A campaign to boycott Holocaust Memorial Day has sparked fury from those preparing to mark the landmark anniversary.
It is understood the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) which has links to Iran has written to 460 councils and universities demanding them to snub official commemorations set to be held a fortnight today.
The group says it is “morally unacceptable” Gaza is not included as a “genocide” alongside the Holocaust.
On January 27 millions around the world will commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi regime’s notorious death camp, where 1.1 million perished, including 960,000 Jews, 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma people, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and up to 15,000 other Europeans.
Prisoners who were not exterminated in gas chambers died of starvation, exhaustion, disease, or were individually executed, beaten to death or killed during medical experiments, as part of what the Third Reich called the Final Solution. The camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army.
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said the IHRC’s call for a boycott was “shocking and disgraceful”.
She said: “This is a cynical attempt to denigrate and undermine the memory of the Holocaust by drawing false parallels between the Holocaust, a unique and unprecedented episode in history, and unrelated current events,” she said.
“Such demands, including calls to make the day ‘more inclusive’ or to insert contemporary political agendas, not only insult the memory of the six million Jewish men, women, and children who were systematically murdered, but also undermine the fundamental purpose of Holocaust Memorial Day. It is vital that commemorations maintain their focus on the Holocaust, that Jewish victims are properly honoured, and that the central role of anti-Semitism in this genocide is unequivocally recognised.”
The IHRC bills itself as a campaign, research and advocacy non-profit group which “struggles for justice for all peoples”.
It was established in 1997 and enjoys special consultative status with the economic and social council of the United Nations.
But it was criticised in an independent review of the Prevent counter-terror strategy by Sir William Shawcross, who described it as an “Islamist group ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime, that has a history of extremist links and terrorist sympathies”.
It is currently campaigning to “boycott genocide”, saying on its website: “We must act now, to do whatever we can to oppose this genocide. One of the easiest things to do is to boycott those that support genocide. There are many companies that support Israel and deserve to be boycotted.”
This year’s global commemorations come amid a spike in anti-Semetic hate crimes following the Hamas murder spree in Israel on October 7, 2023, the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. More than 1,200 were killed during the incursion, triggering shockwaves around the world which in turn sparked frequent and open attacks on Jews in cities including London.
In the first six months of last year the Community Security Trust, a Jewish charity, recorded 1,978 antisemitic hate incidents – more than double those in the first half of 2023.
The rise was attributed to the fallout from the massacre.
Some 1,037 of the self-reported incidents were in London, including 411 in Barnet, where Britain’s biggest Jewish community calls home.
In a letter to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust the IHRC said” “It is with grave concern and great disappointment that we note the absence of the ongoing genocide in Gaza from the list of genocides mentioned by HMD. The failure to include it in commemorations would undermine a fundamental aim of marking the Holocaust which is to help prevent further genocides and to put a stop to genocides when they occur, rather than being a symbolic exercise in remembering historical atrocities.
“There can be little doubt that Israel’s savage onslaught against the besieged people of Gaza amounts to a genocide.”
A spokesman added: “No amount of rehashed false accusations and demonisation of our organisation will undermine our steadfast concern that Holocaust and genocide memorials, founded on the principle of ‘never again,’ are being rendered meaningless when the genocide of our time, unfolding before our very eyes, is deliberately ignored.”
