Key Takeaways:
- Media, political, and institutional Holocaust remembrance messaging increasingly refers to “six million people,” “millions of lives lost,” or “victims of Nazi persecution” without naming Jews or Jew-hate, turning a genocide of Jews into an abstract human tragedy before clarifications, if any, are made.
- Examples from major broadcasters, senior politicians, and religious institutions show a consistent pattern of universal moral framing that omits Jewish peoplehood and Nazi Jew-hate, recasting the Holocaust as a lesson about hatred in general rather than a racially and ideologically driven campaign to eliminate Jews.
- By flattening Jews into “one group among many” and prioritizing inclusivity over historical structure, Holocaust remembrance discourse distorts the nature of the genocide, weakens public understanding of Jew-hate as a distinct ideology, and erodes the link between Holocaust memory and contemporary Jew-hate.
The Holocaust was a Jewish event. It was a genocide conceived, designed, and executed with the explicit aim of destroying the Jewish people wherever they could be found. Six million Jews were murdered not because of something they had done, believed, or chosen, but because they were Jews. This is not a matter of interpretation or emphasis. It is a historical fact.
Yet in contemporary public discourse, the Holocaust is increasingly detached from Jews. It is reframed as a universal tragedy, a lesson about hatred in general, or an example of where intolerance can lead, without sustained reference to Jewish peoplehood, Jew-hate, or the specific ideological project of Nazi Jew-hate. This process, often well-intentioned and frequently framed as inclusive, constitutes a form of erasive Jew-hate. It does not attack Jews overtly. Instead, it removes them from their own history.
Erasive Jew-hate operates through abstraction, dilution, and omission. Rather than denying that Jews were murdered, it drains meaning from the fact that they were targeted as Jews. The Holocaust becomes something that happened to “millions,” to “innocent people,” or to “victims of Nazi persecution,” with Jewish specificity treated as optional or even inconvenient.
Erasure in Practice: Media, Political, and Institutional Language
This is not theoretical. It is visible in mainstream broadcast media. HonestReporting has already highlighted some of the examples that took place on Holocaust Remembrance Day. BBC Radio 4’s Today program referred to the Holocaust as the murder of “six million people.” Jews were not named. Jew-hate was not referenced. The victims were rendered anonymous. As journalist David Collier noted in response, the phrasing raises an unavoidable question: people? Were they just randomly chosen? The answer, of course, is no. They were Jews. To omit that fact is not neutral. It is distortive.
This pattern is mirrored in political and institutional statements. U.S. Vice President JD Vance marked Holocaust Remembrance Day by stating, “Today we remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust, the millions of stories of individual bravery and heroism… one of the darkest chapters in human history.” Jews were not mentioned. Jew-hate was not named. The Holocaust was presented as a moral parable about human nature, rather than as the culmination of a specific ideological hatred directed at a specific people.
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Religious institutions are not immune to this pattern either. A Holocaust Remembrance Day message issued by the Vatican’s official account affirmed opposition to Jew-hate and discrimination in general terms, but did so without explicitly naming Jews as the primary victims of the Holocaust or acknowledging that Jew-hate was the animating ideology of the genocide. The Holocaust was referenced indirectly, as part of a broader moral framework, rather than as a Jewish catastrophe rooted in Jew-hatred.
Holocaust Remembrance Day statements provide a clear illustration of this phenomenon. Each year, official messages commemorate the Holocaust while barely mentioning Jews, or sometimes not mentioning them at all. Jew-hate, the animating ideology of the genocide, is often absent. Instead, these statements emphasize vague commitments to tolerance, diversity, or opposing hatred in all its forms. Other victims of Nazism are sometimes listed, sometimes implied, and sometimes foregrounded. Jews, if mentioned at all, are frequently presented as one group among many, their distinct targeting flattened into a generic category of suffering.
Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
If a memorial statement cannot say that clearly, something is wrong.
Universal language does not honor history. It dilutes it. pic.twitter.com/bXo0ehw3eF
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 28, 2026
Why De-Jewification Distorts History and the Present
This is not about denying the suffering of others under Nazism. Roma and Sinti were targeted for extermination. Disabled people were murdered through state-sanctioned programs of “euthanasia.” Political dissidents, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, gay men, and others were persecuted, imprisoned, and killed. These crimes matter and should be remembered. Acknowledging them does not diminish Jewish suffering. The problem arises when Jewish specificity is erased in the name of inclusivity, rather than properly contextualized within it.
The Holocaust was not simply one atrocity among many. It was the central ideological project of Nazism. Jews were not collateral victims of a brutal regime. They were the regime’s organizing obsession. Nazi racial theory cast Jews as a global, metaphysical enemy, responsible for modernity’s ills and threatening the future of humanity itself. This is why Jewish communities across Europe, regardless of nationality, class, or behavior, were targeted for total destruction. This is why Jews were hunted, even when it diverted resources from the German war effort. To remove Jews from the center of Holocaust memory is to fundamentally misunderstand what the Holocaust was.
When Holocaust remembrance omits Jews or Jew-hate, it does more than distort history. It reproduces a long-standing pattern in which Jewish particularity is treated as problematic. Jewish suffering is accepted only when universalized. Jewish history is permitted only when stripped of peoplehood. This reflects a broader discomfort with Jews as a collective subject, particularly one defined by continuity, memory, and indigeneity.
Erasive Jew-hate does not require malicious intent. In many cases, it is motivated by a desire to build solidarity, avoid hierarchies of suffering, or speak to diverse audiences. But intent does not negate impact. When Jews are erased from Holocaust discourse, Jewish experience is marginalized. Jewish trauma is appropriated into a general moral lesson. Jewish memory is instrumentalized rather than respected.
This has consequences beyond historical accuracy. It shapes how Jew-hate is understood today. If the Holocaust is remembered as a generic warning about hatred, rather than as the culmination of a specific and enduring form of Jew-hatred, then contemporary Jew-hate becomes harder to recognize. It appears as just another prejudice, rather than as a distinct ideological system with deep historical roots and recurring patterns. The link between past and present is weakened.
De-Jewification also places an unequal burden on Jews in public memory. Other victim groups are not routinely asked to universalize their trauma in order to be included. Their histories are allowed to remain particular. Jews, by contrast, are often told that focusing on Jewish specificity is exclusionary, parochial, or even morally suspect. This double standard is itself a form of marginalization.
A historically honest approach to Holocaust remembrance can and must do both. It can center Jews as the primary victims of the Holocaust, acknowledge Jew-hate as its driving force, and situate the genocide within Jewish history and peoplehood. At the same time, it can recognize other victims of Nazi crimes, explain how different groups were targeted for different reasons, and resist competitive hierarchies of suffering. Inclusion does not require erasure. Contextualization is not the same as dilution.
Remembering the Holocaust as a Jewish event does not make it less relevant to humanity. It makes it more so. The universal lessons often invoked in Holocaust education do not emerge despite Jewish specificity, but because of it. They are grounded in what happens when a society embraces an ideology that dehumanizes a particular people and treats their elimination as a moral good.
If Holocaust Remembrance Day is to honor its purpose, it must resist the temptation to sanitize or abstract. It must name Jews. It must name Jew-hate. It must be clear about who was targeted and why. Anything less risks turning remembrance into ritual without meaning.
The de-Jewification of the Holocaust is not a neutral act. It reflects and reinforces a broader pattern in which Jewish history is reshaped to fit external comfort rather than internal truth. Recognizing this as erasive Jew-hate is not about accusation. It is about clarity. Memory that erases the people at its center is not remembrance. It is distortion.
Holocaust remembrance should begin where the Holocaust itself began. With Jews.
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