Holocaust Memorial Day: A Moral Responsibility – by guest blogger DT
In a special post to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, guest blogger DT wonders whether we have really learnt the lessons of the past
I have been bitten by the ‘genealogy bug’ and I’m absolutely gripped!
What’s more, there’s a huge industry out there facilitating almost effortless electronic access to family records which until recently, have either been gathering dust or waiting to be discovered, depending upon how you view it.
With much help from an amateur genealogist, I soon learnt that most of my family originated from Great Britain and although interesting and a bit of an ‘eye-opener’ at times, there were few surprises, until that was, we explored the last line – my father’s. Here, I discovered my ancestors to be Austrian Jews who had fled Europe and arrived in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century.
Instead of looking at church marriage certificates and christening documents as I had with the other parts of the family, I was now presented with details of Ashkenazim Orthodox marriage ceremonies and burials in Jewish cemeteries. I was fascinated. I knew little of this side of the family’s past and now to have even a faint glimpse was incredible. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, I could even see some of the properties where they had lived close up!
I then came across a very sobering document, which detailed where the family had initially lived. Evidently it was so dire, it was deemed a slum and pulled down shortly afterwards. The document revealed that they were a family of nine – plus a lodger – and they were living in just two rooms; and that included a kitchen. I was horrified that people in my family had lived in such wretched conditions.
What’s more, why did they have a different surname to me, a German Jewish sounding name? Why would anybody leave the beautiful country of Austria with its magnificent landscapes, natural beauty, stunning cities and celebrated culture to live in abject poverty as an outsider barely being able to speak the language, let alone read or write it?
Of course, I know why they left and having visited a number of concentration camps across Europe, it is clear why so many people took the decision to get out from the start of the 20th century onwards.
Today, difference is largely celebrated. We have Gay Pride and the Paralympics, while the Human Rights Act ensures that all inhabitants of subscribing nations have a right to life, freedom to practice a religion and protection from slavery and inhumane treatment. However, this hasn’t always been the case.
Jews were the primary victims of the Nazi holocaust, but they weren’t the only ones. Homosexuals, gypsies, the mentally and physically disabled, criminals, academics, political prisoners and those who just ‘didn’t fit in’ were all targeted. Depending upon what kind of enemy you were, National Socialism would determine which coloured triangle(s) you would be forced to brandish. People were promptly categorised and quite literally labelled.
As mentioned, I have visited a number of concentration camps across Europe and each left their own indelible mark on me – but none more so than Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland.
1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz during its four and a half years of operation. 1.1 million people died there. Auschwitz is thought to have claimed the lives of over 1 million Jews and 200,000 of these are thought to have been children. We have an understanding of what took place from the physical evidence and survivor accounts, but many stories will never be told as entire families were wiped out. So many Jews were killed; the Jewish population has never recovered.
How could such a cultured and technologically sophisticated nation at the heart of Europe have commissioned such horror and on such a grand scale? These camps demonstrated the depths to which some humans can go.
The sheer logistics of disposing of so many people meant that the killing machine was a perpetual one – morning, noon and night. This was a well orchestrated and methodically engineered operation, enacted with precision and efficiency. While this was the work of a proportionately small part of the population compared to the regime’s victims, this wasn’t the work of a tiny handful of people. This undertaking required the sustained commitment and diligence of many. The location was not haphazardly chosen either – it was chosen because it was rich in natural minerals, it could supply a work force to the nearby IG Farben chemical plant and there was already a railway line in situ, ready to bring in a regular supply of new inmates and supplies.
Having been rounded up from the far-flung corners of Europe, terrified families disembarked from the tightly jammed cattle trains after days of travelling without food, drink or sanitation to be greeted by Oświęcim– or as the Nazis called it, Auschwitz. One’s fate would be quickly determined by a guard’s simple hand signal: right was life and an existence in the camp while a swipe to the left ensured certain death, particularly for the elderly and sick.
The vastness of the camp was staggering. It must have been more like a small town where people arrived, worked, lived and died. The duration of the bit in the middle, from when you arrived to when you died, along with how tolerable a life you lived, was determined by who you were and your reason for being there.
