'It didn’t start with gas chambers. It started with politicians dividing the people, us vs them...’
Children who had survived photographed just after the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp on January 27, 1945. Picture: CAF pap/AP
Politics had never been part of Holocaust Memorial Day in Ireland. That, like so much, dramatically changed this year.
Undiplomatic disagreements over speaking at the solemn event have embroiled President Michael D Higgins and Israeli Ambassador Dana Erlich, as well as event organisers, Holocaust Education Ireland, and the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland.
“Memorial Day used to be a deeply apolitical event,” a senior source told the , “now it is a much more politicised event. Holocaust commemorations in Europe have become extremely fraught.”
While the Hamas massacre of 1,200 people on October 7, 2023 — and the taking of 250 hostages — and the subsequent flattening by Israeli forces of Gaza, killing an estimated 45,000 people, are central to this atmosphere, the inauguration in Washington last Monday added fuel onto the fire.
Exactly what Elon Musk intended when he addressed an inauguration crowd on January 20 may never be known — but his Nazi-esque salute went down very well with far-right extremists and neo-Nazis.
There was even support in Ireland. One prominent far-right account, with apparently 50,000 followers, welcomed his salute, stating: “America is back baby!”
Monday, January 20 happened to mark the 83rd anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, where high-ranking Nazi officials met at a villa in a Berlin suburb to discuss mass extermination of European Jews.
Also last Monday, US president Trump signed orders pardoning leaders of white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups who took part in the insurrection of January 6, 2021.
Many of these groups openly wear t-shirts and carry flags emblazoned with Nazi symbols, such as swastikas, and openly perform Hitler salutes.
Just days after Musk’s salute, Auschwitz Memorial, the official museum at the camp, sent out an online post about the Hitler salute: “It is an emblem of the Holocaust and other horrifying crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germany.
“Sensitivity to these historical contexts is essential, as such gestures and symbols, even used unintended, resonate and evoke distress, particularly for those who bear the scars of that tragic history.”
At the weekend, Musk did a live video at a gathering of the far-right AfD in Germany, a party he was already publicly backed for next month’s election, and said: "I think there is too much focus on past guilt [in Germany], and we need to move beyond that. Children should not feel guilty for the sins of their parents — their great grandparents even."
Against this background, Robert Gerwarth, Professor of Modern History at UCD, said there is an imperative to remind people about the Holocaust and the fragility of democracies.
“The Holocaust is receding further and further into history, so, obviously its important to remember what happened and to bear in mind how quickly a society can trip into dictatorship, that are genocidal in nature,” he told the .
“Obviously with the Trump inauguration, there’s, again, a lot of talk about the sort of Weimar [German democracy Adolf Hitler subverted and ended] moment of Western democracies and what might happen and how easily democracies can slide either into ‘guided democracies’ or authoritarian democracies.
“Even though I wouldn’t push those historical analogies too far, I think it serves as a very important reminder that democracies can fail, with terrible consequences.”
Prof Gerwarth, a German national living in Ireland for 17 years, believes the Holocaust should be taught in schools and universities here more.
He said Holocaust Education Ireland (HEI), of which he sits on the board, do what they can to “keep the memory alive”.
Recently retired Professor of History at University of Limerick, Anthony McElligott, said he was of the view that knowledge of the Holocaust, and its teaching in schools, “is, by and large, poor”, with little at university level.
“A recent international survey of Holocaust Teaching [textbooks’ quality, materials, etc] placed Ireland near the bottom.”
He said fading memories had two types — collective and individual: “The former never really held much sway in Ireland — despite the best efforts of HEI and its supporters in past and present government circles.”
Prof McElligott’s recent book, 'The Last Transport: The Holocaust in the Eastern Aegean' , was published by Bloomsbury in 2024.
He said: “The few survivors still alive [in Ireland] are now in their 80s. We are now moving to the second and third generation to keep the memory alive — but memory is fickle and subject to change in changing contexts.”
Prof Gerwarth, who is also director of UCD Centre for War Studies, said the reasons for remembering need to be restated: “One is the scale — six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Many genocides happen in colonial settings, whereas this one happened in the heart of Europe and was also carried out by highly industrialised states, that had the capacity and the logistics to bring Jews from all corners of occupied Europe to purpose-built murdering factories.”
The death rate was particularly high for children.
It is estimated that in the region of 1.5m children, including 1m Jewish children, were among those killed in the camps, along with tens of thousands of Romani (Gypsy) children, German children with physical and mental disabilities living in institutions, and Polish children.
In Auschwitz alone, the Nazis, with the help of collaborators, deported around 232,000 children there, including 216,000 Jews, 11,000 Roma, 3,000 Poles and the rest from Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere, according the to Auschwitz-Birkenau museum.
Only some 700 were still alive when the Soviet Army liberated the camp on January 27, 1945.
Lior Tibet is a Jew from Israel living in Ireland for the last seven years.
A PhD student of history at UCD, she said: “Every year I’m amazed how little knowledge and understanding Irish students have on the Holocaust and antisemitism in general.
“In the name of inclusion, the Irish education system has downplayed the centrality of the “Jewish question” to the Nazi regime, failing to emphasize that Jewish people were the absolute majority of those who were killed systematically and on an industrial scale as opposed to other groups sent to labour camps.
“Furthermore, the education system in Ireland minimised the war on Jews to be “a war on religion/faith” (old antisemitism, hatred towards Judaism as a religion) when in fact the Nazi perceived Jews as a race (racial antisemitism).”
Ms Tibet, who was one of the people who protested at President Higgins' address on Sunday and who was removed from the event, said that both the far right and the far left demonstrate the “same level of antisemitism”.
