Join Us Online for Remaking the Promise of Never Again

This afternoon and evening (Sunday February 9th, 2025) will see the continuation of Our Fight's initiative to clarify the meaning of the Holocaust, and to reinstate the centrality of anti-Semitism to the lessons it contains.

From news broadcasts on Holocaust Memorial Day that forgot to mention the Jews, to left-wing memorials for 'all genocides', this year's HMD should come as a wake-up call for anyone who is concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism. Unless we prepare to challenge the re-writing of the Holocaust, the erasure of Jews from the story, and its transformation into a generic morality tale about prejudice, then HMD next year will be much worse.

If you are in London, there are a small number of in-person tickets remaining. It's also very straightforward (and only £10) to join the evening plenary online, with Brendan O'Neill.

Holocaust Denial

For many years the critical response to the Holocaust was outright denial that it had even happened. Nowadays, outside of the depths of some Twitter thread, this is not so common. Instead we see the Holocaust either being relativised, or worse, what is being called Holocaust 'inversion'.

Relativising the Holocaust

To relativise the Holocaust is to say that whilst it was bad, it was much the same as what happened in Cambodia, Bosnia or Rwanda. That is to say, that since the Holocaust was essentially about killing lots of people, it was one genocide amongst many. The lessons it can teach us are therefore nothing more than vague lessons about mass murder and prejudice.

As a consequence, you will see adverts such as a recent Super Bowl advert against anti-Semitism, warning us about the dangers of prejudice, and that not being nice to people who are 'different' can lead to slaughter. Relativising the Holocaust renders its lessons banal—we might as well say that school bullying leads to the Holocaust.

Saying that Jews are not central to the Holocaust—to 'de-Judifie' the Holocaust, as some have put it—is deeply insulting to the memory of the 6 million Jews who were murdered. We saw on the streets of London, during the weekend preceding Holocaust Memorial Day, that a public display of a Yad Vashem exhibition (called The Auschwitz Album) by Our Fight and Stop the Hate, was deemed a counter-protest to a 'Genocide Memorial Weekend' event organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

In other words, an exhibition from the world's foremost centre for the remembrance of the Holocaust, which was being held for the public to look at by descendants of Jews who had been murdered in the Holocaust, was relegated to being a counter-protest to an event which talked about 'all genocides'.

Holocaust Inversion

Relativising the Holocaust in this way, so that it is one slaughter amongst many—and therefore has no significant anti-Semitic component—is insulting enough, but there is unfortunately something worse. To relativise the Holocaust opens the door to a shocking possibility; if the Holocaust is just one genocide amongst many, then maybe the Jews can commit a Holocaust too.

This what the idea of 'Holocaust inversion' takes to its disturbing, but logical conclusion; not content with telling the Jews that there was nothing unique about their suffering, Holocaust inversion says that the Jews themselves—through their state of Israel—are now responsible for unleashing the same barbarism.

Free of Guilt

In one leap, the enemies of Israel and the Jews have wiped the slate clean. Rather than denying that the Holocaust happened—which at least left the door open to proving that it did happen—they say that the Holocaust was something that could have happened to anyone. And if the Jews and Israel are guilty of committing genocide now, then maybe we don't need to be so sympathetic to the Jews that were exterminated in the death camps of Europe.

The world need feel guilty no more.

HMD 2025

This year's Holocaust Memorial Day provided the most disturbing illustration of the culmination of this trend. ITV news forgot to mention Jews when it referred to the 6 million 'people' killed. They apologised for the omission, but as a matter of respect rather than fact. In other words, no-one really thought it was that significant that 6 million Jews were murdered in the death-camps—certainly no more significant than Roma or Poles—and the apology was simply for good form.

On Holocaust Memorial Day itself, at the Kindertransport Memorial in London's Liverpool Street, Our Fight organised another memorial event with Stop the Hate, this time with photos, candles and stories of Holocaust victims, told in order to honour their memory. Yet before the event could start, we had to remove placards from another 'Genocide Memorial Day' event at the same location, mourning those 'slaughtered by Israel in the genocide'.

Once again, on the actual Holocaust Memorial Day, Jewish descendants of Holocaust victims were about to have a dignified memorial for the dead, whilst pro-Gaza campaigners were using this as an opportunity to accuse Jews of committing these very same acts.

Remaking the Promise

From denial, to relativisation to inversion, we have let the Holocaust be distorted and rewritten. Perhaps we imagined that the Holocaust was a lesson that would simply teach itself. Maybe we thought that repeating 'Never Again', year after year would mean that it would always be there as a lesson to all.

But a promise forgotten, is a promise broken. And the power of 'Never Again' has all but vanished.

This year it is time to remake that promise.

Today's symposium is part of a wider programme of activities through this year, to reestablish the centrality of anti-Semitism to the Holocaust. Let's ensure that next year's HMD is a true reflection of what the Holocaust should represent.