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A team of
government ministers and Jewish community leaders recommended in
October that the British government designate a national
"Holocaust Remembrance Day" to be celebrated on the anniversary
of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp. The
purpose of such a memorial -- it said -- would be to prevent
such a thing from being forgotten or repeated, but it's a safe
bet that if such a holiday is proclaimed Holocaust education in
school curricula and even a Royal Holocaust Museum can't be far
behind.
Of course, such institutionalized Holocaust remembrance
practically demands that there be a comparable analysis of the
subject to ensure accuracy. But this is not likely in
Britain, where efforts continue to make Holocaust revisionism a
crime.
It is also rather unclear why Britain would make such an
extraordinary concession to the Holocaust, when it has rather
successfully ignored its own depredations through history,
whether the Potato Famine or the Drogheda massacre against the
Irish, the concentration camps set up during the Boer War that
caused tens of thousands of deaths, the forced labor
deportations to American and Australia, and the countless
episodes of violence against the non-white subjects of the
British Empire.
Perhaps the lobbying of the British Jewish community, about
1% of the British population, will spark demands from all of the
British minorities for comparable memorials. Unfortunately
there are only 365 days in a year.
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Bradley R. Smith, Publisher 