The Holocaust was an unimaginable horror, and it is to our great shame that we have still not learnt its lessons.
When you demonise and degrade any group of people, when you deny them human dignity and a shared humanity, you dehumanise yourself and make the worst crimes possible.
It is poison that infects a society and permits the worst of crimes. It is hatred built on a lie.
It is an excuse for making evil a reality.
Rising antisemitism, in Ireland and around the world, is an attack on history. It is an attack on truth. It is an attack on democracy and our democratic values. It is evil personified in the way it erodes basic values of decency and respect for other people.
Antisemitism has been called the oldest hatred. But it is the oldest hatred that always seems to be able to find new ways of returning and reinventing itself. Of finding new ways to justify and rationalise evil.
It finds excuses to dename and deny, so that it can defend the indefensible.
It is profoundly disturbing that there is growing evidence that increasing numbers of young people in Ireland and around the world have a basic lack of awareness and understanding of the Holocaust. What starts by diminishing the full extent of the horror, in some cases warps into outright denial.
It reflects how powerful disinformation has become in battling historical education, and how exposure to lies on social media has such a hugely destructive and insidious effect.
As surveys conducted by the Claims Conference has shown, it begins with lies about the scale and size of the Holocaust, diminishing the full extent of the horror and the enormity of the atrocity. It moves from there to outright denial. Because once you open the door to a lie, it makes it easier for bigger ones to sneak in, and it creates a pathway for greater lies and distortions. What begins by diminishing the extent of the Holocaust moves to an outright dismissal.
We are even seeing attempts to rehabilitate the Nazis and their collaborators, turning truth entirely on its head.
The Holocaust showed the world how low it can go. Holocaust denial is an attempt to return us to those depths, creating a world where bigotry is tolerated, and hatred is justified.
It is an insult to the memory of all who lost their lives in the Holocaust, the millions of people who were persecuted and murdered because of prejudice and lies.
I am certain that we must combat this growing evil, and we must find new ways of doing so, and quick, because this is an assault on our values, on truth, on history, and our very democracy.
The great nineteenth-century nationalist leader, Michael Davitt, who fought so courageously for the basic rights and human dignity of Irish people, was also a champion for freedom and justice around the world. In 1903 he visited Russia to investigate and report on the massacre of Jews in Kishinev. What he discovered horrified him and he described it as ‘one of the most abominable tragedies in modern times’.
At the very same time, Jewish people in Limerick were being boycotted and abused, excluded and attacked. Davitt also spoke out against this terrible example of antisemitism on Irish shores, exposing it for the evil it was. He said, ‘I protest as an Irishman… against this spirit of barbarous malignity being introduced into Ireland’. And he recognised that Jewish people around the world had ‘endured a persecution, the records of which will forever remain a reproach’.
We did not learn the lessons of history after Kishinev and Limerick, we did not learn them after the Holocaust, we did not learn them after Bondi Beach, and we do not seem to be learning them now.
After the Holocaust we promised the world ‘never again’, but time and time again that has been exposed as a hollow promise, and a falsely reassuring lie. This darkest chapter of human history, the systematic extermination of six million Jewish men, women and children, is a lesson that we need to constantly remember and retell through our actions as well as our words. It was an attempt to murder an entire people, and was accompanied by the attempted genocide of the Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, and LGBTIQ+ people.
Antisemitism is now a global phenomenon, and technology has made it easier to spread falsehoods, and distort the truth. It is a mechanism of hate, constructed to poison and corrupt those who believe in it. And, so often, antisemitism is the gateway prejudice, that opens the doors to other forms of bigotry and hatred.
To our Jewish community in Ireland, I have a simple message. We hear your fears, and we promise to stand with you. Your safety, your dignity, your right to live without fear is fundamental and non-negotiable. I will continue to meet with you, and I will continue to stand with you.
And my message to the wider world is that we must recognise that silence in the face of hatred is complicity.
We need to protest as Irish people, as good people of conscience, against antisemitism and hatred in all its forms, and stand against those who stoke fear, threaten violence, and seek to dehumanise. And to stand with our Jewish community.
On National Holocaust Memorial Day we recommit ourselves to education and to solidarity. It is a call to action. ‘Never again’ needs to mean acting to prevent hatred in all its forms.
We need to learn the lesson from history that by standing up for Jewish people in Ireland and around the world we are defending the very foundations of a free and humane society.
In doing so, we are speaking out for a better future for all of us.