She said: “Far-left policies, protests, and activism shows almost the same level of intolerance for Jewish people and their rights as the far-right’s.”
The concerns of Jewish students emerged when ‘Pro-Palestine camps’ were set up in various colleges, including UCD, Trinity and UCC, where, on occasion, there were flags of Hamas and Hezbollah. These flags also appeared in some public protests, although, again, they accounted for a very small minority.
Prof Gerwarth said: “Talking to Jewish students and colleagues they certainly felt threatened, particularly by the presence, which fortunately didn’t happen too often, but it did happen, the presence of Hamas symbols and flags.”
Ms Tibet noted the Hamas and Hezbollah flags were seen again at the large Palestine march on Saturday.
Videos of the protest — which attracted several thousand people predominantly holding the Palestinian national flag — show a relatively small group, perhaps numbering around 10 people, mostly heavily masked, with a number of them holding the yellow Hamas flag and the green or red Hezbollah flag.
They were marching behind a banner claiming “Palestinian Authority collaborates with Israel”.
Ms Tibet said these were “offensive” displays and that she was concerned to see “support for terrorist organisations and people waving their flags”.
She added: “The Government and the President have been silent on the presence of these flags.”
Gardaí said the protest passed off peacefully and no incidents were reported.
Ms Tibet said she supports a two-state solution.
“I would happily join the protests calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state when I can hold the Israeli flag in them," she said. "The future is two states, side by side, not one state.
Asked if she felt sympathies for Jews had been affected by events in Gaza, she said: “The truth is there is no sympathies for our pain. I was being taught that I can have sympathy for all humanity, not just one group.
"You can say ‘Jews and Israelis are suffering’, without having the competition of who suffers more. Both sides suffer. The loss of sympathy for Jews is overwhelming.”
Prof McElligot said it was “beyond doubt” sympathies had been affected.
He said a US Jewish friend, a well-known terrorism scholar, has received death threats and now cannot speak at a university campus with a police guard, which happened recently in Belfast.
He believes that Ireland, not least among its political leaders and head of state, have not got the balance right in defending Palestinians and being sensitive to Jews in Ireland.
“The death toll and destruction in Gaza and in the West Bank are to be abhorred,” he said. “But we should remember, Hamas is a terrorist organization with a genocidal manifesto. It is also callous in its approach to Palestinians — it knew full well how Netanyahu and the rightwing extremists in his cabinet would respond.
“But there is a basic lack of understanding of the cleavages in Israeli society — the protests against the war and against the landgrab by settlers. That fact never really gets much airplay.”
Prof Gerwarth said debates on the Israeli-Palestine issue, as with many issues, have become polarised and very “black and white”, with the online world partly to blame. He said:
"It contributed to hate speech and different camps in political discourse have become completely irreconcilable and now instead of developing a sound argument we have an emotional, instant response to a post on X.”
A study by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, published in March 2023, found that the volume on antisemitic tweets more than doubled after Elon Musk took over the platform in October 2022.
A report published by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in July 2024 found that 80% of Jews surveyed in the EU (Ireland not included) felt antisemitism had increased.
Gauging antisemitism in Ireland is difficult.
Garda hate crime statistics break down motives by categories, one being religion. However, it does not break it down further for antisemitism.
Anecdotal incidents can be seen online. After the announcement to close the Israel embassy in Ireland, one Irish man posted a photo of Ms Erlich and said: “Good fucking riddance and don’t come back. Rare, I’m proud to be Irish but that we have shunned these parasites is wonderful."
The word ‘parasite’ is one Jews are familiar with. In , Hitler wrote: “The Jew was only and always a parasite in the body of other peoples….The Jews are a people under whose parasitism the whole of honest humanity is suffering.”
At the security and terrorism end, the understands that security services do not see a threat to Jewish people or institutions from radicalised groups, either from the far-left or Islamists.
Security services examine both the “ambition” and “capabilities” of people in assessing their threat.
These services are watching a small number of republicans active in this area, but say that they have not yet seen “anything beyond views and opinions”.
But security services here and abroad are particularly concerned about individuals, often young and vulnerable, self-radicalising themselves online – something that is very difficult to spot and monitor.
The Programme for Government gave a commitment to give effect to a non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The definition states: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
In its commentary, the IHRA states: “Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.
A list of examples include denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour and drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said the IHRA definition was widely used to “shut down criticism” of Israel.
He said the definition was used by supporters of Israel to “equate criticism of the Israeli regime for its colonial, apartheid, genocidal character, with antisemitism”.
Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon said Ms Erlich used the IHRA definition to make “scurrilous accusations” against both Taoiseach Simon Harris and President Michael D Higgins.
He said that legitimate criticism of Israel was not antisemitic and said Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have criticised it.
The rise of the far right in the US and Europe is concerning those attuned to the past.
“This has been brewing over the past decade and is to be found almost everywhere in western societies,” Prof McElligott said.
“It received impetus from Trump's first presidency and is being openly courted by him and his circle now. We should also be vigilant for Ireland — even though the extreme right failed to get widespread support in the last elections, neither did the Alternative for Germany (AfD) when it first came on the scene. And now look where we are.”
Prof Gerwarth said there was a process called “cumulative radicalisation”.
He said: “It’s a gradual process, which is shaped by circumstances like war, for example, or moments of economic crisis, when scapegoats become more common. With the Nazis identified the Jews as a problem and as a problem they wanted to go away, they started with deportations and then gradually they moved to executions, first of men of military age and then escalated to men, women, and children. It is a process of gradual radicalisation.”
It chimes with a famous warning from Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum:
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