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 reports in Middle East Eye on 23 April 2025:
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.