Many people are unaware there is a day commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz, on January , and many of our students either have not heard of Auschwitz or see it as a historical event with little relevance to their lives.
Many British Muslims went as far as to boycott the commemoration because of its focus on Jewish losses. This amounts to a rejection of the genocide of the Roma and others at the death camp. We must not forget that Serbian, Jewish, Roma and Muslim prisoners were killed in Jasenovac concentration camp. I believe we should remember the victims of this great mass murder irrespective of ethnicity, politics or sexuality.
The Holocaust, as Jonathan Sacks pointed out on Radio 4's Thought for the Day last Thursday, claimed on average 3,000 Jewish lives each day for five and a half years. But its relevance for non-Jews will continue to recede.
Perhaps it is time for Jews to accept that gracefully, rather than decrying it as anti-Semitism.
We also should not allow the Germans to hide behind the term Nazi. We do not say that the Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti was responsible for the genocide of more than 1 million Armenians; we call it a Turkish atrocity.
Jessica Bloom
American Intercontinental University/School of Oriental and African Studies