Holocaust remembrance these days
Holocaust Remembrance Day was yesterday. But in Britain, it’s changed:
Schools are stepping back from Holocaust Memorial Day. Not because the facts changed. Not because the lesson became unclear. Because it became dangerous. Administrators sense backlash. Teachers fear complaints. Institutions calculate risk and choose quiet. …
The West forgetting the Holocaust does not dissolve Jewish identity. Jews do not require British schools to remain Jews. Jewish memory is internal. …
So why does this matter so much.
Because in Britain, and across the West, the Holocaust is not merely a tragic chapter to teach. It is part of the foundation of the moral identity that replaced religion as a shared anchor after the war. …
It built a rules based order with human rights language, minority protections, and institutional checks meant to prevent the machinery from ever being assembled again. It built education systems that treated remembrance as civic duty, not political option.
That is why the retreat from Holocaust Memorial Day is not a marginal culture war story. It is an indicator light on the dashboard of a weakening civilization. …
… [F]ear of backlash now outranks fear of forgetting. …
This is Britain quietly admitting it is no longer sure who it is.
A country that cannot commemorate the clearest moral lesson in its modern history without fear has already begun the next chapter.
I’m not British and don’t claim to know for sure, but my sense from across the pond is that it’s actually worse than that. There is some fear of backlash, of course. But much of British society – both imported and homegrown – has become more anti-Semitic, and the schools themselves are probably staffed by more and more teachers and administrators who at best don’t care about the Holocaust and at worst wish it had been more successful.
What’s more, as the actual event recedes, there’s an understandable diminution of caring as well as knowledge. Unless a person is especially interested in the topic, and makes an effort to read in depth about what is admittedly a distressing example of evil, it is possible to gain only a very cursory and sometimes flawed understanding of what the Holocaust was, how it worked, and what it meant.
It also becomes easier and easier to have Holocaust fatigue and say to oneself, “Why are we learning about Jews and their sufferings compared to everyone else on earth who has suffered? What self-centered and annoying people Jews are; who cares?”
To some people the Holocaust has become a useful way to make false and cheap analogies against one’s opponents. To take a prime example, we have the abominable Tim Walz:
“We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank,” Walz said. “Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.”
Speaking of Anne Frank, her father Otto – a person for whom I have the deepest respect – decided, for understandable reasons at the time, to edit her diary to make it more “universal” and somewhat de-emphasize her references to being Jewish. You can read about it in this article.
[NOTE: Here’s a post I wrote about an oft-quoted and oft-misunderstood quote from Anne Frank’s diary. And here’s one of many posts I’ve written on the Holocaust; two more can be found here and here.]
According to Daniel (Ketuvim), it’s just and right to believe that the children didn’t perish in the oven.
According to the Holocaust religion, it’s just and right to believe that they did.
I am making no conclusions from this parallel/symmetry, but I can’t ignore it, either.
I suppose, in countries which rigorously maintain equal rights for all and vigorously prohibit discrimination, continued remembrances of past atrocities might not be needed. Alas, at this time this certainly does not describe the UK, and we have serious problems with it here in the US. Let us remember.
I suggest the horrors of the Holocaust as they happened are one thing.
Is it a different level of horror, different type maybe, that a nation, a government, its entities PLANNED it down to the railroad schedules?
Nobody planned the Black Death. Nobody planned the European diseases which nearly depopulated the Americas.
This was planned in conferences and offices by people in business attire with coffee and dinner at hand and a soft bed at night,
That the one caused the other and they get lumped together is one thing. Am I wrong in seeing the second as its own separate horror?
@LXE
I have questions. Many many questions. But for now
I think a few statements are in order. So let’s start with a few key things.
Firstly: The Ovens were primarily not about murder, they were about covering up murder and destroying the bodes left from the murder. A huge proportion and maybe a solid majority of those bodies fed into the ovens were already dead after dying (overwhelmingly being murdered, directly or indirectly) in other ways.
