Yom HaShoah: Holocaust survivors against Gaza war say ‘never again for anyone’

Agnes Kory, who was born in Hungary in 1944, said 'what was done to us as Jews should not be repeated against anybody else' (Simon Hooper/MEE)

Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors in the UK have said they feel a burden of responsibility to speak out against Israel’s continuing war in Gaza as Jewish communities mark Yom HaShoah - Israel’s day of remembrance for the six million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany.

This year’s Yom HaShoah, which begins on Wednesday evening, coincides with the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe in 1945, as well as the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British forces.

Thousands of people, including a number of survivors and refugees who escaped to the UK from Nazi-occupied Europe, are set to attend an event in London later on Wednesday at the site of a proposed new Holocaust memorial close to the Houses of Parliament.

Organisers have said the event may be “the last major anniversary where survivors and refugees are present in meaningful numbers”.

But other survivors and descendants critical of the event have told Middle East Eye they object to how the memory of the Holocaust has been framed by the Israeli government and its supporters in the UK to justify the war in Gaza and say they fear Israel’s actions are inflaming antisemitism.

Mark Etkind, co-organiser of a network of “Holocaust survivors and descendants against the Gaza genocide”, whose members have regularly attended pro-Palestinian protests in London, said it was imperative too for campaigners in the UK to keep up pressure on the British government to end its support for Israel and to halt arms exports to the country.

“There’s just an absolutely massive burden of responsibility on everyone, especially those of us with a Holocaust survivor background, to speak out. I can’t think of a better commemoration for the six million,” said Etkind.

Israel is home to approximately 120,000 Holocaust survivors, about half of the total number of survivors worldwide. Many arrived as refugees following the Second World War during the violent events known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe, when Zionist militias seized land which became the state of Israel in 1948.

Israel is currently accused at the International Court of Justice and by human rights organisations of waging a campaign of genocide in Gaza - a charge that it denies.

More than 51,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its assault in the aftermath of Hamas’s attacks in southern Israel which killed about 1,200 people, including residents of kibbutz communities and people attending a music festival near the Gaza frontier, in October 2023.

Hopes of an end to the conflict after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire were shattered last month when Israel resumed air strikes and ground operations in the enclave.

On Tuesday, the United Nations' humanitarian office, OCHA, said people in Gaza had now gone the longest period without any aid or commercial supplies reaching them since the start of the war and were now facing "probably the worst humanitarian situation" they had endured.

'Outraged and insulted'

During a Yom HaShoah ceremony at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem memorial last year, Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu said that a “straight line” existed between the Holocaust and the Hamas attacks and vowed that no amount of international pressure would tie Israel’s hands.

“Never again is now,” Netanyahu said, using a phrase commonly associated with the memory of the Holocaust.

But Agnes Kory, an 80-year-old child survivor originally from Hungary, told MEE: “I am outraged and deeply insulted by the Holocaust being used as an excuse for Israel's relentless war against the Palestinian people.

“Tragically, events like Yom HaShoah are now used to direct attention away from Israel's aggression. And, in any event, what was done to us as Jews should not be repeated against anybody else.”

'The calculated abuse of the Holocaust by Zionism is one of the great crimes against humanity. It's a stain on the history of the Holocaust'

– Haim Bresheeth, Israeli academic and filmmaker

Kory, who was born in December 1944, said she felt compelled to raise her voice “not only because of my own family, but for everybody around us, all the Hungarian Jews and all the European Jews who were slaughtered by the Nazis”.

Kory said her mother, who was also a survivor, wrote a memoir about her wartime experiences when her daughter was just three months old, passing it on to her when she was 13.

“There’s a cover page that says so you remember so times like this never repeat again. She probably meant against the Jews, but I continue to interpret it as never again against anybody.”

