Holocaust Memorial Day 2024: Reflections by Peter Beyfus
The first Holocaust Memorial Day was held on 27 January 2001 to mark the anniversary of
the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps by Soviet troops in 1945. Since then the
scope of this mournful day has widened to include the many tragedies that have befallen
other populations that have suffered persecution, torture and death at the hands of those
who saw them as different and not worthy of civilised treatment. The list of atrocities in the
modern era, not to diminish those who perished in former times, is depressing, so many
innocent lives sacrificed for ideology, ethnic rivalry and just plain hatred.
The Holocaust saw 6 million Jewish lives snuffed out; in the Darfur region of Sudan, in 2003,
some 400,000 people were slaughtered by government-backed militia, the Janjaweed (earlier
this month President Cyril Ramaphosa, that “beacon of morality”, warmly greeted
Hemedti, a former leader of the Janjaweed), in Rwanda in 1994 the Hutus sought to
realise the genocide of the Tutsis, killing an estimated 800,000 men, women and children;
in the Bosnian war Serbian troops were guilty of ethic cleansing, resulting in the deaths of
200,000 Bosnian Muslims and of displacing some 2 million people; in Cambodia, 1975-
1979, the Pol Pot regime killed between 1.5 and 2 million citizens; and finally in China,
under Mao Tse-tung, the ‘Great Leap Forward’ campaign of 1958, cost the lives of 27
million people who starved to death to glorify one man’s ego.
What unites all these terrible events is hatred of the other, of demonising an ethic group
or of removing anyone who opposes dictatorship. This pathological animosity has evolved not just to include a
particular people but in the case of Israel a whole country. Those who chant from the
‘River to the Sea’ are advocating the extermination of the Jewish population of Israel, a
projected genocide. Anyone who doubts this claim should spend a little time reading the
charter of Hamas and other Islamist terror organisations. To criticise a country’s policies,
including our own, is part of the privilege of living in a democracy, but when does legitimate
concerns about the behaviour of a sovereign state become a pretext for threatening,
intimidating and terrorising Jewish people living in Israel and in many countries of the
world?
Many Jews have witnessed unbridled hatred directed at Israel and the diaspora.
What other minority group in Britain has been provided police protection because
synagogues, Jewish schools and businesses are regarded as potential targets for attack?
There is a climate of fear, likened by some to what was experienced in Nazi Germany, and
that is not a good place to be. The emotional and intellectual impact of the aforementioned
atrocities have been derogated by the gross misuse of language. The currency of those
who wish to promote hatred have been heard on the streets of Britain and around the
world.
When referring to the tragic events in Gaza, a war, incidentally, Israel neither started
or wanted, emotive terms like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” are being broadcast,
indicating a profound level of ignorance. Those responsible for the misuse of language
should consider the tragedies already listed.
As we come together to mark Holocaust Memorial Day we should keep in mind the evil that has led to so much misery and that,
sadly, is still with us, and it is incumbent upon all of us to ensure our liberal democracy is
not tainted by those who advocate intolerance; and, perhaps, the most important counter
to this threat is education, becoming better informed, to resist insidious propaganda, and
to be prepared to challenge those whose information comes from social media, heavily
laced with the latest “sound bites”.