Does this mean that no children died in the ovens? No. Indeed it would probably be a small miracle if none were given how the criteria for feeding people into the ovens or other pyres was more about if people were not moving or could not do work. But they were more about cleaning up the bodies of the “undesirables”, not their lives.
Secondly: There’s a vast difference between what is just and right on one side, and what one has or should have the legal/political right to say. There is no justification whatsoever as far as what is right or good to argue that there is no reason to believe children didn’t perish in the ovens, not when we have in depth analysis and evidence including from the perps themselves and survivors/witnesses like Witold Pilecki and the Vrba-Weltzer Auschwitz Report (and if someone does not know those names or reports, that might be an issue).
The issue comes from assuming the main purpose of the ovens was specifically to kill anyone (it wasn’t, it was to destroy bodies, mostly dead but also some living) or that all of the killing was done at the camps, which is very obviously untrue as the Jaeger Report and others make clear.
I believe that people should have the political and legal right to clam the Holocaust didn’t happen, in much the same way I believe they should have the right to deny the Holodomor or the starvation deaths of the Great Leap Forward. But this is not because I believe it is morally right and just to do so, because it is not. And frankly I will believe anybody who tries to claim otherwise is stunningly ignorant and foolish, outright malevolent, or all of the above.
Thirdly: I fail to see what Ketuvim has to say about the Holocaust or grounds to ignore things like the burnt bone meal found compacted and dense in places like Sobibor, or to argue that men like Pilecki, Vrba, or Wetzler were wrong about the running of the camps and the ovens. If anyone is unfamiliar with the evidence lines or sources, I am happy to help to the extent of my ability.
But I can only help so much.
Richard, it’s just a cultural thang…
– – – – – –
Kate, the UK—or rather the UK’s currently “governing” Politburo—are peddling furiously towards the goal of tweaking the grim, determined motto to something like “Never Remember” (or “Always Forget”?) hoping such an audaciously creative conceit will
appeal tobecome wildly popular with a rather hefty segment of the Newish vote…– – – – – – –
LXE, it’s a wide tent…but THAT WIDE?
(You may feel more comfortable in a more woke blog—Left OR Right.)
Turtler, thank you very much. Here are links to the reports you listed
The Vrba-Wetzler Report.
https://files.libcom.org/files/The%20Auschwitz%20Protocol%20-%20full%20report.pdf
The Jager Report.
https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DocJager.htm
The Story of Witold Pilecki
https://www.auschwitz.org/en/education/e-learning/podcast/story-of-witold-pilecki-co-founder-of-resistance-in-auschwitz/
Since it is easy to confirm the historical authenticity of the Holocaust, people who claim the Holocaust didn’t happen are outright malevolent.
@Barry
What makes you think it’s woke to draw a cultural parallel?
I don’t need a tent of any kind. I make my observations in broad daylight.
Calling something a religious dogma is not the same thing as calling it untrue. Conservation of energy is a dogma of many. Evolution is a dogma of many others. The Nicene Creed refers to Pontius Pilate, a historical figure whose existence is confirmed by independent sources.
The difference is in the significance ascribed to the statements. That my father’s name is Vladimir (Slavic: “ruler of the world”) is a plain statement of fact, it is reflected in government papers. But if I practiced ancestral worship, it would have had religious significance to me. It would have been a religious statement.
There are really two ways to practice ancestral worship. One of them to say, “our fathers and forefathers achieved a lot, and contributed a lot to the humanity”. And I second that. Gosh, I *first* that.
And the other is to say, “our fathers and forefathers suffered a lot”.
Yes they did. It’s really sad. Now you feel the pain of the Armenians.
@Turtler
> There’s a vast difference between what is just and right on one side, and what one has or should have the legal/political right to say.
No argument on that. The First Amendment is the golden rule here.
> I fail to see what Ketuvim has to say about the Holocaust
It establishes a framework.
Time and again in the Torah and the Tanakh the Creator redeems the nation of Israel; in Judaism, so that it were the light of the nations; in Christianity, so that it produced the light of the nations.