The design of the camp ensured that inmates lived in the most unspeakable and insufferable conditions. They slept three to a bunk made of wooden planks, one level on top of the next. There was so little space that they had to turn in unison and there was a daily battle to secure a coveted top bunk as disease and dysentery were so common. Only a place at the top would ensure nothing unpleasant came from above in the night.
Sanitation was non-existent in Birkenau. Inmates were restricted to two 20 second toilet stops per day and there was no paper or flushing system. A plum job was that of the ‘Scheiß-Kommando’, responsible for clearing out the latrines. The privilege associated with this position is indicative of just how dreadful other jobs within the camp must have been.
Horrendous experiments were undertaken with scientific detachment and sadistic curiosity in Block 10. There was no concern for the victims, many of whom were twins. If they managed to survive they were often left with complex disabilities and profound impairments.
The much-feared Block 11 was where inmates were interrogated, tortured and executed. This featured the ‘standing cell’ in which numerous people were packed into a standing space for one and left to die through suffocation or sheer exhaustion.
Block 24 really moved me. This was the brothel. Some prisoners were incentivised with the promise of a voucher, which they could exchange for sex. The victims were thought to have been selected from non-Jewish prisoners in the camp, although it’s not exactly clear. As so little is known about this part of the camp, the women’s suffering has seldom been acknowledged.
At the beginning of the war photographs were taken of inmates, as this would enable the Nazis to ascertain during the daily count up if any prisoners had escaped. However, as their appearance deteriorated so rapidly, rendering them unrecognisable, the practice was abandoned and they resorted to the permanence of tattoos.
Auschwitz was no exception when it came to plunder. Thinking they were going to start a new life, inmates arrived with carefully packed possessions, clothing, food, jewellery and items of sentiment. The Nazis especially prized cash and jewels, as they were a readily transferable currency and easily liquidated. Religious Jews brought precious pieces of Judaica important for prayer and worship. Any conceivable asset was swiftly confiscated, sorted, melted down or ‘redistributed’. While it appeared that goods were being redeployed to aid the Nazi war effort, in reality much ended up in the pockets of guards and officials.
The piles of spectacles, the discarded tins of Zyclon B, the thousands of pairs of shoes, the mountains of suitcases, the hoards of artificial limbs and body braces, the vast array of kitchenware, the prayer shawls and 7,000 tons of human hair were visible for all to see and testament to the horrors which became synonymous with Auschwitz.
When I left the camp, I was silent and stunned. I thought to myself how horrendous this was and that this must never be allowed to happen again. But it has – and when history repeats itself, it is plain that we haven’t learnt lessons from the past.
The 1970s saw Cambodia under Pol Pot where over 2 million lost their lives. The 1990s saw ethnic cleansing in Bosnia where thousands were killed. The mid 1990s saw one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed in 100 days in Rwanda, while the new millennia saw hundreds of thousands of civilians murdered in Darfur. Where’s next? We think that a holocaust could never happen again, but who would ever have thought that the England football team would give a Nazi salute? Albeit reluctantly, they did.
I believe that we all have a moral responsibility to remember victims of genocide, as well as a duty to challenge injustice and speak out against discrimination and intolerance of difference, no matter how uncomfortable this difference makes us feel or how dissenting our own views are.
Photo of a Jewish gravestone from Poland by Nikodem Nijaki via Wikipedia under a Creative Commons licence
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8 Comments
Daniel Toljaga on January 27, 2013 at 6:49 am
You mentioned “ethnic cleansing”, but you conveniently avoided stating the fact that Genocide was also committed in Bosnia.
Two top international courts have ruled that the July 1995 Srebrenica Massacre constituted the first Genocide on European soil since World War II. In Srebrenica, Serb forces executed 8,000 men and boys in July 1995.
Approximately 25,000 Bosniaks were mass-slaughtered in eastern Bosnia between April 1992 and November 1995. Serb army — with the logistical, financial and military help from Serbia — ethnically cleansed eastern Bosnia in their attempt to create a racially pure ‘Greater Serbian’ state.
