From the archives: Britain must face its past

JVL Introduction

As the government throws its weight behind the controversial campaign to build a new Holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster, we look back at the decision to introduce a Holocaust memorial day commemoration in the first place.

Tony Klug, writing in Jewish Socialist in 2001, raised some important questions about who and what was being remembered.

By commemorating post-war genocides in which Britain had not been implicated, he feared it might “carry more than a tinge of British self-righteousness”, blotting out Britain’s own xenophobic leanings, exemplified in the transatlantic slave trade.

Here he makes the argument not for doing away withHolocaust Day but for expanding it into a Holocaust and Slavery Day – an argument perhaps even more relevant today than it was when made over two decades ago.

Thanks to Tony and Jewish Socialist for agreeing to republication

From the archives: Britain must face its past

Tony Klug, Jewish Socialist, No 44, Spring 2001

The campaign for a memorial day in this country is marked by contradiction and paradox. Unlike other European countries which observe an annual Holocaust day, Britain was not complicit in the crimes of the Nazis. Blitzed but unoccupied, it did not round up and hand over its Jews and other designated undesirables for the deathly transports or watch passively while the stormtroopers did their own dirty work. On the contrary, with justification, the British nation’s collective self-memory is of its own noble role in finally disposing of the Nazi evil.

Nor is the finger of guilt pointed at Britain for more recent genocides and severe human rights abuses highlighted in the recent Holocaust Day commemoration, such as those in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo. These tragedies were included – and incorporated into Tony Blair’s keynote speech at the main event – both to widen the scope beyond its essentially Jewish focus and to justify the paradoxical assertion that the Holocaust, acclaimed as unique, is illustrative of other atrocities.

But what message does a British Prime Minister, in ticking off one foreign wicked deed after another, really pass on to a British public not unknown for its xenophobic leanings? Wittingly or unwittingly, the expressions of indignation carry more than a tinge of British self-righteousness, potentially reinforcing the very opposite sentiment to anti-racism.

Yet Britain has no reason to be smug. Apart from its own centuries-old tradition of antisemitism, our imperial forebears saw no shame in plundering, kidnapping, trading and enslaving whole African populations and devastating their lives and communities. Remarkably, until today, there has been no proper reckoning of these atrocities.

The proposal here is not to do away with Holocaust Day but to expand it into a Holocaust and Slavery Day. Of course, there were important differences between these two horrendous experiences, but legalised enslavement and routine killing on racial grounds were characteristic to them both. The victims were disposable humanity.

Dispossession, humiliation and cruelty of an extreme kind, organised and casual, were their common lot. By explicitly linking the British role in black slavery with traditional antisemitism throughout Europe, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and other defenceless groups, and by tracing and understanding the connections between them, the universal messages arising from the racist danger may be more readily distinguished and assimilated by society at large than by spotlighting just one of these catastrophes. Regarding these evils together, across borders and down generations, may illustrate far more effectively where indifference, contempt, bigotry or the dehumanisation of whole peoples can lead.

There may be an instructive precedent for this proposal in a Californian law adopted in 1992 whereby high schools were mandated specifically to incorporate the study of slavery and the Holocaust into their courses on human rights. As the parallels between the two experiences are drawn out, people familiar with one narrative may find themselves more receptive to the narrative of the other.

The obverse can also be true. A headteacher friend recently told me that he had considered but then rejected the idea of commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day in his large comprehensive school on the outskirts of London. He concluded that the Holocaust as such would have little resonance for his predominantly Asian and Afro-Caribbean students.

However, a project that linked the Holocaust with black slavery, comparing and contrasting the experiences, would, he felt, stimulate plenty of interest. Researching the information and preparing and presenting the materials in various ways would necessarily require collaboration among different ethnic and community groups, both at the school and wider society levels. This, in itself, could make an important contribution to reducing stereotypes and enhancing co-operation and understanding across the barriers.

By contrast, the predominant focus on antisemitism – even if other tragedies are benevolently subsumed under the Holocaust rubric – could have the opposite effect. In ethnically mixed classrooms, for example, Jewish pupils may variously feel singled out, embarrassed, isolated, pitied. At a more general level, the essentially negative notion of Jews as perennial victims may be perpetuated.

None of this is to imply that there is something illegitimate about commemorating the Holocaust per se, especially by those groups who were its direct victims. The late Rabbi Hugo Gryn, a Holocaust survivor himself, constantly called for Jewish communities to observe Yom Hashoa (Holocaust Day) every year. It is to be seen whether, for Jews in Britain, this day of reflection will be overwhelmed by the sheer stridency of the state-backed Holocaust Memorial Day.

A similar question mark may hover over the well-regarded Anne Frank Day, launched a few years ago by the Anne Frank Educational Trust and directed mainly at UK schools and other educational institutions. Alongside Anne Frank’s own story, its materials feature the more recent Stephen Lawrence case and other instances of present-day racism in Britain, and arguably provide a more effective, less in-your-face, approach in getting the Holocaust and anti-racist messages across. As for the acclaimed success of the first Holocaust Memorial Day, it is revealing that, despite its declared anti-racist theme, very few sponsors were drawn from black groups. Predictably, there was a preponderance of Jewish sponsoring groups.

Finally, in the circumstances of the current Middle East crisis, there is a serious credibility question looming for Jewish groups and public figures who admirably deplore the suppression of human rights by governments throughout the world  – conspicuously protesting the failure to learn the lessons of the Holocaust – while they simultaneously urge support and understanding for an Israeli government that, in its policies and practices towards the Palestinians, constantly flouts the same human rights principles.

Their deep devotion to the Jewish State may genuinely blind these groups and individuals to the discrepancies in their positions but, in the eyes of many others, their flagrant double standards expose them to a charge of gross hypocrisy. As the contradictions visibly deepen, this may impact negatively on their plausibility as advocates of a universal human rights message and so critically undermine the proclaimed purpose of Holocaust Memorial Day.

A more general anti-racist and/or genocide day has been floated as a worthy alternative, but there are potential drawbacks. First, the opportunity for Britain squarely to confront its own past, particularly its preeminent role in slavery, may get swamped or simply ignored. Similarly, the Holocaust in particular and antisemitism generally may be passed over in the broad sweep of anti-racism, as commonly happens. An attempt to replace Holocaust Memorial Day altogether so soon after its inception would certainly invite concerted opposition, whereas some supporters may actually welcome the opportunity to widen its scope.