The chief narrative of the Torah and the Tanakh isn’t suffering; it’s redemption. Specifically, in Ketuvim, salvation and redemption from the fiery furnace.
When the main message stops being “God’s with us”, it stops being a winning message. It becomes a claim of damages. We lost in what we think is a zero-sum game, therefore you profited at our expense. Now you owe us. (Google “woke” and “reparations”.)
This isn’t just contrary to everything that makes the ancient Israel special (whether you think of it in Old Testament terms or not). It’s also contrary to everything that makes the *modern* Israel special. You know, that “bad Jewish guy” on a Merkava. Or that new Alan Turing from Cellebrite.
It literally says “our God failed to save us, so now you must”.
I refuse to buy into it precisely because I am a follower of that God.
I am not generally qualified to speak on His behalf, but I can’t deny that the XX century was a Tower of Babel story, and every nation that laid bricks into the tower owned its fall; mind you, mine (Russian) no less than the Jewish.
It’s not clear to me what you’re trying to express here.
You wrote,
“the Holocaust religion”?
What could this even possibly mean?
(And should this, for consistency’s sake, therefore also include an “Inquisition religion”? A “Crusader religion”? A “Chmielnicki religion”? A “Khobar religion”? A “Stalin religion”? Etc.)
You wrote,
“…it’s just and right to believe that they did [perish in the ovens]”
But WHAT exactly does BELIEF have to do with Nazis gassing to death (or otherwise killing) men, women and children in the death-camp Zyklon X showers and then burning their corpses in the death-camp crematoria? Or Nazis killing people by a variety of other means—shooting them en masse over self-dug graves, trenches or ravines, poisoning them with carbon monoxide in “special” vans, starving them to death, instigating suicide, etc.—in an intentional attempt to wipe them out throughout Europe and parts of North Africa, and then globally (the Thousand Year Reich presumably granting them sufficient time to complete this moral/aesthetic ambition, such, at least, was the plan).
And what exactly is the so-called CONNECTION—the “parallel/symmetry”—between the miracle by which Daniel and others in the Ktuvim (but also including Abraham, according to midrash) were saved from being burned alive and those millions during WWII who were not saved (albeit with certain very few “miraculous” exceptions)?
Unless you mean to say that God should—if he were consistent—should have saved them too; and/or perhaps that therefore God is dead and/or that therefore Israel has been supplanted, neither of which is a terribly original position to take; but if so, then why not go ahead and say it (instead of providing some absurd evidence that somehow indicates or perhaps even proves it—but no “conclusions”, no sir, God forbid)?
As mentioned, I’m more than a bit puzzled by the so-called similarities you seem intent on bringing to our attention and suspect that instead, you’ve unintentionally alerted us to something quite a bit different.
It’s clear to me what he’s trying to express Barry, as much as he thinks he’s so cleverly concealing it.
“Why not go ahead and say it?”
Because he’s chickenshit.
And from the bulging BBC folder in the “Heh” File:
“BBC apologizes for omitting Jews from Holocaust Memorial Day coverage”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/421633
(Not sure even the Bee could have come up with something quite like this…)
+ Bonus:
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2026/01/28/convicted-terrorist-who-plotted-to-bomb-british-consulate-and-was-linked-to-hook-handed-hate-preacher-abu-hamza-stands-in-birmingham-council-elections-to-unify-the-people/
@ Richard: “Am I wrong in seeing the second as its own separate horror?”
No, I would agree it is a separate (usually neglected) aspect to the total that magnifies the horror of that total result. It raises the prospect that it was not just “those other nasty enemy German Nazis” who did this, but that there is a potential any one of us might somehow be pulled into such a scheme (willingly or unwillingly, as the case may be).
Your comment also triggered a thought that maybe we want to neglect the administrative horror of the Holocaust because so much of our lives requires some levels of planning and scheduling, etc. And this is otherwise so “normal” but heinously abnormal in that people eradication context.