Marilyn Stowe on January 27, 2013 at 9:18 am
Many thanks DT, this is an incredibly moving post. In the light of the recent, shocking and despicable comments of Bradford Lib Dem MP David Ward, I have decided to reproduce some thoughts about him. He is a disgrace to the people he is elected to serve, not least for misleading them, damaging his party and once again reinforcing the idea across the world that Britain is endemically an anti Semitic society.
Holocaust Memorial Day abuse part 3: David Ward MP
January 25th, 2013 by Mark Gardner
In recent days, CST Blog has covered two separate examples of the debasement of Holocaust Memorial Day, as we fast approach its annual commemoration on 27th January. (The first, by pro-Iranian group, Islamic Human Rights Commission is here. The second, by the Respect Party’s Lee Jasper is here.)
Now, a third example, this time by the Member of Parliament for Bradford East, David Ward (Liberal Democrat). His twitter feed is succinct:
#Bradford MP condemns #Israel for treatment of #Palestinians on day he signs #Holocaust Memorial Day Book of Commitment davidward.org.uk/en/article/201…
Mr Ward sent the tweet on the day that he signed the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Book of Commitment in the House of Commons. Mr Ward’s website has a photograph of him signing the book and explains that the Book gives MPs
…the chance to honour those who were persecuted and killed during the Holocaust and encouraging constituents to work together to combat prejudice and racism today.
The website page has the same title as the tweet (without the hash tags) and states:
Bradford East MP, David Ward, has criticised Israel on the day he has signed a Book of Commitment in the House of Commons, in doing so pledging his commitment to Holocaust Memorial Day and honouring those who died during the Holocaust and in subsequent genocides.
Of course, there is ‘criticism’ and then there is ‘criticism’. So how exactly has the Bradford East MP “criticised Israel”? His website explains:
Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.
Here we have someone who has visited Auschwitz in both a personal and professional capacity. The assumption, therefore, must surely be that he is most certainly not an antisemite. So, he is not an antisemite, but what exactly ought we to call a Member of Parliament who makes a crass Jews in Israel equal Nazis comparison?
…I am saddened that the Jews…within a few years of liberation…inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel…daily basis…
The Guido Fawkes political website carries a Liberal Democrat Party criticism of its MP’s remarks:
This is a matter we take extremely seriously. The Liberal Democrats deeply regret and condemn the statement issued by David Ward and his use of language which is unacceptable.
Mr Ward may know exactly where he stands on antisemitism, the Holocaust and the Israel-Palestine conflict. He may be utterly assured of his spotless morality and faultless compartmentalisation of all three issues. He may well have signed the Book of Commitment in order to encourage “constituents to work together to combat prejudice and racism today”.
Sadly, however, this is not quite how racism works; and neither is it how Jews (nor many others) will react to this latest opportunistic and amoral debasement of Holocaust commemoration.
Updates
Karen Pollock MBE, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, states:
I am deeply saddened that at this sombre time, when we remember those who were murdered by the Nazis, Mr Ward has deliberately abused the memory of the Holocaust causing deep pain and offence – these comments are sickening and unacceptable and have no place in British politics.
Some time prior to 1230hrs, 25th January, the page was removed from David Ward MP’s website. The ”atrocities” paragraph still appears at Asian Image.
Marilyn Stowe on January 27, 2013 at 9:38 am
This from The Commentator
EXCLUSIVE: Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel slams UK LibDem MP for “shameless” slanders over Holocaust remarks
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel issues stinging rebuke to UK Liberal Democrat MP David Ward over comments about Israel, Jews and the Holocaust
By The Commentator
On 25 January 2013 18:53
Elie Wiesel
On Friday 25th January, The Commentator broke the story of David Ward MP, a member of the British parliament, who this week brought shame on the Liberal Democrat party — the junior partner in Britain’s coalition government — by conflating the Holocaust with the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
His words have now been condemned by Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Professor Elie Wiesel in an exclusive statement to The Commentator.
Ward, the representative for Bradford East, stated openly: “I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.”
He then went on to defend himself by using the words of Holocaust survivor, Professor Elie Wiesel: “I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
But Professor Wiesel has issued a harsh rebuke to Ward, telling The Commentator, exclusively: “Although he quotes me correctly, I am outraged that he uses my words at the same time he utters shameless slanders on the State of Israel.”
