Holocaust Memorial Day | Auschwitz, me, the world ten years on
The Holocaust and other genocide normally are taken as one big event, however, to understand our values as a country I believe that we need to look back. The fact however remains the same, ‘we didn’t keep our promise of never again,’ but we all have a responsibility to prevent genocide,
This year I’m going to try something different, marking ten years in March, since I went to Auschwitz, I’m going to try both to give a personal reflection as well as looking back, I want to look at where we are. Since going to Auschwitz back in March 2012, I have witnessed as I’m sure we have all seen, the left and right around the world become more and more entrenched.
I believe that hasn’t been helped by the political culture and the ideas of the right in most cases seem to ‘be acceptable’ to the media, while those on the left are often overhyped and creating arguments. In most countries, I think the right use the fear of the left dragging the world back to the mid-1900s with nationalised industries, low wages, free migration etc.
But the feeling is I think different to what we saw and read about in the 1930s, people are growing tired of the restrictions, and we see the government break the rules. We have been living under some of the tightest, if not more restrictive measures since the war.
There has also I think the feeling that with care homes for example, that the elderly and disabled have often fleet like ‘collateral damage’ in this pandemic. No one I think set out to do that, but it adds to the feeling sometimes that the system doesn’t care about those who need support.
The Holocaust saw around 11 million, mainly Jews, killed for being who they are not because they committed a crime, they just didn’t fit the model or image of the Nazi Government. Often the cause of genocide is a series of policies, stemming from fear, which then snowballs over time into extermination.
While political events, Trump, Brexit and the pandemic as I feel I write about every year when thinking about HMD, have not helped. Ten years on from my One Day visit to Auschwitz in March 2012, I believe the ultimate lessons have become more important.
In some ways they, I think, can be traced further back to the real start being the 2008 global financial crisis, like very much though not caused by economic sanctions on Germany following WWI. That I think was in many ways started the domino effect towards the rise of the Nazi Party, first, then when they consolidated s power in 1934, they put in motion their idea.
Adolf Hitler, along with the likes of Himmler, Gobbles thought terms of the Treaty of Versailles was unfair on Germany, and through the 1920s and 1930s that snowballed almost into creating the myth of a Jewish conspiracy. The ‘conspiracy’ which some neo-Nazi’s and others still deny the holocaust and that is nothing new.
Auschwitz website says “The acceptance of revisionist claims or ignorance about the crimes committed by the German regime and the regimes that collaborated with Nazi Germany leads to the glorification of people and institutions responsible for genocide.”
This shows that we can’t be blind to what’s going on in our own country, we need to stop discrimination as that’s often where we can trace it back to one person or a group of people who believe something. The best evidence in recent times of this was QAnon and the myths created by former president Donald Trump over six years, which cumulated in the January 6th 2021, Capitol Riot.
I think Trump created this narrative since 2015, almost in the same way as the Nazi’s, that others like Muslims, Mexicans, Hispanics and Latino were responsible for the problems that America has. Often that isn’t true but say it enough people will start believing it.
We saw before and since the Nazi’s still the idea of a Jewish conspiracy of control of the world, and the pandemic was put down to Jews, that varies from creating the virus to using the vaccines to take control. Listening to a podcast The Coming Storm on BBC Sounds, about the January 6th 2021, Capitol Riot, in the way the end of the process.
It could be traced back to a conspiracy movement QAnon, that it is fighting a “deep state” of paedophiles. Again, having its roots in the mix of polarization and partisanship, growing distrust in public institutions, pandemic-fuelled social isolation as well as fake news.
Joe Mulhall, the head of research at Hope, not Hate, told The Guardian in October, “There is an unbroken lineage within the British far-right which goes all the way back to the 20s and 30s, which is explored in this exhibition. In some ways, those prejudices and hatreds have remained unchanged, but what has evolved is the way they’re distributed, and that’s the internet.”
It’s also important to remember the children who are sons/daughters of those who stir up these hate messages. When writing the obituary for former FIA president Max Mosley last May there was a lot about how hard it was for him to distance himself from his father Oswald, he said “There was always a certain amount of trouble [being the son of Sir Oswald] until I came into motor racing. And in one of the first races, I ever took part in there was a list of people when they put the practice times […] and I heard somebody say.”
“’Mosley, Max Mosley, he must be some relation of Alf Mos[e]ley, the coachbuilder.’ And I thought to myself, ‘I’ve found a world where they don’t know about Oswald Mosley.’ And it has always been a bit like that in motor racing: nobody gives a damn “
Admittedly, which he has always denied the News of The World story, also dismissed by the high court, of a ‘Nazi Orgy’ video where the paper claimed Mosley engaged in acts with five consenting women in a scenario that the paper alleged involved Nazi role-playing (an allegation that, though dismissed in court as “no genuine basis”, allegedly “ruined” Mosley’s reputation).
Mosley later stood down after an attempt to remove him for several scandals on track, with an attempted coup by F1, WTCC and WRC team, this was also a time of scandals on track race fixing (Crashgate), the Spygate Scandal and the FIA-FOTA dispute.
Fake news is a topic we are all familiar with but since 2015-16 with the Trump presidency, I think the lines between genuine fake news and stories he didn’t like was often blurred. Fake News is nothing new, Goebbels during the Nazi regime and their rise to power was tasked with creating myths about Jews and thus creating the climate of antisemitism and the eugenics programme.
These included, for Jews and disabled Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (“Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living”). At the heart of it is a very simple message, something I think as political campaigners forget, keep it simple and that is what wins votes.
While we can never understand the suffering of those who have be persecuted during genocides, as a disabled gay man, I know what it’s like to be judged based on people looking at me on paper and making preconceptions about me. But it’s human nature for us to have these thoughts we all have subconscious biases.
Looking at the 2016 US Election Trump had a very simple message “make America great again,” comparing the 2019 UK Election the Conservatives had a very simple message “get Brexit done,” as a Labour had “for the many, not the few.” I think the Conservatives stuck with a simple message and that cut through.
While I’m trying not to suggest that any western regime would try this, we still need to keep our eyes open to the injustices at home and around the world. We know while genocide isn’t being committed, as far as we know, there is a hidden war in Tigray, we don’t know what’s really going on, but the UN said that both the Ethiopian government and Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) are committing severe human rights violations.
In December, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch detailed further atrocities, mass detention, torture, and the forced displacement of large sections of the Tigrayan population.
We always need to be careful when we use certain phrases, like genocide, crimes against humanity, as they shouldn’t be bounced about in everyday language as they will I think will lose its gravitas, as we should save the term genocide for hard-hitting events. Ten years since going to Auschwitz in 2012, I still and will always remember standing in the tower at Birkenau and was struck by the scale, it seemed
I think sites like Auschwitz, the killing fields in Cambodia, are our ultimate reminder of the cruelty we can impose on others especially when they haven’t committed a crime other than existing. Being disabled and gay, I would have been ‘doubly dangerous,’ but it still hurts me that some countries treat disabled people as second class citizens and some people are put to death for being gay.
The murder of David Amess in October was committed by an extremist Islamist, Islam is in my view a peaceful religion. However, there are with everything a minority who will use, any belief to permit their acts of terrorism. We need to work on both sides, those who believe Islam is the only path and those who want the religion banned.
In my view, both sides are wrong, as always, we should look to find a middle ground, and that doesn’t mean giving in to Islamic extremism. The UK governments definition of ‘vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.’
We need a more cohesive world, for countries to respect each other’s customs and cultures, while we have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), we know it’s not enforced by all countries. Surely it is our duty to use our soft alongside our hard power to bring about change?