Press releases
The Holocaust: the last moral absolute?
publication date: 15 October 2005
'In order to preserve a real memory of the Holocaust we have to challenge its frequent misuse in contemporary debates': a discussion at the Battle of Ideas festival on the uses and misuses of the Shoah.
In a time where school children are taught to think through their experiences of bullying and racism through the Holocaust, where the latest manmade as well as natural catastrophe is described as a holocaust and where lobby groups ranging from animal rights activists and environmentalists to anti-abortionists and anti-Zionists fall back on the Holocaust to bring force to their plights, it is easy to lose sight of what actually happened during World War II.
'In order to preserve a real memory of the Holocaust we have to challenge its frequent misuse in contemporary debates. The tendency to take the Holocaust out of its historical context in order to consider how it may still be with us today ultimately diminishes the memory of the systematic slaughtering of 6 million Jews and others to a mere symbol of evil'.
Nathalie Rothschild, Deputy Editor of The Liberal and convenor of The Holocaust, the last moral absolute?
The Holocaust Memorial Day, set up by New Labour in 2001, aims to commemorate all victims of genocide and it has been criticised for not being inclusive enough. When everyone wants to have their plights officially recognised and when the Holocaust seems to be the only clear-cut case of good and evil around, the tragic events of the Shoah risk being reduced to a moral lesson.
Join this debate to put things back in perspective!
On the panel:
Josie Appleton, Assistant Editor, Spiked
Bob Brecher, Reader in moral philosophy, Brighton University
Gillian Walnes, Executive Director, The Anne Frank Trust UK
Chair: Nathalie Rothschild, Deputy Editor, The Liberal
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