Liberal Democrat HQ will be expected to act swiftly to remove Ward from the party, with many campaigners and commentators now stating that his position as a Liberal Democrat MP is untenable.
Professor Wiesel is the author of 57 books, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He has also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Legion of Honour.
At the time of writing, Mr. Ward has not been removed as a member of the parliamentary Liberal Democrats. Holocaust Memorial Day is on Sunday 27th January 2013.
Read more on: Elie Wiesel, holocaust, david ward mp, and Israel
Marilyn Stowe on January 27, 2013 at 9:43 am
And this from Normblog
« A story for Frank Keating | Main
January 26, 2013
David Ward MP, innocent
What was so wrong with what he said? I mean he only said that having visited Auschwitz twice, he’s saddened that the Jews could go on to inflict atrocities on Palestinians ‘and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza’. He didn’t say the Jews are Nazis or as bad as the Nazis. Listen to his responses regarding the critical reaction to his words; listen here (from 47 minutes in) or to the audio clip here. Ward is concerned about man’s inhumanity to man wherever it takes place and about learning the lessons. What’s unacceptable (he asks) about referring to the horrors of the Holocaust and to actions taking place in Palestine/Israel? Or, again, listen here where Ward demurs at the suggestion he was comparing Nazi Germany with Israel. At Holocaust-memorial events, he insists, everyone says it is necessary to learn the lessons, so it seems entirely appropriate to him to raise the issue of man’s inhumanity to man as it still goes on in different parts of the world, including by those who suffered most during the Holocaust. What could be wrong with any of this?
Plenty, that’s what. Many will find this too obvious to be worth spelling out, and to all of you I apologize if I take up your time. But there will be others who are swayed by Ward’s protestations of innocent intent, and explanation and argument are therefore necessary.
One of the things wrong with Ward’s style of combined reference (to the Holocaust and Israel’s actions against Palestinians) is the indifference at once to scale and to the specific nature of Holocaust inhumanity. These are points I have made before, in a discussion with Martin Shaw concerning comparisons between the Warsaw ghetto and Gaza (see section [e] here): ‘In little over a year after the Warsaw ghetto was sealed, some 50,000 of its inhabitants had died of starvation, and in the end the population there was “liquidated” – deported to the death camps.’ Not altogether similar, then, to Gaza today.
Ward’s particular references include Auschwitz and this can only accentuate the same points. More than a million people were murdered at Auschwitz, to say nothing of the cruelties inflicted on them before they were murdered or in the process of murdering them. Furthermore, they were killed not as part of any two-sided conflict in which they had taken up arms against Germany or were threatening it, resolved to end its existence and so forth. The victims were done to death for who they were, in an attempted genocide. Whatever Ward conceives to be the rights and wrongs of the Israel-Palestine conflict, a political conflict is what it is, the Palestinians are not subject to genocidal mass murder in gas ovens and the Palestinian leadership – or parts of it anyway – precisely are resolved, or so they keep saying, to ending Israel’s existence. Once again, consequently, not altogether similar to Auschwitz.
You may believe that a parent who gives a child a slap is behaving wrongly. But should you invoke – in condemning it, and in all apparent seriousness – the recent shootings to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School, people may well take you to be making an unjust and odious comparison, since there are relevant differences of both scale and content. It bears repeating here: anything can be argued to be like virtually anything else in some respect. But the differences can also matter morally. To focus on the general phenomenon ‘inhumanity’ without due regard to its variants and their moral significance is a form of obtuseness.
Another thing that is wrong with the Israel-Nazism combination in contemporary hostile discourse towards Israel is the extreme selectivity of it. It just has to be Israel and Nazism. Not Israel and something ‘smaller’ – say, Britain in Northern Ireland or the Falklands War, the United States in Afghanistan. And not, for that matter, some other country than Israel and Nazi Germany. In this way the Jewish state is like no other, and no other is like Israel, in resembling the Nazis. It’s a privileged form of combination and comparison, the damning taint of the very worst inhumanity reserved, more or less, for the people who were its primary victims.