Then I also thought perhaps there is a pale shadow of the Holocaust administration in our own deep state / admin state and we sense this even when we don’t jump to that connection formally. [We might note that both are derived from some Germanic intellectualizing, but I will leave it to other commenters more qualified than I am to discuss any of the respective German philosophers who might have helped things along.]
@LXE
Thanks for clarifying, and now I understand better.
Honestly I’d argue it rather elaborates on an already created framework going back to the Old Testament.
Agreed there, and I do think that the extreme secularism of many Jewish groups have helped cause a great deal of suffering and aimlessness.
I have a great deal of problems with much of modern Jewish (or “Jewish”) social life and group dynamics, and particularly how a great number of early Zionists tried to remove the Most High and Religion from their arguments for a Jewish Nation and modern Jewish life, it’s one reason why I actually have plenty bad to say about the likes of Herzl. But even factoring that in and the wider issues of abandoning “God’s With Us”, it has shown the capacity to have more than some “winning”, as the extremely secular early Israel of 1946-1973 shows.
Perhaps, but that in no way changes the fact that there is abundant grounds for such damages to be claimed. The Third Reich and its allies systematically robbed and murdered their way through the communities of “undesirables”, whether said undesirables were Jews or not, and amassed a truly staggering amount of booty that helped feed in Hitler etc. al’s bread and circuses to keep the loyalty of the wider public. Something that the Arab League has by and large continued, even if not in quite as murderous a fashion.
I can criticize the likes of Theo Herzl and Eli Wiesel plenty for their secularism, lack of faith, and attempts to remove the God of Israel from the history and existence of Israel. But that in no way changes the fact that they had ample justifications for seeking bills of damages or an independent Jewish nation.
I am sorry, but what the hell is this supposed to mean?
It by and large was not the Jews that argued or tried to contrive their existence as a “zero-sum game.” It was the National Socialists of Germany and its allies, as well as its Arab Allies like the Arab League or the al-Husseinis. This becomes crystal clear if you read the likes of Hitler’s Second Book, which focuses upon the war of all against all for existence and finite resources. Likewise how the Arab League or precursor regimes like the pro-Nazi Iraqi Coup Government of 1941 or the al-Husseini movement sought to exterminate Jews.
I have my own issues with how the Holocaust is taught, which is probably one reason why you see such modern disillusion and the rise of scum like Fuentes, Carlson, Cooper, and even Buchanan carrying water for Hitler. In particular it bitterly amuses me how many people know nothing about Aktion T4 and the Nazi regime’s mass murder of its “useless eaters”, as well as the ramifications of it such as how the Hadamar Eugenics Center was a blueprint for the gassing centers and crematoria used further East at places like Auschwitz (and how it meant that the Western Allies could independently verify things the Soviets were telling them). And as someone who has a mental condition – even if a mild one – and has studied a host of Nazi atrocities, it annoys me beyond words how this tends to be overlooked and how pop culture and modern “education” frequently ignore or mis-inform on National Socialism and its host of victims, as well as the ideology.
But that in no way means that it is not warranted.
Which isn’t that surprising when you start looking through the blood money hauled around.
I’d argue it isn’t contrary to EVERYTHING that makes Israel special, as the whole “bless those that bless you, curse those that dishonor you” thing. Though I do think there has been too much fixation on the Holocaust as kind of a substitute religion. Hitler, the NSDAP, and their allies were bad. Very very bad. Among the worst to ever exist on this Earth from among the human fold. But ultimately they were human monsters, and they will probably be equaled or exceeded in time. They may be the most bloody of the persecutors for now, but they are ultimately not what is important.
I have plenty to criticize that sort of thing, and particularly amidst the Jewish left wing and things like Herzl. But above all I view it as simply ignorant. God did not fail to save the Jews, and indeed He as Lord of Hosts was more than capable of directing the mortal armies of the world to crush those that sought to exterminate the Jews in WWII and its aftermath.
