British Jews concerned as Holocaust exhibit at British parliament rejected, ‘Jews’ omitted from memorials

This year’s International Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) resulted in members of the British Jewish community feeling concerned about the state of affairs in the United Kingdom.

The Speaker of the Parliament’s House of Commons requested an investigation into why a Holocaust exhibit was denied a space in Westminster Hall, for being “too political,” the Times of London reported.

ALL ISRAEL NEWS covered the display, entitled the ‘Vicious Circle,’ held last month in a different London venue, depicting the pogroms and destruction of Jewish life in five locations: Berlin, 1938; Baghdad, 1941; Kielce in Poland, 1946; Aden in Yemen, 1947; and Israeli kibbutzim in October 2023.

“We were initially disappointed by the decision from Westminster Hall,” Maiken Umbach, Chief Academic and Innovation advisor at the National Holocaust Centre and professor of Modern History at the University of Nottingham, told ALL ISRAEL NEWS.

“But we are heartened by the public response when the story was reported by The Times, and especially the strong support from Lord [Eric] Pickles, who is the UK’s Special Envoy for post-Holocaust issues."

“We hope that, after the exhibition has finished its European tour, which includes venues such as the state parliament in Berlin and the European Parliament in Brussels, we will find a more suitable location in London, to bring this important message to a wider public,” Umbach said.

Lord Pickles told The Times that if Westminster Hall granted favor to a Palestinian solidarity group, a Holocaust exhibition should surely be allowed.

“Considering the timing of it, that we have just commemorated the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps put by Nazi Germany, I was frankly astounded,” he said.

"It just seems to me that if you are going to ensure that the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign has something there, it’s not unreasonable to have a government-funded exhibition there," Pickles added.

"Dealing with the questions of antisemitism – I mean, after all, Westminster Hall is where Churchill lay in state, where he received many honours. There was perhaps no greater fighter against antisemitism than Churchill. He would be appalled by this decision."

Dov Forman – the great-grandson of Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert, who recently passed away – highlighted another worrying trend in British media and politics, the erasure of the word ‘Jews’ from HMD news and speeches.

In a Good Morning Britain (GMB) news report about Holocaust Memorial Day, the anchor’s script read: “Six million people were killed in concentration camps during the Second World War, as well as millions of others because they were Polish, disabled, gay, or belonged to another ethnic group.”

The following day, the program issued the following apology: “In yesterday’s news, it was reported that six million people were killed in the Holocaust, but we failed to mention that those six million were predominantly Jewish. That was our mistake, and we apologise.”

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) also flagged the fact that the UK’s deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, had also omitted the word "Jews" or "Jewish people," in her commemorative post on 𝕏.

“Tonight, I’m lighting a candle to remember all those who were murdered just for being who they were, and to stand against prejudice and hatred today,” the post read.

“If you couldn’t clearly state in your political statement, social media post, or news piece on HMD that Jews were the primary victims of the Holocaust, you have failed to truly understand the lessons of the Holocaust and why it happened,” Forman wrote on 𝕏.

The young author of "Lily’s Promise," who regularly appears on GMB and other UK news programs, also highlighted the alarming statistic that a third of young adults in Britain are unable to name Auschwitz or any other Nazi death camp. Forman’s great-grandmother survived Auschwitz and lived to the age of 100.

Due to skyrocketing antisemitism in the UK since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced last year new measures to increase Holocaust education in schools. 

In his speech at the Holocaust Education Trust’s annual dinner, Starmer noted that “over a thousand people were massacred by Hamas, for the very same reason [as in Nazi Germany’s Holocaust] – because they were Jewish.”

However, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust received a letter this year from the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), saying that it was “morally unacceptable” that Gaza was not considered a “genocide” alongside the Holocaust.

The IHRC, which has been linked to Iran, also wrote to 460 UK town halls and educational centers, asking them to boycott this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, the Jerusalem Post reported.

A recent poll conducted by the CAA showed that less than half (43%) of Jewish people currently feel welcome in the UK. A massive 92% of those surveyed believed that media bias against Israel fuels the persecution of Jews in Great Britain.