Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Myth and memory
by The Guardian (UK), Jan 24 2001
Posted: Sunday, January 28, 2001 08:06 pm CST

Britain's first Holocaust Memorial Day is on Saturday - but why has such a laudable event stirred up anger and protest? Because it provokes an uneasy reading of our history, says David Cesarani

In the 1994 BBC Reith lectures, the writer and critic Marina Warner observed that arguing about the past has become "a vital part of being a member of society, an ordinary but important act of citizenship, a factor in establishing the idea of a home as a place where you would like to belong, and might be allowed to stay". The current row over Holocaust Memorial Day exemplifies the tangled relationship between history and home.
Britain's first Holocaust Memorial Day, on Saturday, will be marked by a ceremony in London attended by political and religious leaders and broadcast live by the BBC. Similar gatherings will be held around the country and schools will hold special assemblies and classes inspired by the day's message: Remembering Genocides. Lessons for the Future.

At first sight this would seem laudable, but the event has been denounced as irrelevant and hypocritical from the left and the right. Representatives of the Armenian community have condemned the day for apparently excluding the slaughter of Armenians by the Turks in 1915-16. They have accused the government of colluding in the denial of the Armenian genocide in order to avoid offending Turkey.

These are serious charges. However, there is more at stake than arguments about the "uniqueness" of the Holocaust or the pathos of the government's "ethical" foreign policy. Those who condemn the event entirely, or merely criticise its "exclusivity", are prone to moral and political myopia.

They are so mired in either universalism or particularism that they have failed to notice that Holocaust Memorial Day is a step towards realising the vision in the Parekh report on the future of multi-ethnic Britain. This development in itself has to be appreciated in the context of global changes which presage the emergence of a new international morality.

None of this occurs to adversaries such as the Observer columnist Nick Cohen, who take their cue from antagonists of the so-called Holocaust industry. They deny that the Holocaust is relevant to Britain and ridicule the idea that it has lessons for today. If the government is serious, why is it locking up asylum seekers and selling arms to regimes with poor records on human rights?

Isn't the Holocaust actually being used to avoid engagement with contemporary atrocities by requiring them to meet an impossible standard before they merit intervention? From the other extreme, the Daily Telegraph has declared that "a special day to commemorate the Nazis' six million Jewish victims was a bad idea in the first place".

Using it to push ideas of political toleration, ethnic inclusivity, and cultural diversity "is to belittle the enormity of what happened, to help bolster New Labour's spurious claim that Britain is riddled with racism". The day "does not deserve wide public support". When the bien penseuses of the left concur with the Daily Telegraph in loathing something, you know it has to be right.

Apart from the fact that Britain was embroiled in the fate of the Jews between 1933 and 1945, Nazi racial-biological policies perpetrated a crime against humanity. Humanity does not stop at the white cliffs of Dover. The day was never intended to be just about Jewish suffering: it will highlight onslaughts against a range of other populations in Nazi Europe and afterwards, including Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

There are sound reasons why the day made Nazi atrocities a springboard for examining genocides after 1945. The Nazi assault on the Jews differed from anything that had preceded it. That was why in 1943 Rafael Lemkin invented the concept of genocide: to define something new. The choice of subsequent cases can be debated endlessly, but it is puerile to insist that because the selection is imperfect no one should benefit.

The Holocaust was a dormant subject until the 70s, but before that there was not much interest in previous genocides either. A general shift in the ethical and cultural climate is responsible for concern about the victims of the past. According to Elazar Barkan, author of The Guilt of Nations, "a new international morality" has gradually fallen into place since the 50s.

It began with West Germany's admission of responsibility for Nazi crimes and making reparations to the victims. It was accelerated in the United States when, as part of the 60s Great Society policy, the administration heeded the legacy of slavery and racism, and instigated social policies to correct their effects.

Suddenly the memories harboured by survivors of persecution were no longer a private affair: it was recognised as part of their identity as members of a group. Moreover, this group had a right to claim compensation. Diaspora groups used the democratic process to mobilise and pursue their claims.

Because collective memory is now accepted as integral to personal and group identity, perceptions of history and their ramifications must be accommodated in a pluralistic society. In his 2000 report for the Runnymede Trust, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, Lord (Bhikhu) Parekh contended that to achieve such a goal it would be necessary to retell Britain's "national story".

This entails challenging the myth of Britain as unified and uniform >From time immemorial until the arrival of those pesky immigrants. It means questioning the "civic and secular character" of liberal constitutionalism and religious toleration by recognising that they are "embedded in particular cultural values and traditions" with an ethnic hue. Above all, it requires disrupting the simplistic glorification of Empire and recognising the ambiguous impact of British expansionism which was, after all, ultimately responsible for most post-1945 immigration.

Whereas Remembrance Day each November was harnessed to the myth of a doughty island race defending democracy and toleration, Holocaust Memorial Day provokes a queasy reading of British history: a tale of half-hearted opposition to fascism, the mean-spirited treatment of refugees, and prevarication in the face of persecution, later genocide. It begs questions about Britain's role in recent international crises and the treatment of asylum seekers. Yet it can also give those who have found refuge in this country a sense that their scarred memory has become part of our national heritage.

Of course, the day is not perfect. But it will take place annually and it is appropriate if it remains contested ground. Unlike the monolithic remembrance of Britain's mythic past, it defies monopoly. By remembering genocides we are acknowledging the way that past catastrophes have helped to create a multi-ethnic Britain. By confronting the history of intolerance we can help to forge a society in which such things will not recur and the once persecuted can, at last, feel at home.

• David Cesarani is professor of modern Jewish history at Southampton University and a member of the Holocaust Memorial Day steering group. This article reflects his personal views.

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