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Report
Rise in anti-semitism in wake of Gaza war plays into the hands of far-right, expert says
FRANCE 24 English
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1/27/2025
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00:00
In Monday, January the 27th, January the 27th in 1945, the day the Allies entered Auschwitz
00:06
death camps, a place become the word since for evil and atrocity, synonymous with those two
00:13
terms. More than a million people put to their death as part of the Nazis mechanised attempt
00:18
to wipe out the Jewish population in Europe and others that the Nazis viewed in their ideology as
00:24
inferior. Well the number of survivors for this 80th anniversary now numbers around 50,
00:29
some returned today for commemoration events alongside European leaders too. Now the survivors
00:35
mostly in their 90s braved freezing temperatures to attend today. Let's hear from some of them.
00:43
As I was being beaten mercilessly by a guard for fidgeting, for not being able to stand still
00:53
for hours at an appel, a roll call, I looked into my mother's eyes. She was standing next to me
01:04
silently and she was pleading with me, don't cry, don't cry, hold on. And I didn't.
01:14
I recall thinking I will never, I will never let them know how much they are hurting me.
01:25
At five and a half I had the rebellion in me. I will not show them, I will not let them know
01:35
the pain they're inflicting on me.
01:58
I want to cross to David Lees, an Associate Professor of French Studies at the University
02:02
of Warwick and a cultural historian and is researching the teaching and representations
02:07
of the Holocaust. Great to have you on the programme this evening, David. First of all,
02:11
can I ask your reflections on the commemoration today and incredibly powerful words we just heard
02:18
from Marian Turski, 98 years old. Well indeed they are very moving and poignant images,
02:26
aren't they, being beamed across the world from Auschwitz this evening and this afternoon.
02:30
I think this is, as you've been mentioning already, Gavin, a deeply sombre occasion,
02:35
one which I think resonates for many of us who are in many ways committed to continuing to remember
02:42
those awful atrocities now with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
02:48
And thinking of course across Europe, including notably in France where the Holocaust was enacted
02:54
by people who were in power at a time, especially in France, where the Vichy government under
03:00
Philippe Étaing and Pierre Laval, Prime Minister and Head of State, were responsible for deporting
03:06
some 76,000 Jews to the death camps, many of whom went to Auschwitz. Only around 2,000 came back. So
03:14
across the Western world, across Western Europe, occupied Europe, this is a very sombre day indeed.
03:20
I want to quote to you, David, Leon Weintraub, a 99-year-old survivor from Lodz in Poland,
03:27
who today described, quote, a rising hatred, he said, on increasingly vocal movements,
03:34
radical and anti-democratic right. What do you make of that?
03:39
Unfortunately, I think those comments are absolutely correct. We've seen
03:43
across Europe, arguably across the entire globe, a rise in the far right and the popularity of the
03:49
far right, notably in Western Europe, arguably some of those countries which are most impacted
03:56
by the Holocaust, where the most significant numbers of people were deported, Hungary, Poland,
04:01
for example. And of course, Germany, France, Spain, where far right parties have been recently
04:08
increasing in popularity and in power. Whether or not those parties try to distance themselves
04:13
from their historic past or the past of their predecessors, they nonetheless retain, I think,
04:19
an element of anti-Semitic content and insight. I want to quote to you the FRA in the EU, a
04:26
fundamental rights agency. Its director has said, part of the wave of anti-Semitism has been driven
04:31
by events in the Middle East, significantly increasing since October the 7th, the Hamas
04:35
massacres and then the war in Gaza. He said there's not enough separation of the actions
04:41
and the policies of the Israeli government and ordinary communities.
04:47
Well, I think that's an absolutely fair comment and we've seen, haven't we, as you say, since
04:51
last year a significant increase in anti-Semitism across the world. That has, of course, played into
04:57
the hands of, as I say, those kind of far right movements and parties for whom the Jewish community
05:02
has always been traditionally scapegoats, going back to arguably the 19th century and beyond in
05:08
Europe. So it's hardly surprising that agencies across the world are noting that. I think it's
05:14
somewhat tragic, really, that we find ourselves in this position on this particular day where
05:18
our sort of survivors have been so kind of powerfully saying, unfortunately, many of these
05:24
far right movements, it is generally the far right, perhaps sometimes also the far left,
05:27
who sort of single out Jewish people for this kind of ongoing sort of special treatment that's
05:32
being perceived to be connected to, you know, to sort of power, financial power and so on, as I say,
05:37
happened, you know, for centuries really in Europe. So unfortunately those comments are absolutely
05:41
incorrect and stand true today. And the difficulty here, the complexity of anti-Semitism is also the
05:48
overuse of anti-Semitism too readily in a modern situation. I'm going to quote to you, this is
05:54
the chair of Israel's Holocaust Memorial Center, Yad Vashem, who said, the Israeli delegation to the
05:59
UN, they were all yellow stars, a symbol of Nazi persecution of Jews during a meeting of the UN
06:05
Security Council. After the Hamas massacre, Danny Dayan said the act dishonoured victims of the
06:10
Holocaust and we saw Benjamin Netanyahu in November as well, when he faced a warrant for international
06:16
arrest at the ICC, he called those, well, facing alleged crimes against humanity, which he denied,
06:21
but he said it was a, quote, anti-Semitic attack. So it's complex, isn't it, in terms of its
06:27
its use by politicians? Well indeed, it's a very complex term and of course there are
06:33
definitions of anti-Semitism that do, you know, do sort of preclude criticism of Israel as a state,
06:39
so it's a very complex, broad area. I mean, I think crucially what we're focusing on today,
06:43
as we've been establishing, is the mass slaughter of innocent men, women and children
06:48
during those kind of awful atrocities committed in the name of the final solution by the Nazis,
06:53
but anti-Semitism more broadly could include other kinds of exclusion and discrimination,
06:58
but as you notice, we say, Gavin, it's important, I think, to make a distinction between
07:02
the sort of suggestion of criticism of Israel, the legitimate criticism of Israel as a state and its
07:06
actions and indeed the kind of, these atrocities we're talking about today, which are kind of poles
07:11
apart really in terms of anti-Semitism. And the fundamental hate that preceded that, which
07:16
we've heard from the survivors, it wasn't just about the event, it's what preceded it and the
07:20
warning about what's going on now. David, a pleasure to talk to you. David Lees,
07:24
Associate Professor and University of Warwick.
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