If you find the title of this post offensive, then so you should. But what else is one supposed to say? The whole thing is as ridiculous as it is revolting. For one thing, why is it on 27th January, the day Auschwitz exchanged mass-murdering Nazi tyranny for mass-murdering Soviet tyranny? Why not 15th April, the day Belsen really was liberated, and that by the British? In some years, that would even coincide usefully with Easter.
That we are prepared to have it today points to the extent to which the anti-British sectarian Left has taken over our public life, and the extent to which it has made peace with its old adversaries, also massively influential, on the anti-British sectarian Right. That we insist on having it all points to the extent to which it is so much easier, and even to which it is so much more fun, to concentrate on the wrongdoing of others rather than on the wrongdoing of ourselves.
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The date of 27th January was chosen in Germany in 1996 and quickly became the international date of Holocaust Rememberance.
ReplyDeleteWhen the UK started commemorating the Holocaust in 2001 I suppose it just seemed the natural thing to do to choose the same day as everyone else.
As for whether the 27th January is a good choice of date in the first place, I do take your point.
While i'm fairly sure that at least one of your online allies will take umbrage at the suggestion that the Red Army did not 'liberate' Auschwitz (or the whole of East and Central Europe for that matter) I do not have a problem with such a suggestion. (Although the way you phrase it makes it sound as if the Soviets just moved in and kept the gas chambers up and running which is completely untrue.)
Nonetheless, Auschwitz was the first major concentration camp to be captured by anti-German forces so it is as an appropriate date as any.