Today is the anniversary of
the liberation of Auschwitz. But has the world really learnt its lesson?
60 years on: what has changed?
Today, 27 January, is Holocaust Memorial Day.
It is a call to remember all the victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution
– Jews, Roma, East European civilians, Soviet prisoners of war,
trade unionists, communists, disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses,
lesbians, gay men and black Germans.
This year’s theme is Survivors and liberation, while today also
marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp
at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland.
Established in 1940, Polish prisoners were the first to be imprisoned
and die there, followed by Soviet prisoners of war, Roma and prisoners
of other nationalities. Then, from 1942, the camp became the centre of
the Nazis’ intended extermination of the Jewish people.
There is a danger that, in many people’s minds, the Holocaust is
viewed as an historic event that happened years ago to different people
at the hands of a bunch of nasty foreigners.
In other words, it couldn’t happen again and it couldn’t happen
here.
But just the past few weeks have shown – again - just how misguided
and dangerous a view that is.
At the beginning of this week, a report by the Israeli government’s
Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism showed that the number of violent anti-Semitic
incidents in Britain had risen from 55 in 2003 to 77 in 2004.
The report found that the total number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain
rose from 163 to 304 when verbal assaults, damage to property and the
daubing of swastikas were taken into account.
In November, a survey for the Independent suggested that homophobic hate
crime has risen across the UK by an average of 23%
Metropolitan Police figures suggested a 12.5% rise in homophobic attacks
from January to September 2004, Surrey Police saw an increase of 134%,
while Gwent in Wales saw an increase of 210% in the same period.
According to the National Youth Agency, independent monitoring organisations
estimate that there are around 70,000 acts of racist violence and harassment
every year.
UK Muslims have been attacked as 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’
have produced a rise in Islamophobia.
If we cast our minds across the world, it’s easy to see that the
persecution of people for their race, their sex, their sexuality or their
creed shows little sign of abating, from Sudan to Iraq to North Korea
to Zimbabwe to the Middle East and on.
Even Michael Howard, immigrant and leader of Her Majesty’s loyal
opposition, chose the week of Holocaust Memorial Day to kick off the Conservatives’
general election campaign by playing the race and xenophobia card, announcing
that a future Tory government would place massive restrictions on immigration
and asylum seekers.
In his retort, prime minister Tony Blair, perhaps worried at the idea
of upsetting those who agree with Howard’s proposals, merely agreed
that abuses did exist within the asylum system, but described the plans
as unworkable.
The Tory leader’s own father was a refugee from fascism in Romania,
while his mother’s family had fled anti-Semitism in Russia.
Yet Howard’s approach is not without precedent. The end of the war
did not guarantee the end of the suffering for those who had survived
the Holocaust. Rabid and violent anti-Semitism in Poland saw more than
100,000 Polish Jews joining the 50,000 or so camp survivors in the British
and US zones in Germany.
While few Holocaust survivors wanted to return to their homes from before
the Nazi persecution, no country in the world was willing to take substantial
numbers of Jewish ‘Displaced Persons’ (DPs), as the survivors
became known.
The British government only allowed a few thousand refugees to come here
under a scheme for the ‘distressed relatives’ of Jews who
were already in the UK, while 10,000 Jewish and non-Jewish children were
admitted. Those who were old enough to work were ruled out, even though
tens of thousands of non-Jewish DPs, including Poles, Balts, Ukrainians
and ethnic Germans, were recruited for work here.
The lessons of the Holocaust are not all negative though. We can take
heart from the courage of people like Oskar Schindler, who saved over
1,200 Jews. Or Corrie ten Boom, a middle-aged Dutch woman who, with her
sister and father, hid many Jews, students who refused to cooperate with
the Nazis, and members of the Dutch resistance before they were betrayed.
We could, of course, just pretend that it’s not really anything
to do with us.
But as Pastor Martin Niemöller, imprisoned in a concentration camps
for seven years for opposing Nazi ideology, wrote: “First they came
for the communists, but I was not a communist – so I said nothing.
Then they came for the social democrats, but I was not a social democrat
– so I did nothing. Then they came for the trade unionists, but
I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was
not a Jew – so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was
no one left who could stand up for me.”
Story by Amanda Kendal
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