Holocaust Memorial Day is a moment to reflect on a unique evil. Man’s inhumanity to man is known throughout history. But never before have the entire resources of a people and a state been placed at the service of the extermination a people whose condition was unalterable: the racist ideology of the far-right that grew into Nazism did not permit a Jew to escape death by renouncing faith or belonging.
There are many other hates of the other that lead to violence and death today as much as in the past. But none sought out the person to be killed in so many far flung remote corners of a continent. With the precise industrial, logistical, engineering, chemical, construction and transport skills of the advanced German state, the Nazis spent three years finding Jews hundreds of miles from Germany and brought them still living to be put to death in the gas chambers the Nazis built in Poland as if they did not want German soil to be contaminated with the ashes of dead Jews.
Today there is a serious attempt to devalue or banalise the Holocaust and the antisemitism that gave rise to it. Jew-hatred is back with a vengeance as a quick look at statements of far-right European politicians including our own BNP can testify. Sadly the Arab Spring has allowed a new antisemitism to emerge in the statements of some in Cairo and Tunisia. And all should read the charter of Hamas aand other Islamist ideologies dedicated to the extermination of the Jewish state in Israel.
Here in Rotherham we are proud of our good community relations and our motto ‘One Town, One Community’. Our schools work with the Holocaust Educational Trust to visit Auschwitz and our trade unions support speakers on the evil of antisemitism and all forms of racism.
When the Prophet Mohammed saw a Jewish funeral procession he stood up as a mark of respect. He was asked why he stood up for a dead Jew. ‘Is he not a human being?’ replied the Prophet.
That is why it is a tragedy when Jews are attacked because of what they believe and the causes they support. As Mehdi Hasan writes in The Times today the suffering of Palestinian and Kashmiri people is not eased by belittling the Holocaust or allowing contemporary anti-Jewish racism to sink roots in the community or on the campus.
He quotes the great Muslim teacher and leader Ali ibn Abu Talib who said ‘Every man is your brother. He is your brother in faith or your brother in humanity.’
Today we remember our six million brothers and sisters murdered in cold blood because anti-Jewish racism became state ideology. In German they say ‘Nie Wieder’. Never again. As Jews face new exterminationist hates from Iran and ideologies that use the same langauge as the Nazis let us say ‘Never Again’ here in Rotherham, here in Britain, here in Europe and the world.
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Statement at Holocaust Memorial Day Event, Rotherham Town Hall, 27 January 2012
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Denis MacShane is MP for Rotherham and former minister for Europe
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