Letters to the Editor | 12 August 2006

A new Holocaust

From Lucy Mandelstam
Sir: Melanie Phillips’s mention of the ‘annual hate-fest’ on the streets of London filled me with despair (‘Hezbollah cells await Iran’s orders’, 5 August). Last month I celebrated my 80th birthday. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to live so long. I survived four years in Vienna under Nazi rule, and three years in concentration camps. After the end of the war I was a refugee for three years, spending those years mostly in displaced persons’ camps in Europe and Cyprus, finally coming to Israel. I had hoped to live out the rest of my life in relative peace. It was not to be.

I have been in Israel now for 58 years and I have lived through another few wars, but a great part of the world still debates whether to recognise us or not. No other country’s right to exist is ever questioned; why ours?

I know there are many reasons that I could name, but I am sure that Melanie Phillips is right: hatred is the driving force. Anti-Semitism is stronger than ever, even if it is called by another name, such as anti-Zionism. Our history has been so twisted out of shape that people have forgotten that the Jews in British-occupied Palestine were called Palestinians.

When I was a child in Vienna, people used to shout at us, ‘Jews to Palestine’. Now that I have lived the greater part of my life here, it seems I still have no right to my own country. Where can I go? When I was liberated in Germany I never thought of revenge, I didn’t hate anybody, all I wanted was to start a new life in my own country.