Haim Bresheeth, an Israeli academic and filmmaker living in London and the son of Polish survivors of Auschwitz and Belsen-Bergen, told MEE he believed the memory of the Holocaust had been "annexed" by Israel as a key element in the country's Zionist ideology which he said had been used to justify apartheid and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians long before the current conflict.

"The calculated abuse of the Holocaust by Zionism is one of the great crimes against humanity. It's a stain on the history of the Holocaust," he said.

Stephen Kapos, an 87-year-old child survivor originally from Hungary, told MEE he was speaking out in “protest against the use of the Holocaust experience by Israel as cover for what they’re perpetrating right now”, and said he believed Israel’s actions would lead to worsening antisemitism.

“It is an insult to all the survivors and the memory of those who perished,” said Kapos.

“Because they conflate Jewishness with what they are doing it inevitably increases antisemitism, so they are also doing the Jewish people a great disservice.”

Different opinions

Etkind, whose father survived the Lodz ghetto in Poland and a number of concentration camps including Buchenwald, said Israel’s claim to represent all Jews meant that some people would wrongly hold Jews responsible for atrocities committed by Israeli forces - though he stressed there could be no excuses for antisemitism.

He added: “But I think if we want to reduce antisemitism, which we all absolutely do, it’s really important that the media in this country makes it clear that only some Jews fully support what Israel is doing, and other Jews have different opinions.

“The real tragedy of the media and the political establishment is they have come up with a story that these very conservative sections of the Jewish community represent the whole community, and it's absolutely not the case.”

Both Kapos and Kory also criticised British Jewish institutions such as the Board of Deputies and the office of the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, which have remained staunchly supportive of Israel.

'If we want to reduce antisemitism, it’s really important that the media in this country makes it clear that only some Jews fully support what Israel is doing'

- Mark Etkind, Holocaust survivors' network

They rejected the claim that such institutions spoke for British Jews as a whole, and also called for Jewish voices critical of Israel to be heard more loudly.

They point to the presence of a large organised Jewish bloc at the regular pro-Palestine demonstrations in London since the start of the Gaza war despite complaints by pro-Israel activists that the protests have made central London unsafe for Jews.

Kapos and other members of the network have been among the most visible members of the bloc, often carrying placards identifying themselves as Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors.

Last month, Kapos was interviewed by police under caution as part of an investigation into alleged public order offences during a demonstration in January in which he laid flowers in Trafalgar Square.

Police accused protesters of defying restrictions by passing through police lines. Organisers accused police of “heavy-handed and aggressive policing”.

Jewish community organisations in the UK have largely held a united front in support of Israel since the start of the war and despite the growing Palestinian death toll and the accusations of war crimes levelled at Israel’s political leaders and armed forces.

But last week, 36 members of the Board of Deputies, the largest representative Jewish body in the UK whose members are drawn from synagogues and community organisations, published an open letter in the Financial Times in which they condemned the Israeli government for resuming the war in Gaza following the ceasefire agreed with Hamas at the start of the year, as well as Israeli violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

The letter was described by the FT as “the first public show of opposition” to Israel’s war by members of the board.

The newspaper said signatories had pushed the board to release a statement condemning Netanyahu for resuming the war in Gaza but had decided to publish the letter after the board was unwilling to publicly criticise the Israeli government.

“The inclination to avert our eyes is strong, as what is happening is unbearable, but our Jewish values compel us to stand up and to speak out,” they wrote.

But the letter was quickly denounced by the board’s leadership, with Chief Executive Michael Wegier accusing the signatories of “misrepresenting our community”.

On Tuesday, the board announced it had suspended a senior member who co-signed the letter and said that other signatories were "subject to a complaint procedure".

Kapos said the letter was welcome, but questioned why it had taken the signatories “a year and a half of mass murder” to speak out.

Kory was more dismissive: “Why don’t they write to [British Prime Minister Keir] Starmer and [Foreign Secretary David] Lammy and say stop arming Israel? It doesn’t matter what they say and where they write it. Netanyahu is not going to take the slightest bit of notice.”