Holocaust Memorial Day

More than ever, the most important day of the year

This is an annotated and amplified version of a piece I wrote on this day in 2008. I never imagined that 17 years on, the richest man in the world would have an office in The White House, and would celebrate the inauguration of the President of the United States with a Nazi salute. The original paragraphs are in italics.

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Child survivors of Auschwitz shortly after liberation. Photo: Bilderwelt/Mary Evans

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. Stephen Smith, who chairs the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust wrote eloquently in yesterday's Guardian about the importance of remembering the Nazi genocide.

That piece is still available on the Guardian website and is still very much worth a read.

Each year the day brings new opportunities to hear from some of those who lost loved ones, and others who managed to survive the extermination camps. But many of the survivors are now nearing the end of their own lives. It is crucial, therefore, that their recollections are preserved and retold for future generations.

Each year, of course, the number of survivors becomes fewer and fewer. In terms of reinforcing the crucial message about the horrors of the Holocaust and the imperative of avoiding a repeat, there is nothing more powerful than the testimonies of those who lived through it and survived the death camps.

Remarkably, fifty survivors have today returned to Auschwitz to mark the 80th anniversary of its liberation. But before long we’ll be relying on the written and recorded testimonies of those who were there.

To my mind, the greatest of these remains Primo Levi’s remarkable book, If This Is a Man. Inevitably it’s a difficult read, but anyone who hasn’t read it, really should. It is the least we can do.

If you do read it, be sure also to read Levi’s ‘sequel’ The Truce, in which he told the remarkable story of his repatriation back to Italy, and, through the people he met on the way, provided just a little in the way of redemption for humankind.

Six million people - most of them Jews - were murdered in Hitler’s death camps. Thousands of ordinary Germans were actively involved in committing these unimaginable crimes over a period of several years. Millions of others were complicit. Last time it happened in Germany. Next time it could happen in your country.

One of the reasons I am so committed to the idea of a more just and inclusive world is that the potential to fall into fascism (indeed totalitarianism of any kind) lurks not very far beneath the surface of even the most civilized and superficially democratic of societies.

Do I need to add anything here, except to say that, quite clearly, fascism currently lurks far closer to the surface than at any time since 1945.

Its return remains a distinct possibility in an increasingly uncertain world, especially as perceptions (correct or otherwise) of injustice among certain groups continue to grow. This is why it's so important that as many people as possible are encouraged to ‘Imagine, Remember, Reflect and React’ - the tagline of this year's commemoration.

It is clear that one factor driving the resurgence of far-right politics today is the ability of bad faith actors to exploit the sense of injustice felt by ordinary people for whom the economy has failed to deliver over the last four decades, and so to achieve power through the ballot box.

The only way to prevent a full scale return of fascism, and likely in more than one country - is to reverse that trend. And that requires politicians to tell a different story about what has gone wrong and why. And then to explain how they plan to reconfigure the economy so that everyone is able to share in the benefits of our remarkable ability to create wealth, not just the tiny minority that currently pulls the levers of economic power.

If you're much younger than I am, and don't know much about the holocaust, I would recommend you get hold of a copy of Stephen Spielberg's 1998 film, The Last Days. It's not easy to watch - I first saw it at the cinema soon after it's release; as the auditorium emptied many of those present still had tears streaming down their faces - but once you've seen it you'll never forget why it's important to remember.

The Last Days is currently available to watch on Netflix. I would still urge anyone who doesn’t know as much as they might about The Holocaust to watch it.

This paragraph from Stephen Smith’s 2008 article is even more relevant today than when he wrote it:

Reflection gives us time to work it out, to think it through, to wonder, to question, to challenge ourselves. The reflection is not a pause for meditation, but a personal challenge. Given similar circumstances, regardless of background, what would we have done? In the community today, how do we make an impact? Do we stand up and speak out, or are we complicit through our silence?

There are so many parallels between the 1920s and 1930s and what is happening today: the rise of the far-right AfD in Germany; the possibility of an uninhibitedly racist government in France; the rise of anti-Semitic attitudes and attacks on Jewish people and monuments in many parts of the world; the election of an unhinged authoritarian in the United States whose policy of mass deportations is motivated by racism and an obscene disregard for his victims’ welfare.

Trump is not a Nazi, even if Elon Musk can’t tell the difference between the various flavours of fascism, but whatever the specifics of each authoritarian regime, the consequences for thousands, and in some cases millions, of people targeted by such maniacs are intolerable.

And with a recent study finding that:

A third of young adults in UK ‘unable to name Auschwitz or any Nazi death camps’

it is imperative that the Holocaust and the history of the period of leading up to it are communicated to every new generation as forcefully as possible.

Those of us who care about our fellow human beings; who recognise that we have far more in common than that which divides us, that we all share similar aspirations for ourselves and our loved ones, must do all we can to counter the rise of fascism, before it’s too late.