Which is all well and good, but that in no way changes the fact that your wording is often godawful and not very clear, and you certainly staked out some very odd hills to fight from like the idea that “According to Daniel (Ketuvim), it’s just and right to believe that the children didn’t perish in the oven.
According to the Holocaust religion, it’s just and right to believe that they did.”
Which I agree as far as that goes, and the wider tragedies of WWII and the 20th Century in General show that. As does the number of worldly Jews or those of Jewish descent that were so obsessed with getting in the “in group” like Fritz Haber (Jewish apostate to Christianity and war criminal who helped mastermind the Kaiserreich’s gassing operations in WWI) who wound up leaving themselves and many of their peers – be they Jew or Gentile – out to dry. I also take issue again with the attempts to use the Holocaust as a substitute for true or deeper meaning in modern Jewish life, and particularly the covenant with God.
But those quibbles I have do not and should not take away with the fact that the Holocaust was the result of mass murdering social darwinists who very much saw existence as a zero sum game and sought to rob and exterminate groups like Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, most Eastern Slavs, and so forth. It may be lamentable that a great number today try to turn that experience into a substitute for divine or transcendental meaning, and this is far from exclusive to Jews as you pointed out (and oh how I have chewed out the “Great Patriotic War” myth, and argued how it seems like modern societies would struggle to recognize evil if it does not appear under a Red, Black, and White standard as white guys in well trimmed uniforms). But I cannot fault them for recognizing the Holocaust was a signal event in human history and an attempt to exterminate all “undesirables” in a zero sum game.
Turtler, you are aware—aren’t you?—of how Rabbi Kook (HaRav Kook*) regarded the young—and not so young—mostly socialists (the “Vanguard”**) who came to redeem and rebuild The Land (at first under Ottoman rule and then during the British Mandate period)?
As for “I take issue…” one can always hope that “Man’s Search for Meaning” might yield the “approved of” result…but one must be prepared to be disappointed. (One might also want to console with the motion that attitudes evolve, sometimes in the “approved of” direction. Sometimes.)
* Chief Rabbi of the Yishuv during the British Mandate
** Halutzim (or chalutzim)
Oops.
Should be “…want to console oneself with the notion that…”
what the heck (was that about) Hitler spelled out exactly what he desired, and the Wansee Conference, put it in clear text, Eichmann, whose malevolence drove him to visit and make alliance with Haj Amin Husseini, in the pre war period, who rallied the Handschar SS Battalion in Central Europe and the Middle East, the Farhud of Baghdad, was a small example, the Ustachi the OUN, the Cagoule, were even more bloodthirsty, in this regard, the exemplars like Mengele, who did his work exclusively at Auschwitz, Barbie in Vichy France, Rauff in Tunisia and later Egypt, Alois Brunner in Salonika, they all had their part,
all of these persons btw escaped Justice at Nurenberg, sans Barbie, they did entirely, they were protected by the Kamaraden, and certain elements of Western authorities including regretably some elements of the Vatican
one might think these men, were the manifestations of the Old Gods, of Pharaoh, of the Assyrians Phoenicians and Babylonians, but they are nonetheless men,
in the aftermath of the war, some of these schemed from redoubts in Syria, and Egypt, where they trained the armies and security services of said countries, and they trained the sons of Husseini,
to notice Evil, that was aimed at a particular ethnicity, although not exclusively
of course the newcomers, that the British imported at the strenuous objection of the likes of Enoch Powell, will not even brook acknowledgement of this fact,
after the War for their own Reasons, the Soviets, brought this blood libel into the open, hiring the sons of Hussein and Qassem, like Arafat and Wadi Haddad, through the likes of General Sakharovsky, the father of the skyjacking, from Dawson Fields to Entebbe and then onto Beirut, and TWA 847, the former involved the Baader Meinhof, the latter the Iranian proxies, Hezbollah,
this blended with third world madness of Qadaffi Uganda and Boumedienne, the last two were largely applauded at the evil peanut gallery that was the General Assembly, back when Moynihan was observing, but it has metastasized since then,
we saw this in cities from Paris to Berlin to Sydney, and sadly it looks like the slouching beast is surfacing in Gotham, witht the arrival of the Cobra,
in the 90s, there was a little too much focus on Christian animus toward Jews, like John Cornwell, resurrecting Hochhuth’s the Deputy, Goldhagen Carroll, et al, and certainly there has been more than a share of that, probably largely due to Martin Luther, although there were predecessors in ecclesiastical periods, there is a certain oikophobia, that makes one ignore the 800 pound guerilla in the modern day, the Arab nationalist and Islamist currents, plus other elements,
CAIR right around the same time, their premiere event came to my campus, and it made me twitchy, I had already had my brief intro into Emerson and Boddansky, years before 9-11,
The Holocaust was terrible, 10 million civilians being murdered by Nazis, 6 million of them Jews. I do have fatigue about pointing out the Jews were the 60% majority group targeted for genocide, but 4 million others were also killed.
