Rise in anti-semitism in wake of Gaza war plays into the hands of far-right, expert says

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00:00In Monday, January the 27th, January the 27th in 1945, the day the Allies entered Auschwitz

00:06death camps, a place become the word since for evil and atrocity, synonymous with those two

00:13terms. More than a million people put to their death as part of the Nazis mechanised attempt

00:18to wipe out the Jewish population in Europe and others that the Nazis viewed in their ideology as

00:24inferior. Well the number of survivors for this 80th anniversary now numbers around 50,

00:29some returned today for commemoration events alongside European leaders too. Now the survivors

00:35mostly in their 90s braved freezing temperatures to attend today. Let's hear from some of them.

00:43As I was being beaten mercilessly by a guard for fidgeting, for not being able to stand still

00:53for hours at an appel, a roll call, I looked into my mother's eyes. She was standing next to me

01:04silently and she was pleading with me, don't cry, don't cry, hold on. And I didn't.

01:14I recall thinking I will never, I will never let them know how much they are hurting me.

01:25At five and a half I had the rebellion in me. I will not show them, I will not let them know

01:35the pain they're inflicting on me.

01:58I want to cross to David Lees, an Associate Professor of French Studies at the University

02:02of Warwick and a cultural historian and is researching the teaching and representations

02:07of the Holocaust. Great to have you on the programme this evening, David. First of all,

02:11can I ask your reflections on the commemoration today and incredibly powerful words we just heard

02:18from Marian Turski, 98 years old. Well indeed they are very moving and poignant images,

02:26aren't they, being beamed across the world from Auschwitz this evening and this afternoon.

02:30I think this is, as you've been mentioning already, Gavin, a deeply sombre occasion,

02:35one which I think resonates for many of us who are in many ways committed to continuing to remember

02:42those awful atrocities now with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

02:48And thinking of course across Europe, including notably in France where the Holocaust was enacted

02:54by people who were in power at a time, especially in France, where the Vichy government under

03:00Philippe Étaing and Pierre Laval, Prime Minister and Head of State, were responsible for deporting

03:06some 76,000 Jews to the death camps, many of whom went to Auschwitz. Only around 2,000 came back. So

03:14across the Western world, across Western Europe, occupied Europe, this is a very sombre day indeed.

03:20I want to quote to you, David, Leon Weintraub, a 99-year-old survivor from Lodz in Poland,

03:27who today described, quote, a rising hatred, he said, on increasingly vocal movements,

03:34radical and anti-democratic right. What do you make of that?

03:39Unfortunately, I think those comments are absolutely correct. We've seen

03:43across Europe, arguably across the entire globe, a rise in the far right and the popularity of the

03:49far right, notably in Western Europe, arguably some of those countries which are most impacted

03:56by the Holocaust, where the most significant numbers of people were deported, Hungary, Poland,

04:01for example. And of course, Germany, France, Spain, where far right parties have been recently

04:08increasing in popularity and in power. Whether or not those parties try to distance themselves

04:13from their historic past or the past of their predecessors, they nonetheless retain, I think,

04:19an element of anti-Semitic content and insight. I want to quote to you the FRA in the EU, a

04:26fundamental rights agency. Its director has said, part of the wave of anti-Semitism has been driven

04:31by events in the Middle East, significantly increasing since October the 7th, the Hamas

04:35massacres and then the war in Gaza. He said there's not enough separation of the actions

04:41and the policies of the Israeli government and ordinary communities.

04:47Well, I think that's an absolutely fair comment and we've seen, haven't we, as you say, since

04:51last year a significant increase in anti-Semitism across the world. That has, of course, played into

04:57the hands of, as I say, those kind of far right movements and parties for whom the Jewish community

05:02has always been traditionally scapegoats, going back to arguably the 19th century and beyond in

05:08Europe. So it's hardly surprising that agencies across the world are noting that. I think it's

05:14somewhat tragic, really, that we find ourselves in this position on this particular day where

05:18our sort of survivors have been so kind of powerfully saying, unfortunately, many of these

05:24far right movements, it is generally the far right, perhaps sometimes also the far left,

05:27who sort of single out Jewish people for this kind of ongoing sort of special treatment that's

05:32being perceived to be connected to, you know, to sort of power, financial power and so on, as I say,

05:37happened, you know, for centuries really in Europe. So unfortunately those comments are absolutely

05:41incorrect and stand true today. And the difficulty here, the complexity of anti-Semitism is also the

05:48overuse of anti-Semitism too readily in a modern situation. I'm going to quote to you, this is

05:54the chair of Israel's Holocaust Memorial Center, Yad Vashem, who said, the Israeli delegation to the

05:59UN, they were all yellow stars, a symbol of Nazi persecution of Jews during a meeting of the UN

06:05Security Council. After the Hamas massacre, Danny Dayan said the act dishonoured victims of the

06:10Holocaust and we saw Benjamin Netanyahu in November as well, when he faced a warrant for international

06:16arrest at the ICC, he called those, well, facing alleged crimes against humanity, which he denied,

06:21but he said it was a, quote, anti-Semitic attack. So it's complex, isn't it, in terms of its

06:27its use by politicians? Well indeed, it's a very complex term and of course there are

06:33definitions of anti-Semitism that do, you know, do sort of preclude criticism of Israel as a state,

06:39so it's a very complex, broad area. I mean, I think crucially what we're focusing on today,

06:43as we've been establishing, is the mass slaughter of innocent men, women and children

06:48during those kind of awful atrocities committed in the name of the final solution by the Nazis,

06:53but anti-Semitism more broadly could include other kinds of exclusion and discrimination,

06:58but as you notice, we say, Gavin, it's important, I think, to make a distinction between

07:02the sort of suggestion of criticism of Israel, the legitimate criticism of Israel as a state and its

07:06actions and indeed the kind of, these atrocities we're talking about today, which are kind of poles

07:11apart really in terms of anti-Semitism. And the fundamental hate that preceded that, which

07:16we've heard from the survivors, it wasn't just about the event, it's what preceded it and the

07:20warning about what's going on now. David, a pleasure to talk to you. David Lees,

07:24Associate Professor and University of Warwick.

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