So if David Ward is innocent, this is innocence in one of two other meanings than the blameless meaning. It is either the innocence of a political fool, someone who should know better and is culpable for not going to the trouble of knowing better; or it is the dishonest innocence of the person who chooses not to understand what the fuss is about.
There are contexts where it is proper to point out how smaller wrongs or sins or misdemeanours can foreshadow much worse. Primo Levi was amongst many survivors and witnesses of Nazi barbarism to tell us that the perpetrators were human beings, not monsters, and we need to be on our guard against where our own fragilities might lead. But the context and the overt purpose of writing in this way show it not to be a deliberate calumny against the Jews. David Ward has no such protection. His remarks were aimed at one group of people and no other. They were just such a calumny.
That’s what was wrong with what he said.
Posted by Norm at 11:01 AM | Permalink
DT on January 27, 2013 at 5:15 pm
Good afternoon Daniel
Thank you for your comment.
I am not an expert in genocides or atrocities and I wouldn’t seek to use language which places a greater significance on one horrific event over the other; they are all diabolical.
The Nazi holocaust is something I feel particularly passionate about. I learnt about it at school and heard about it from relatives as a young child who would tell me stories of how my maternal grandfather was sent by the Foreign Office to Bergen-Belsen in Germany to work on the denazification process. I have always been mindful of what went on and always searched to learn more.
In all honesty, I know much less about other atrocities which have taken place in the world compared to what I know about the Nazi holocaust and so any omission or misuse of language has been done entirely in error and without intent. My purpose in drawing parallels with other terrible events in recent years was to illustrate that we as human beings are still making the same terrible mistakes. What I said wasn’t any kind of attempt at quantification.
I hope this explains my rationale.
Best wishes,
DT
Marilyn Stowe on January 28, 2013 at 4:16 pm
And this from the Cranmer blog which brings us up to date with the Sunday Times cartoon published on Holocaust Memorial Day. It is indeed utterly alarming and I am grateful to him for his post.
Cranmer
▼
MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 2013
Sunday Times anti-Semitism – on Holocaust Memorial Day
Last week a Liberal Democrat MP by the name of David Ward found himself in a bit of hot water for stating, quite boldly, that ‘the Jews’ (all of them) had failed to learn the lesson of the Holocaust. He wrote upon his blog (now removed):
Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.
Outrageous, you may think. But we must remember that the Liberal Democrats have form on this: they are, after all, the party of Baroness Tonge, who not only declared that she might have been a suicide bomber had she been born a Palestinian, but has a tendency to speak of the ‘Israel lobby’ as a worldwide Jewish conspiracy: “Once they have decided to go for you, they will go for you,” she once disclosed. “I bear the scars.” And then she chillingly prophesied: “Israel is not going to be there forever”, she warned, because it ‘will lose its support and then they will reap what they have sown’.
So David Ward and Jenny Tonge are Jew-hating peas from the same Illiberal-Undemocrat pod. To both, there is an undeniable correlation between the current Middle East geo-political conflicts and the systematic slaughter of the Jews by the Nazis. When questioned on his meaning and intention by choosing to juxtapose the two, Ward helpfully clarified, saying: “It appears that the suffering by the Jews has not transformed their views on how others should be treated.”
So, in summary, Israel is apartheid; the Jews are evil; Gaza is oppressed; the Palestinians are innocent victims. It’s all akin to how Hitler treated the Jews. And what better time to state this than on the approach to Holocaust Memorial Day?
As disgusting and disturbing as this may be, it is astonishing (really, utterly alarming) that Rupert Murdoch’s esteemed Sunday Times decided to commemorate such a sombre day with the same strain of anti-Semitism. The Gerald Scarfe cartoon above features Benjamin Netanyahu as a big-nosed hunchback, constructing a grotesque security wall with the blood of Palestinian women and children (and President Obama appears to be cemented in as well). It carries the caption: ‘Israeli Elections… Will Cementing Peace Continue?’
