Never again means never again for anyone!
Written by Anna Hubbard
This Monday the 27 th of January is Holocaust Memorial Day. On this day 80 years ago Auschwitz was liberated. My great aunts Yvonne and Louisa Deloge walked free from the camp. Their mother Marceline sadly had not survived.
Holocaust is derived from a Greek word meaning wholly burnt offering used in translations of the Torah. Between 1933 and 1945 people the Nazis thought inferior such as Jews, Roma, Sinti, black people, gay and bisexual men were all consumed by its flames. Similarly, opponents of the Nazis such as socialists, communists, trade unionists and resistance fighters were also persecuted.
In the years following the war the memory of the Holocaust has been appropriated by the Israeli state and the Zionist movement to further their political aims. In his book The Holocaust Industry Jewish intellectual and child of Holocaust survivors Norman Finklestein argues that the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain and to further Israeli interests.
A more recent example of this is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s deeply flawed definition of antisemitism which conflates opposition to the actions of the state of Israel with antisemitism. Such is the power of the word Holocaust this definition has been uncritically adopted by governments and organisations throughout Europe and North America. It has been used to silence criticism of Israel and demonise pro-Palestinian activists as antisemites.
Jewish, pro-Palestinian activist Tony Greenstein wrote yesterday
“What the Holocaust does is provide the Israeli state with a powerful rationale for its victimhood complex even as it perpetrates a genocide. All settler states have a victim complex and believe that it is the settlers who are hard done by. Israel is no different in this respect but the Holocaust provides a unique moral justification and of course the West is happy to support this.”
Child survivor of Auschwitz Yehuda Elkana wrote
“There is “a profound existential “Angst” fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the holocaust … that we are the eternal victim. In this ancient belief… I see the tragic and paradoxical victory of Hitler. Two nations, metaphorically speaking, emerged from the ashes of Auschwitz: a minority who assert, “this must never happen again,” and a frightened and haunted majority who assert, “this must never happen again to us.” ”
We unequivocally stand with those who say this must never happen again – to anyone.
