplice to evil. So they set up the Holocaust Educational Trust, to ensure that we would never forget.
Thanks to the HET, the Holocaust is now at the heart of the national curriculum. And the resources which enable children to learn about that unique evil are more sophisticated and powerful than ever. Thanks to the HET, we now have a national day to remember the Holocaust. And thanks to the HET, we have superbly trained teachers across the country. We know that nothing, however, is more effective than hearing from those who survived this crime.
Thanks to the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, more than 90,000 school children have had that unforgettable privilege. I feel privileged myself to have heard the testimony of those who survived the killing rage of the Nazi regime. As time goes by, however, we know that the Holocaust will increasingly move from the realm of living history to just history. Which is why we need to invest in the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust — now more than ever.
Thanks to the Trust, thousands of youngsters have had the chance to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau. The experience, I know, has transformed lives and I am proud that this government provides funding for the project in England. I must also pay tribute to the previous government, and in particular to Gordon Brown, who secured funding for the project in 2005. Many members from both sides of the House have taken part in these visits and seen for themselves the impact on the young people who participate.
Next year is the 70th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust and the liberation of the survivors. Realistically, this is the last major commemoration at which significant numbers of survivors will participate. That raises the question: how do we preserve the immediacy of the Holocaust in the longer term? That is why the Prime Minister set up the Holocaust Commission, to consider how the Holocaust should be remembered in our national life. It has been a privilege to serve on that Commission and its work is needed — now more than ever.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, everyone was agreed. Antisemitism could have no place in a civilised society. The articulation of prejudice towards the Jewish people was the gateway which led to Auschwitz by way of Nuremberg — exclusion and then extermination.
Before the war, antisemitism had been alarmingly commonplace. In Britain, even respected writers such as T. S. Eliot and Graham Greene had regularly, almost casually, indulged in antisemitism. That would surely now cease. Adorno might be refuted; poetry would still be possible, but it would be purged of the poison of pre-war antisemitism. Belatedly, mankind had developed new sensitivities.
Or so it seemed back then. Today, across Europe, there has been a revival of antisemitism that the enormity of the Holocaust should have rendered forever unthinkable.
In France, in July of this year, more than 100 Jewish citizens had to be rescued from one synagogue and another was firebombed. The leader of an antisemitic party, the Front National, is France’s most popular politician. Heroes of popular culture — like the comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala — try to make hatred of Jews a badge of radical chic.
The virus is spreading across other European nations. In Germany, Molotov cocktails were lobbed at one synagogue. In Belgium, a café displays a sign saying “dogs are allowed but Jews are not” while a doctor refuses to treat Jewish patients. And, in May of this year, four people visiting the Jewish Museum in Brussels were killed by a jihadist terrorist. We must all remember where this leads. Now more than ever.
And we must not think that Britain — gentle, tolerant, civilised Britain — is immune. The Community Security Trust (CST) monitors instances of antisemitism throughout the UK. It is careful to distinguish between explicitly antisemitic incidents and more general protests about Israeli policy. The latter, even if many of us would regard them as profoundly misguided, are legitimate expressions of opinion in a democratic society. But once they transgress into antisemitism, all legitimacy ceases.
When banners at pro-Palestinian rallies carry slogans such as “Stop Doing What Hitler Did To You” or “Gaza is a Concentration Camp” then a line has been crossed. In July this year, CST recorded 302 antisemitic incidents, a fivefold increase from July 2013. In 101 of those cases, there were explicit references to the Holocaust, including attempts to equate Israel’s actions in self-defence with Nazi crimes. On our streets, our citizens have marched with swastikas superimposed on the Israeli flag.
We need to be clear about what is going on here. There is a deliberate attempt to devalue the unique significance of the Holocaust, and so remove the stigma from antisemitism. The historian, Professor Deborah Lipstadt, has spoken out about the way in which Holocaust comparisons are used “politically, glibly”. She explains that Holocaust denial now takes the form of “comparisons of Israel to the Nazis”. These are “terrible and outrageous and most importantly incorrect. You can believe that Israel was wrong to go into Gaza, but to call it a Holocaust is wrong.”
And even as this relativisation, trivialisation and perversion of the Holocaust goes on, so prejudice towards the Jewish people grows. The Tricycle Theatre attempts to turn away donations which support the Jewish Film Festival because the money is Israeli and therefore “tainted”. In our supermarkets, our citizens mount boycotts of Israeli produce, some going so far as to ransack the shelves, scatter goods and render them unsaleable. In some supermarkets, the conflation of anti-Israeli agitation and straightforward antisemitism has resulted in kosher goods being withdrawn.
We need to speak out against this prejudice. We need to remind people that what began with a campaign against Jewish goods in the past ended with a campaign against Jewish lives. We need to spell out that this sort of prejudice starts with the Jews but never ends with the Jews. We need to stand united against hate. Now more than ever.
I believe that, in the face of this prejudice, there has, so far, been insufficient indignation: an insufficient willingness to recognise that civic freedom is indivisible: that an attack on one is an attack on all.
The British rightly pride themselves in their long and relatively peaceful political evolution based on a widespread acceptance of British values. But this can have an unfortunate consequence: complacency in the face of threats from those who care nothing for peace, democracy or British values. Antisemitism is an obvious early manifestation of the growing threat and we are all in this together. It is because the government takes the threat so seriously that the Prime Minister has set up the Extremism Task force.
We know that, in the twisted world-view of Islamist extremists, antisemitism is a central strand, but we also know that when Islamist extremists embrace violence they have us all in their sights. That requires a robust approach from us — at home and abroad. Because we know that the jihadist terrorists responsible for horrific violence across the Middle East are targeting not just Jews and Israelis but all of us in the West. They hate Israel, and they wish to wipe out the Jewish people’s home, not because of what Israel does but because of what Israel is — free, democratic, liberal and Western. We need to remind ourselves that defending Israel’s right to exist is defending our common humanity. Now more than ever.
And we are all in this together in another way. There is an iron law in history: the more secure the Jewish people are in a nation, the freer and happier that nation is. Throughout world history, the test of which nations are most advanced and most liberal is the security of the Jewish population.
Whether it has been the Netherlands in the 17th century, England at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, or America now, the health of a country’s Jewish population is a badge of freedom. And the corollary of that is when a Jewish community feels less secure in any nation then that nation is moving into darkness. Whether it’s counter-reformation Spain, 19th-century Vienna, central Europe in the 1930s or Russia in the last decade.
So the question for all of us is how secure is Britain’s Jewish community; how secure do Jews feel across Europe? And what are we doing to make them feel more secure. We should never allow darkness to encroach again. We must — all of us — stand firm for our precious freedoms and stand alongside our Jewish neighbours. Now more than ever.
In 1945, our forebears thought that some good might be rescued from the Nazi’s terrible legacy: surely the Holocaust would discredit antisemitism for ever. We now know better. Mankind has not developed new sensitivities. Instead, we live in a world full of horrors, where man is still a wolf to man.
Hitler tried to reduce a race to dust and ashes. The Holocaust Educational Trust is determined to ensure that neither his evil nor their sufferings will be forgotten.
Santayana said that those who forget history are condemned to relive it. God forbid, but the Holocaust Educational Trust exists to help to ensure that no one forgets; that no one will ever forget. That is why it is needed. Now more than ever.
This article is an edited version of Michael Gove’s speech at the Holocaust Educational Trust dinner this week
