Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD): now being used to minimise the Shoah, write Jews out of the Holocaust, and equate Jews with Nazis

Yesterday was "Holocaust Memorial Day" (HMD). I happened to attend a Jewish community event that was unconnected to HMD, but the organisers decided that this HMD prayer should be read out. I’ve discovered that this prayer was written under the auspices of the HMD Trust by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, then Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and Senior Imam Qari Asim.  It includes lines such as:

“In the horrors of that history, when so many groups were targeted because of their identity, and in genocides which followed, we recognise destructive prejudices that drive people apart.”

As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I was dismayed at this prayer. Daniel Ben Ami says about HMD: “It ought to be an occasion for sombre reflection on the systematic extermination of six million Jews.”  Instead, the wording of the HMD Trust prayer is indicative of attempts to minimise the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people, implying that similar genocides against other minorities have taken place, or will take place. As Karen Pollock wrote recently HMD is being used to “erode the uniquely Jewish experience of the Holocaust and to erase antisemitism from the narrative of the day”.

Indeed, because of this dilution of the Holocaust we have arrived at a situation whereby, in its long section covering HMD, ITV News failed to mention Jews in the list of groups persecuted during the Holocaust and only published an apology after furious complaints by Jewish organisations. Similarly, Deputy PM Angela Raynor failed to mention Jews in her HMD statement about "all those murdered". She has not apologised for this omission.

Frank Furedi talks about the “debasement of the Holocaust” and points out that “Holocaust inversion is rife among the anti-Israel crowd”. He also notes that the Islamic Human Rights Commission called for the boycott of HMD  if it did not include Gaza in its list of ‘genocides’.

We must stop pandering to:  

• the progressive narrative that all genocides are equal;

• the authorities who use the diversionary tactic of a notional “extreme right” threat; and

• those commentators who disgracefully find moral equivalence in what happened in the Shoah with Israel’s actions in Gaza, casting Jews as the new Nazis.

If not, how long before future HMD events and prayers really are forced to include reference to the fake 'Gaza genocide' as demanded by the Islamists?

October 7 and the subsequent antisemitic protests confirmed the Jewish people still face an existential threat. This should be the message of HMD, not a prayer that minimalizes what the Holocaust represents. The real threat to Jews comes from progressives and Islamists who are hijacking the meaning of HMD. The Trust debases the memory of people like my father with such a prayer.

A friend of mine accurately summarised HMD a few years ago as a day when:

• people who normally spend their energy advocating for the destruction of Israel’s 6 million Jews virtue signal their ‘sadness’ at the destruction of 6 million Jews.

• people trivialize the unique tragedy of the Jews by equating their suffering to that of others, even claiming Israel is “carrying out a Holocaust against the Palestinians.”

• people say “Never Again” to justify mass immigration of people who will ensure the end of any remnants of Jewish life in Europe.

The HMD Trust, who have been instrumantal in creating the revisionist Holocaust narrative, is no longer fit for purpose and should be disbanded.