This is usually Guardian territory (see here and here).The target is not religion, but race. The Guardian rarely misses an opportunity to vent its bile for the only democracy in the region. Now it is joined by the Sunday Times, insulting, denigrating and defaming Jews worldwide. There is, as ever, no mention of the slaughter and bloodshed in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain or Egypt. There is no consideration of the thousands of missiles that rain down daily upon Israel from Gaza, and not a whiff of the terrorist incursions of Hamas or Hezbollah. There is complete ignorance of the need to protect Israeli civilians against Palestinian terrorism. The Sunday Times cartoon legitimates such terrorist attacks; it seeks to justify suicide bombs against the evil Israeli regime, just as Jenny Tonge has reasoned. Like Guardian cartoonists, Scarfe would never dream of portraying Muslim leaders in such vile caricatures, or denigrating Arabs or Islam.
Questioning Israel’s wholly necessary security policy in this crude fashion would cause offence on any day of the year. But to publish such a cartoon purposely to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day – while Prisoner A26188 is touring schools and media outlets to remind us of the very face of evil – is a blood libel; a vicious assault on the memory of millions, and an offence against all morality.
DT on January 28, 2013 at 8:34 pm
It beggars belief that an MP and a paper such as the Sunday Times (ST) can conduct themselves in such a manner.
The cartoon featured yesterday was vile. It would have been vile on any day of the year but on HMD it was absolutely unforgivable. It reminded me of something from Der Stürmer.
Sadly this proves my point; human beings keep making the same mistakes and don’t seem to be learning and that terrifies me.
Marilyn Stowe on January 29, 2013 at 7:06 pm
I have now received this:- http://www.webelieveinisrael.org.uk
Dear Marilyn,
Gerald Scarfe Cartoon – “Unreserved Apology” from Sunday Times
I am writing to you to tell you with positive news regarding the Sunday Times Gerald Scarfe cartoon, the imagery in which caused so much offence when it was published on Holocaust Memorial Day. Thank you to so many of you who wrote to the Sunday Times and the Press Complaints Commission to explain the offence and distress that the cartoon had caused. I was struck by the extraordinary number of people who wrote, the articulate and passionate letters written, and the real sense of hurt that this image caused.
BICOM, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Community Security Trust, and the Jewish Leadership Council have issued the following statement
There was a meeting at 4pm today (Tuesday 29 January) between representatives of the Jewish Community and the Sunday Times Senior Editorial Team and News International Corporate Affairs:
In the meeting the Jewish Community organisations present made the following points:
Jews (and others) throughout the country reacted to this cartoon with a visceral disgust that is unprecedented in recent years. This was due to the gratuitous and offensive nature of the image, made worse by its use of blood and its being published by Britain’s leading Sunday newspaper on Holocaust Memorial Day.
Blood has a long and ugly tradition within the history of anti-Semitism, premised upon the notorious medieval Blood Libel, with Jews being alleged to steal the blood of others for religious purposes. The use of blood, including on occasion the actual Blood Libel, persists in extreme Arab and Iranian anti-Israel propaganda. It is a profoundly disturbing example of the adaptation of anti-Semitism for modern day usage.
These historical and contemporary contexts have racist impacts upon victims and proponents alike. This is why so many Jews were wounded by the cartoon, regardless of the initial motivations of Gerald Scarfe and the Sunday Times.
In response Sunday Times Acting Editor Martin Ivens said:
“I’m grateful so many community leaders could come together at such short notice. You will know that the Sunday Times abhors anti-Semitism and would never set out to cause offence to the Jewish people – or any other ethnic or religious group. That was not the intention last Sunday. Everyone knows that Gerald Scarfe is consistently brutal and bloody in his depictions, but last weekend – by his own admission – he crossed a line. The timing – on Holocaust Memorial Day – was inexcusable. The associations on this occasion were grotesque and on behalf of the paper I’d like to apologise unreservedly for the offence we clearly caused. This was a terrible mistake.”
Mick Davis, Chair of the Jewish Leadership Council said “We have voiced our concern in response to the strength of the feeling from all sections of the Jewish Community. I welcome the genuine apology from the Sunday Times. I appreciate the urgency and respect with which the Sunday Times have treated Jewish communal concerns and now look forward to constructively moving on from this affair.”
Best wishes and thanks again for your superb and rapid response,
Luke Akehurst
Director, We Believe in Israel