But the 25% population of Cambodia, over 2 million, occurred in my lifetime, and the million plus genocide of Rwandan Tutsis by the majority Hutus happened while I was politically active.
So many killings, so often based on envy—the desire that your neighbor’s prize cow dies.
The 2 not fully peaceful MN protestors killed by enforcers of The Rule of Law. Enforcement of rules is never fully peaceful.
The utter failure of International Law to stop the Islamofascists of Iran from murdering 30,000. Now, in 2026. Tho the Nazis were 300 times worse. Yet Iran is 1,500 times worse than ICE in just numbers killed.
MN anti-ICE is mostly political theater, as is the ending of Holocaust Remembrance in the UK.
The almost New World Order of Pax America is ending. We are cursed, and blessed, with very interesting times.
Along with AI, which unfortunately is likely to be used by China, if not others too, to monitor Chinese closely & immediately punish any & all anti-CCP expressions. Now I wonder if there won’t be antiJew AI attack, tho also a ‘67 like pre-attack preemption by Israel.
They were going to hit me, so I hit him back, first.
As my Jewish Econ-AI substacker A Kling says,
Have a nice day.
Tom Grey:
I’m fairly sure you weren’t starting a conversation on the topic of genocide versus other large-scale killings, but I’m talking this opportunity to discuss it, just for general consumption.
Being killed by Nazis, even if a civilian, is not the same as genocide. Only two groups were victims of genocide by the Nazis: Jews and gypsies. The Nazis killed 2/3 of the Jews of Europe, and would have killed 100% if they could have. Their goal was total annihilation of the group and total elimination. They rounded up (or tried to round up) Jews from all the nations they occupied and tried to kill them, and succeeded in large part.
For gypsies (Roma), it is harder to know the numbers because we don’t really know how many were in Europe in the first place. But it’s thought that at least 1/6 were killed, and perhaps as many as 1/2.
The remaining 4 million in your figures represent a small percentage of the rest of Europe, compared to what happened to the Jews. The most deaths as a percentage of the population occurred in Poland:
About 200K Poles were killed by bombing prior to the occupation. That leave us with something between 10% and 11% of the ethnic Polish population killed. No comparison with what happened to the Jews.
However, the Nazis did have plans to eliminate more Poles if they ended up winning the war. They wanted to enslave the rest. Their ultimate goal was significantly eliminationist, but they fortunately didn’t win the war and therefore were unable to carry out their plans. But since genocide for the Jews was either their absolute top priority or one of their top priorities, they managed to kill well over half the Jews of Europe.
The killing fields of Cambodia were absolutely horrific, but not a genocide. They were perpetrated by Cambodians on other Cambodians for political, social, and class reasons. The Rwandan killings are closer to being a genocide, because they were perpetrated along ethnic lines; however, it turns out the distinctions were not totally ethnic but more social between Hutus and Tutsis. It is estimated that up to 3/4 of the Tutsi population was killed. I think that absolutely qualifies as genocide, but of a local population rather than an international one (like the Jews or gypsies), and as part of a larger civil war.