Foreword
The Holocaust Educational Trust and
Community Security Trust sincerely
thank all those who, from differing
perspectives, have contributed to this
short essay collection on antisemitism
and the lessons of the Holocaust.
Our contributors represent different
faith, political and civic communities,
showing that tackling antisemitism
is a cause for the many, and not the
few. We hope this booklet prompts
reflection, discussion and - most
importantly - action.
Antisemitism did not begin with the
Nazis. Its British history includes the
anti-Jewish pogrom of York in 1190 and
the banishment of Jews by King
Edward I, to British fascism before and
after World War Two. To combat
today’s antisemitism, we must know its
history, continuity, adaptability and
longevity. This age-old scourge shifts
shape and form to suit its surroundings:
culminating - but not ending - in the
almost complete annihilation of the
Jewish people.
The Holocaust was the murder of
approximately six million Jewish men,
women and children by Nazi Germany
and its collaborators during the Second
World War. Nazism had Jew-hatred at its
core, but Jews were not its only victims.
Homosexuals, Roma, Sinti, Jehovah’s
Witnesses and the disabled were all
murdered and dreadfully persecuted,
as were citizens of countries deemed
inferior to Aryans: but it was the totality
and methodology of the Nazis’ attempt
to murder every Jew, that made the
Holocaust unprecedented.
In his essay, historian Laurence
Rees articulates the origins of this
Nazi ideology through Hitler’s own
‘visceral, appalling hatred’, long before
the Final Solution was even conceived,
powerfully rebutting the scandalous
charge that Hitler somehow
‘supported Zionism’.
We must not indulge conspiracy
theories, antisemitic tropes and the
muddying of historical fact. We are
increasingly worried by what the Rt
Hon Sajid Javid MP terms ‘dinner-party
antisemitism’, the so-called acceptable
face of prejudice.
It is not acceptable to minimise what
happened to Jews and others in the
Holocaust, either by denying its facts, or
by comparing other things to Auschwitz
or the Warsaw Ghetto. Antisemitic
charges cannot be made correct by
substituting ‘Zionist’ or ‘Israel’, where
‘Jew’ had appeared for so long before.
Chief Rabbi Mirvis issues an impassioned
plea for individuals to refrain from such
insidious language, referencing the
‘visceral grief’ still felt by Jews over 70
years on from the Holocaust.
The Archbishop of Canterbury laments
such language becoming part of our
everyday discourse. Like a sponge,
our discourse has absorbed poisonous
linguistic norms: is it any wonder when it
is squeezed that this poison leaks out?
4 – Lessons Learned? Reflections on antisemitism and the Holocaust
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