This was the year the Jews were told ‘the Holocaust is not about you’

By the end of Holocaust Memorial Day, I found myself wishing that the whole thing could just be abolished. That’s the way it seems to be going, anyway; why prolong the agony?

Let us count the ways in which it was debased, appropriated, exploited and erased. Set aside the authors of crass Auschwitz books who saw the solemn occasion as a chance to hawk their wares online (no business like Shoah business, eh?). As Elie Wiesel once put it: “A novel about Treblinka is either not a novel or not about Treblinka.”

Set aside also the Auschwitz episodes of the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast, advertised with a jolly “achtung!” and co-presented by comedian Al Murray for Gary Linker’s production company. This kind of idiot one expects. As Wiesel also said: “A little history, a heavy dose of sentimentality and suspense, a dash of theological ruminations about the silence of God, and there it is: let kitsch rule in the land of kitsch.”

Yes, set them aside. But the Good Morning Britain presenter talking of the deaths of six million “people”, not the Jews? The deputy prime minister Angela Rayner lighting a candle for “all those who were murdered”, not the Jews? This was another order of insult. We saw it all over, from Sarah Champion MP to Justin Trudeau, from the councils of Bury and Cambridge City to Humanists UK, who tweeted their sorrow for “all the victims of genocide”. At the Lowestoft Council wreath-laying, Jews were not invited to lay a wreath. These people might as well have just spelled it out. Listen up, Jews. Stop whingeing. The Holocaust is not about you.

Only it is. That’s the whole point. The fetish for deracinating the Shoah from its victims is nothing less than a fresh attempt to erase us. This year, we were told, Holocaust Memorial Day commemorated not just the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz but also the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia. To which I say: Why can’t the Bosnians – and the Rwandans, Cambodians and Darfurians, for that matter – have their own ceremony?

If people want to observe a “Genocide Memorial Day”, that’s fine. But this year proved that relativisation has always been the prelude to erasure. The smarmy ecumenicals have been picking Jewish pockets of our anguish, then telling us that we never owned it in the first place.

I hold the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust partially responsible. These, don’t forget, are the very people who in November were forced to apologise for referring to “violence against Palestinians” in their invitation to the annual commemoration. The debacle of 2025 was inevitable result of the trajectory they chose. To the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, commemoration has always also been about “all forms of genocide”.

Why can’t Jews be left to grieve in peace? I’m not playing “my genocide is better than your genocide” here. Just don’t steal the crime that took our families, scrub it clean and turn it into a metaphor for yours. Particularly if your “genocide” happens to be fake.

It is a topsy turvy world indeed when Jews are complicit in their own demise. Who was it who said the barbarians never take a city until someone holds the gates open to them? Given his views on Zionists, I don’t often quote Christopher Hitchens. But when I saw that contemptible gaggle of preening as-a-Jews crowding the memorial to the Kindertransport with placards about Gaza, a little bit of sick came into my mouth.

Yes, a topsy turvy world. In 2025, mourning the Holocaust has become a vehicle for undoing the Jews. When the gnomish Irish president took to the stage in Dublin and proceeded to defile our pain by dragging it through the rubble of Gaza, he was echoing an ancient precedent. Norwich, 1144: The Jews killed little William. Berlin, 1934: Die Juden sind unser Unglück. Dublin, 2025: It’s sad about the Holocaust and everything but what really matters is Gaza. Especially the children.

Several Jews turned their backs on Higgins and were manhandled and ejected. We were left with certain questions. As the security guards dragged a Jewish woman – a historian of the Shoah at that – from a ceremony to mourn her dead, did they not sense a certain irony? What to make of the fact that two Holocaust survivors, Tomi Reichental and Suzi Diamond, had begged Higgins not to bring Gaza into his speech and were ignored? And where is all this leading?

I’m dreading next year. Like I said: is there a point to Holocaust Memorial Day any longer? The King’s visit to Auschwitz was immensely meaningful, of course, as were the many local ceremonies. But perhaps we should focus our energies instead on Yom Hashoah, the Israeli springtime commemoration, which remains – shock horror – solely about the Jewish genocide. Perhaps its time to defend our right to mourn.