The Independent: Holocaust, Racism, and Threats To The Future (28 January 2025) PDF

TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2025 News Editorials As the world remembers the Holocaust, racism still threatens our future Holocaust Memorial Day is a moment to remember, to reflect on the present, and to contemplate the future of universal human...

TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2025 News Editorials As the world remembers the Holocaust, racism still threatens our future Holocaust Memorial Day is a moment to remember, to reflect on the present, and to contemplate the future of universal human rights. However, the immediate focus is always, and rightly, on the unique nature of the Holocaust, which targeted Jews for slaughter and was the culmination of millennia of antisemitism. Many others died at the hands of the Nazis, their allies, and collaborators, and they should be, and are, memorialised, but it was the Jewish people of Europe who suffered from the conscious state-sponsored perversion of modern industry, organisational techniques, and transport links to exterminate 6 million people in the so-called "Final Solution". Visitors to the Holocaust memorial centre at Auschwitz always remark on the sheer size of the site, and, as the largest of the concentration camps, the scene of more than a million murders, and the first to be liberated, it has come to be symbolic of this terrible episode. One out of every six Jews killed in the Holocaust died at Auschwitz. But it was only one of 44,000 such ghettos, transit camps, factories of death, and scenes of mass murder, and the names, each chilling, also deserve to be recalled: Sobibor, Treblinka, Ravensbruck, Buchenwald, the Warsaw ghetto, Draney, Westerbork. On the Both anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp at sombre commemorations attended by international leaders, including King Charles, such truths are freely acknowledged. There is an additional sense of poignancy now because so many of those first-hand witnesses who survived have passed away, some too frail to attend memorial events. There are fewer people around now who lived through the Shoah, and are brave enough to tell their harrowing stories, but their warnings from history are consistent and powerful - and more relevant than ever, retold more and more by their families and preserved in memoirs, documentaries, and archives, such as the Wiener Holocaust Library and the YadVashem international centre. They are relevant because of the persistence of antisemitism, as with the atrocities of 7 October and the recrudescence of ancient anti-Jewish theories. Sadly, recent years, as the Second World War recedes into history and memories fade, have seen a rise in racist extremism and intolerance in all its forms, perhaps most vividly in the rabid Islamophobia that has disfigured so much public debate. This is most distressingly displayed on social media, but also in more mainstream channels and propagated by politicians and public figures who should know better. Holocaust Memorial Day should give such leaders pause for thought about their words and actions, and remind them that language matters. Dehumanising language and attitudes towards minorities, refugees and immigrants have consequences, and, if unchecked, can lead to violence. The racist riots that broke out in parts of England last summer after lies were spread are more than sufficient evidence of that danger. When the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, now a member of the United States government, addresses a rally in Germany for the far-right AfD and tells them that their country should not feel guilt about the past, that is a symptom of something going very badly wrong in the world. "Never again" is the phrase that comes to mind whenever the Holocaust is mentioned, but in the decades since the worst mass murders in history were committed, there have been too many more genocidal campaigns - in Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Darfur. "Ethnic cleansing" is an all-too-common feature of modern warfare, not least in Sudan. Members of the Israeli government have had charges of crimes against humanity in Gaza levelled against them at the International Criminal Court. It is also a terrible irony, and a tragedy, that no representatives of the Russian government were invited to attend the ceremonies at Auschwitz to mark the role of their country in liberating the camp - where many Soviet prisoners of war died in horrific conditions. President Putin's brutal war of aggression in Ukraine, with its campaign of terror against civilians and suppression of Ukrainian national identity, is itself another crime against humanity, morally precluding his attendance. Bizarrely, too, the current occupant of the White House appears to advocate the use of force as a legitimate weapon to achieve territorial expansion, though only as a bargaining tactic. The same, it must be hoped, is also true of President Trump's suggestion that he'd like to see a "clean-out" of Gaza and a million Palestinians possibly permanently and involuntarily displaced and relocated to Egypt and Jordan. So, these are dark, worrying times. Britain's chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, asks whether we are to be the generation that allows the horrors of Auschwitz to fade into oblivion. His answer is righteous and clear: "Eighty years ago today, the gates of hell were finally opened, but true liberation is an ongoing task, a sacred duty to fight for a world in which every person's humanity is recognised and every soul cherished... in that spirit 'never again' is a phrase we recite, but a promise we live." Want your views to be included in The Independent Daily Edition letters page? Email us by tapping here [email protected]. Please include your address BACK TO TOP/\.  TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 202S News 0 Home at last... the 200,000 returning to northern Gaza for first time in 15 months Masses of Palestinians walk north along the coastal route as those travelling in cars face days-long waits at checkpoints.... 