The war in Gaza and the loss of life on both sides is a tragedy. But there is no equivalence with the Holocaust. The post Phil Eastment: 80 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, Galloway reminds us why Holocaust education is so important appeared first on Conservative Home.
Phil Eastment is a former Conservative Party Campaign Manager and Agent.
Today we mark Holocaust Memorial Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland.
We commemorate the six million Jews, and millions of others – Roma, disabled people, LGBTQ+ individuals and political dissidents – who died in Hitler’s state-sponsored genocide. Sadly, the Holocaust was not the last atrocity to target an entire people. But it is unique in its depravity, in its scale, in its industrial and methodical nature. It is the darkest chapter of our collective human history, and it is imperative that it is always remembered as such.
It is a tragedy that, eight decades since the liberation of Auschwitz, a factory of death in which 1.1 million people were exterminated in the gas chambers or worked to death, that antisemitism is on the rise through the western world, fuelled by the war in Gaza and misinformation and historical distortion online. Over the last month, synagogues have been set alight in Australia, once a bastion on tolerance and acceptance. Every week since Hamas’ brutal terrorist attack on Southern Israel, the greatest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, we have seen images of marches through London and capitals throughout the world in which symbols Nazi atrocities are equated with Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
Last week, George Galloway published a video on YouTube to his half a million subscribers in which he declared during his opening monologue: “If the torture and mass murder and genocide in Auschwitz had been live streamed, it would have looked something like what we’ve been looking at in Gaza over this last year and a bit.”
This grotesque comparison, all too common its occurrence, isn’t just wrong, it is dangerous. It demeans the causes and horrors of the Holocaust. Sadly, the Holocaust was not the last atrocity to target an entire people. But it is unique in its depravity, in its scale, in its industrial and methodical nature. It is the darkest chapter of our collective human history, and it is imperative that it is always remembered as such.
If the “torture and mass murder and genocide in Auschwitz had been live streamed” it would have looked nothing like the war in Gaza.
Viewers would have watched over one million innocent men, women and children purposefully transported to Auschwitz, in the most horrific and inhumane of conditions, and ordered off trains. At this point, they would have been selected to die immediately in the gas chambers, or to be worked to death as slaves. Families would have been separated and babies and children murdered in front of their mothers. This industrial horror was the culmination of over a decade of deliberate persecution. It began first with ideas and lies. With conversations, speeches and posters. With ignorance, propaganda and prejudice. It began with the gradual restriction of freedoms and rights. It began with discrimination.
The war in Gaza and the loss of life on both sides is a tragedy. But there is no equivalence with the Holocaust. Hamas’ claims that 50,000 Gazans have been killed since October 7th, 2023. Even if this figure is close to accurate, there is no differentiation between civilians and combatants. And not one of those lives would have been lost if Hamas hadn’t brutally invaded Israel and murdered, raped and kidnapped Israeli civilians. Israel hasn’t launched a war of extermination against the Palestinians. It is engaged in a war of defence against a hostile terrorist regime following a devastating attack.
Opponents of Israel scream ‘genocide’ at Israel whilst overlooking the reality that two million Palestinian Arabs, predominantly Muslim, live in Israel with full citizenship and voting rights. Protestors and opponents of Israel around the world denounce Israel whilst ignoring the deaths of half a million Syrians, the systematic persecution of curtailment of rights of Afghan women and the horrors of the war in Sudan in which half a million are feared dead and over seven million have been displaced. In China, over a million Muslim Uyghurs have been subject to forcible detention and other human rights abuses. Our own Parliament, amongst others around the world, have declared this persecution to be a genocide.
The South African legal case against Israel on accusations of genocide was launched by the same government that allowed Sudan’s former dictator Al-Bashir to evade justice for the genocide in Darfur, even refusing to heed its own court order to arrest him and transfer him to the International Criminal Court. Over 200,000 civilians died in the Darfur genocide, all of them betrayed by a government that was only prepared to act against the Jewish state.
At any stage during this conflict Hamas could have brought an end to the suffering of the civilian population by laying down their arms and releasing the hostages. There was no action Europe’s Jews could have taken to end their persecution and extermination. Unlike the Nazis and their zeal for exterminating Europe’s Jews, Israel has no desire to exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza or elsewhere. Indeed, Israel has always, and continues, to treat sick Palestinians in its hospitals. This is in contrast to the calls of Hamas and its supporters for the destruction of Israel “from the river to the sea.”
Whilst the horrors of the Holocaust are unique, the lessons from its origins – of how a civilised society could allow such an evil to manifest – are alarmingly applicable in societies around the world today.
The passing of the Holocaust from living memory and the misinformation spread online by influential people such as George Galloway mean there is a real and deepening urgency to address these lessons as we face the reality that antisemitism is once again on the rise. It is only through remembering the Holocaust, and through educating current and future generations of its causes and horrors, that we offer the best chance of ensuring that it can never happen again.
We owe it to the survivors who, despite all their unimaginable suffering, continue to work tirelessly to educate future generations about the horrors that they endured, and to ensure that the lives lost are truly never forgotten.
The post Phil Eastment: 80 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, Galloway reminds us why Holocaust education is so important appeared first on Conservative Home.
