Holocaust Memorial Day matters more than ever, and the false comparisons must stop, writes Ben Kentish

The same was true last year, and the year before. Every year that passes, in fact, the commemoration becomes ever more vital.

That might seem a strange thing to say given that we are approaching the 100-year anniversary of the start of Hitler’s rise to power.

As terrible as it was, some people suggest, it’s ancient history now. Must we keep talking about it as much we used to?

The answer, resoundingly, is yes we must. Because every year that passes, the risk of forgetting grows, and therefore so does the importance of remembering.

Over time, collective memory fades and events slip into the haze of history. Soon, the haunting testimonies of those who survived the camps, the ghettos and the pogroms will be available only through books, recordings and second-hand accounts.

Anybody who has sat and listened to a Holocaust survivor tell their story will know that their words stay with you – hearing what they endured leaves you with both a grim recognition of the evil that humans are capable of and a determination to play whatever small part you can in making nothing like it ever happens again. We are the last generation that will have that privilege directly – and feel that responsibility first hand. It is vital that their testimony - of what they endured and what facilitated it it - does not die with them.

Perhaps this gradual fading into the blur of time elapsed is why the memory of the Holocaust is being increasingly obscured, the facts of what happened either skimmed over or twisted to suit modern political agendas. There is a growing tendency to draw comparisons between the Holocaust and modern events.

Current politicians are compared to Adolf Hitler every time they act in a vaguely dictatorial, nativist or authoritarian way. Criticise them, sure. Call them despots or even fascists if you want. But Donald Trump is not plotting the mass murder of millions of people.

Nigel Farage does not lead a party that wants to eradicate an entire religion from the face of the earth. The constant false comparisons between people and events that aren’t remotely comparable isn’t just absurd – it demeans and undermines the unique evil of the Holocaust and those who perpetrated it.

These comparisons reached fever pitch during the war in Gaza. So many times in the last few years, I have seen and heard the suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis invoked as a stick with which to beat them, or at the very least the world’s only Jewish state.

Gaza referred to provocatively as a “concentration camp”. Benjamin Netanyahu, of whom I’m no fan at all, depicted as Hitler. The appalling suffering of the Palestinian people referred to, deliberately, as a “Holocaust”.

Others don’t even try to be subtle about it: they directly link the Jewish people’s suffering in the Holocaust to the situation in the Middle East and accuse them of doing the exactly same to the people of Gaza as the Nazis did to them.

These endless comparisons with the Nazis aren’t made when it comes to other conflicts. They don’t come up over and over again when other groups are being persecuted, or when other allegations of genocide are made. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that those who constantly talk about Israel and the Nazis in the same breath are doing so to cause maximum impact and, let’s be honest, offence.

There are many ways to critcisise Israel and its current leadership, including the blunt and full-throated condemnation that some of its recent actions have warranted.

I have done so repeatedly. It is also entirely possible to do so without invoking the Holocaust at every turn and gratuitously exploiting the most painful moment of many painful chapters in Jewish history.

So this Holocaust Memorial Day perhaps we can all commit to remembering the Holocaust for the unique and unprecedented stain on human history that it was and making sure we never forget the lessons it teaches us about hatred, prejudice and demonisation.

And while we’re at it, let’s stop eroding and undermining its significance by drawing ridiculous parallels with something so clearly unparalleled.

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Ben Kentish is an LBC Presenter

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