11\1 J,.,..,. J-A I 1 · 'II " 1~ ~-.... Those displaced to the south during the war make their way home yesterday (Reuters) BEL TREW IN JERUSALEM Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are streaming into devastated northern Gaza - many for the first time since the early weeks of the 15-month war - allowing them to reunite with loved ones and see what has become of their homes. A column of people, some holding infants in their arms or carrying bundles of belongings on their shoulders, headed north on foot, along a road running by the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. More than 200,000 displaced people returned to north Gaza on foot in the two hours after the crossing opened, according to a Gaza security official speaking to the AFP news agency. Many will return home to find their homes flattened by intense Israeli bombardment, but that did not extinguish the sense of joy at finally being allowed to return. "It's like I was born again," said Palestinian mother Umm Mohammed Ali, part of the miles-long crowd that moved slowly along the coastal road. "My heart is beating, I thought I would never come back," Osama, so, a public servant and father of five told Reuters as he arrived in Gaza City, the largest city in the north. "Whether the ceasefire succeeds or not, we will never leave Gaza City and the north again, even if Israel would send a tank for each one of us, no more displacement." Around 1 million Palestinians were forced by Israel to flee northern Gaza in late 2023 (Reuters) The opening of the Netzarim corridor that separates northern Gaza from the rest of the enclave, which was due under the terms of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, was delayed for two days after Israel said that Hamas had broken the deal by failing to release civilian female hostage Arbel Yehud. Late on Sunday, mediator Qatar said Hamas agreed to hand over three Israeli hostages before Friday and Israel started to withdraw its forces from the corridor. Having been repeatedly displaced over 15 months of the war, cheers erupted at shelters and tent encampments when families heard the news that the crossings would be opened. The ceasefire is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and Hamas and securing the release of dozens of hostages captured in the Hamas attack inside Israel on 7 October 2023 that triggered the conflict. Some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in that attack, with another 250 taken hostage. Israel responded with an air and ground war that has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza health officials. Under the first phase of the ceasefire, Hamas is to free a total of 33 hostages in exchange for the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. So far under the truce, Hamas has released seven hostages in exchange for more than 300 prisoners, including many serving life sentences for deadly attacks on Israelis. Yesterday afternoon, Israel said a Hamas list showed that eight of the 33 hostages to be released in the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire are dead.  The huge stream of civilians heading up the Gazan coast yesterday morning (Reuters) Government spokesperson David Mencer said that Hamas said the other 25 are alive. Israel overnight said it had received a list of information on the status of the hostages from Hamas. Israel has said the next release of hostages will take place on Thursday, followed by another on Saturday. The second - and far more difficult - phase of the ceasefire agreement has not yet been negotiated. Hamas says it will not release the remaining 60 or so hostages - many of whom are believed to be dead - unless Israel ends the war, while Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is still committed to destroying the militant group. Back in Gaza, Yasmin Abu Amshah, a mother of three, said she walked around four miles (6km) to reach her home in Gaza City, where she found it damaged but still habitable. She also saw her younger sister for the first time in over a year. "It was a long trip, but a happy one;' she said. "The most important thing is that we returned." In the opening days of the war, Israel ordered the wholesale evacuation of the north and sealed it off shortly after ground troops moved in. Around 1 million people fled to the south in October 2023, while hundreds of thousands remained in the north, which had some of the heaviest fighting and the worst destruction of the war. In all, around 90 per cent of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced.  Hamas called the return 'a victory for our people' (Reuters) Starting at 7am local time, Palestinians were allowed to cross on foot. A checkpoint for vehicles opened a few hours later. Under the ceasefire agreement, vehicles are to be inspected for weapons before entering the north, meaning it could take days to clear the queue of thousands of cars that has formed. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said Israel would continue to enforce the ceasefire, and that anyone violating it or threatening Israeli forces "will bear the full cost". "We will not allow a return to the reality of 7 October," he wrote on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). Ismail Abu Matter, a father of four who had waited for three days before crossing with his family, described scenes of jubilation on the other side, with people singing, praying and crying as they were reunited with relatives. "It's the joy of return," said Abu Matter, whose family was among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation. "We had thought we wouldn't return, like our ancestors."  Displaced Gazan women hug each other as they cross the Netzarim corridor into Gaza City (AFP/Getty) Hamas said the return was "a victory for our people and a declaration of failure and defeat for the [Israeli] occupation and transfer plans". The opening of the corridor to allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza followed remarks by US president Donald Trump that he would like to "clean out" Gaza and move the Palestinians into neighbouring Egypt or Jordan, which is already home to around 2 million Palestinian refugees. "I'd like Egypt to take people," Mr Trump said in a Saturday meeting with reporters. "You're talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, 'You know, it's over."' The comments drew wide criticism from Arab nations, including both Egypt and Jordan, who said they would reject any proposals to relocate Palestinian civilians. Others saw it as a departure from the two-state Israel and Palestine solution traditionally backed by the US. Additional reporting by Tom Watling Want your views to be included in The Independent Daily Edition letters page? Email us by tapping here [email protected]. uk. Please include your address BACK TO TOP/\