Never Again

The emptiest phrase in the English language is "never again."

How many times have people said it since the Second World War, and how many genocides and acts of barbarism have we continued to witness since then?

• Between 1.5 and 2 million people died in Cambodia under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in 1975-79

• An estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in Rwanda in 1994

• Around 800,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in Bosnia in 1995

• The Yazidi genocide carried out by ISIS took place in Northern Iraq in 2014-2017

• The Myanmar military carried out the genocide of the Rohingya from 2016 and continues to do so today

• The genocide and brutal suppression of the Uyghurs in China are happening now, as you read these words

• The murder of Christians in Sudan continues as we avert our gaze

All these show that every nation is capable of crimes against humanity, and anybody of the "wrong" persuasion can become a victim. 

Never again in all its heart-rending sincerity was first seen at Buchenwald concentration camp following its liberation by American forces in April 1945. Survivors held a memorial service and displayed handmade signs in multiple languages, including German, declaring never again.

It continued to be used by survivor groups, political organisations and world leaders as a vow to prevent the return of extremist forces. 

And yet, extremist forces are precisely what we are seeing throughout the world today, and Jewish people are once again the victims of this extremism.

At Bondi Beach, Australia, Alexander Kleytman, aged 87, died sheltering his wife, Larisa, from the bullets sprayed into a crowd celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. As children, the couple had escaped the Holocaust. I wonder what thoughts went through Alexander's head as he lay dying? The Nazis failed to kill him, but the new Nazis of Islamic Jihadis had now succeeded. 

I have just finished writing the story of a woman who escaped Nazi Austria as a baby. The Anschluss, the incorporation of Austria into Hitler's Germany, released anti-Semitism among the Austrian people, which saw Jews forced to clean pavements with nail brushes and toothbrushes, often using water mixed with acid.

Researching her story, I came across a sentence which is so pertinent today. The artist Alfred Hrdlicka said this, "One cannot always refer to Auschwitz, for it (genocide) started with the washing of the streets."

The death of 15 Jews on Bondi Beach or the death of two Jews at the Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur are the result of a radical Islamist ideology which has been allowed to take root throughout the Western world and which will one day destroy that world.

For us in the UK, it won't have started with the washing of the streets, but with the failure to deport hate preachers from their mosques and stop the Jihadi marchers spewing hatred on our streets.