World

Is Holocaust education letting today’s anti-Jewish racism off the hook? When it became compulsory in 1991, Britain was largely in remission from the ancient disease of anti-Semitism. Life was stable. The Berlin Wall had fallen. Liberal democracy was the only future — indeed, Francis Fukuyama infamously wrote how the 1990s would mark ‘the end of history’. How we Fukuyama’ed it all up. Times are now bad and bad times demand scapegoats. So anti-Jewish conspiracy theories thrive on a global scale Joseph Goebbels would lust after. It creates the conditions for the next Jewish genocide. And yet Holocaust education has barely responded. A different kind of Britain today calls for a different kind

As Holocaust Remembrance Day comes round again, actual remembrance of the Holocaust seems fainter than ever. The arson attacks on synagogues in France and Australia, the mass-assault on Israeli football supporters in Holland last autumn, or the shocking recent scenes at the Oxford Union, where Jewish speakers were taunted, booed and sworn at by the audience, are a horrible echo from history, almost unimaginable a few decades ago. At Auschwitz, Primo Levi wrote, nothing was morally clearcut Much of this may be due to demographic change, as sworn enemies of Israel migrate in large numbers to the West. Yet as genuine survivors of the Holocaust die out – a year

In the morning darkness at the reception of our central Kharkiv hotel, 25 miles from the Russian frontlines, the night porter’s face was creased with sleep. As we made our way towards the door to catch the early express to Kyiv, he handed us a small keyring with a yellow and blue plastic ornament. They had been made by local children. The man was large, muscled rather than hammy, and had a trim beard. In the several days we had stayed at the hotel, he had not shown a trace of emotion. Now he almost looked as if he might cry. ‘Perhaps next time we meet there will be peace,’