Holocaust commemorations - Antisemitic behaviour continues

More than 40 world leaders are expected to attend the Fifth World Holocaust Forum, marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation by the Soviet Union’s Red Army of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the most notorious of the Nazi’s death camps.

There will, in fact, be two ceremonies, one today at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem and the other at the Auschwitz site in southern Poland on Monday, January 27, the date of the liberation. Leaders at both sites, joined by elderly survivors, will pay tribute to the 6m Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust, more than 1m of them in Auschwitz alone.

The fact there will be two ceremonies underlies how politically charged such commemorations remain. Israel had hoped to present a united front in commemorating those who died in the genocide but the remembrance days risk being overshadowed by a dispute between Poland — where Nazi German occupiers operated Auschwitz and other camps — and Russia, the successor state to the USSR.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his officials have been claiming that Poland — which was invaded in 1939 by German and Soviet forces — actually bears responsibility for starting the war, while the Polish government has been defending the nation’s record, recalling how its wartime government-in-exile alerted Western leaders to the plight of Jews. Such squabbling does a huge disservice to the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust. At the same time, while memorial ceremonies such as these serve as a reminder of a brutal period in history, the most fitting memorial of all would be to see an end to antisemitism, once and for all.

Sadly, the opposite appears to be the case. Since the beginning of the 21st century, we have witnessed a widespread resurgence of antisemitism around the world, a tidal spread that every year increases in volume and virulence. On Monday, Pope Francis condemned the “barbaric resurgence” of cases of antisemitism and urged the need to respect each person’s human dignity.

Research by the Vienna-based European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) shows that antisemitism is growing in the EU. Its 2018 study shows that most cases of antsemitic harassment were registered in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium, while similar, although fewer, such incidents have occurred in the UK and Italy.

A report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), the Council of Europe’s independent human rights monitoring body, echoes the FRA study, revealing that European Jews continue to be confronted with hatred, including violence.

While there have not been reports of major antisemitic incidents in Ireland, we are hardly immune from this scourge. While it is important not to conflate justified opposition to official Israeli positions on Palestinians with unjustified antisemitism, the danger is that one gives credence to the other. The important thing is to be aware of the perils of antisemitism and what it can lead to.