European Jews for Palestine excluded from Holocaust Remembrance Conference of 21 January
As a network of Jewish groups and collectives, European Jews for Palestine (EJP) is concerned, outraged and saddened to see our historical trauma held hostage by the State of Israel, European governments and the EU itself. We feel that it is our right, as Jewish people living in Europe, to have a say in how the story of the Holocaust is told, in what it is used for, and what it should not be used for. In particular, we are alarmed to see this year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day being cynically utilized to support pro-Israel narratives and shield the rogue Israeli State, including wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, from accountability, to the explicitly exclusion of non-Zionist Jewish voices.
On January 21st, the European Commission and the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU host an event titled, Holocaust Remembrance Conference: Remembering the Past, Shaping the Future. On 16 December 2024, EJP met with Katharina Von Schnurbein, the European Commission’s Coordinator on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life. Following that meeting, EJP sent a letter to Ms. von Schnurbein, requesting to be a part of the coming conference. Unfortunately, Ms. von Schnurbein has neglected to respond to our letter of 16 December, hence sending a clear signal that she and her office are only interested in representing some Jewish voices, but not all of them.
Noting that the Holocaust Remembrance Conference is being held in partnership with 11 Jewish organizations, all of whom explicitly engage in political support for Israel and many of whom work in close alliance with the Mission of Israel to the EU, we question why our network, constituting a major Jewish constituency in Europe, are not invited to participate. The inclusion of American organizations such as the American Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith, while European Jewish groups like ours are being excluded, is also highly troubling. We also question why there is no Roma representation in the program for the event, despite the hundreds of thousands of Roma slain at Auschwitz.
The exclusion of EJP as a Jewish network only serves to divide Jews into acceptable and unacceptable, deserving and undeserving. The Holocaust Remembrance Conference, purportedly seeks to honor our ancestors and shape our cultural legacy as Jewish people in Europe; but how can this be done while excluding the voices of so many Jews based on our political position? We know that politics, history, and culture are closely intertwined. By inviting and taking into account the views of only pro-Israel organizations, the European Commission risks perpetuating the antisemitic myth of political homogeneity within the Jewish community. This exclusionary, politicized stance only negates the lessons of one of the most heinous crimes ever committed by European society, the Holocaust.
We condemn the Polish decision to invite wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to Auschwitz Ceremony
As Jewish organizations, we are also outraged with the decision by the Polish government to agree to the request by President Andrzej Duda, issued on the 9th of January, 2025 to allow wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu into their country, in flagrant disregard to the arrest warrant issued for him by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the 21st of November, 2024.
The ICC arrest warrant was issued on the basis of Netanyahu’s personal responsibility as Prime Minister for the crimes against humanity being carried out by his government against the Palestinian people in Gaza, including the crime of starvation of a civilian population as a method of warfare.
This warrant is legally binding on all 125 ICC member states, including Poland, and obligates all member states to arrest Netanyahu should he seek to enter their borders. The Polish State’s shameful decision to protect Netanyahu from arrest reveals the extent of their complicity with the heinous crimes of the Israeli State and their utter disrespect of international tribunals and international law.
The decision is even more insulting to us as Jewish groups, who note that the rationale given for this decision is that Netanyahu should be allowed to visit Poland for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27th, 2025, where 1.1 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.
In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated the 27th of January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day under Resolution 60/7. The Resolution states that the purpose of the day is to encourage the memory of the Holocaust to be preserved to “prevent future acts of genocides”. Yet as we know, Israel under Netanyahu’s rule has been found to be at “imminent risk” of committing genocide according to the ICC.
It is an absolute insult to the memory of our Jewish ancestors who were ruthlessly murdered at Auschwitz, to allow this war criminal to attend such an event. This decision signals Poland’s willingness to partake in genocide denialism and shows clearly how little the Polish government has learned from its racist past from which so many Jews suffered, before, during and after the Holocaust.
As Jews, we call on the Polish government to, at a bare minimum, fulfill its obligation to uphold international law and immediately reverse the decision to protect Netanyahu. Anything less can only be considered as complicity with Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians.
Holocaust Remembrance should serve the goal of preventing genocide, not supporting it
As Jews living in Europe, many of whom are descendants of Holocaust survivors, we are committed to ‘Never Again, for anyone’. We believe that the lessons of the Holocaust are best expressed through uncompromising opposition to all forms of oppression, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, racism, and genocide, including the well-documented and longstanding oppression of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel and the current, still on-going genocide in Gaza.
We oppose the current situation in which our Jewish identities are held hostage as a tool of oppression against Palestinians and Muslims more generally. It is painful to see our collective trauma as Jewish people misused for the perverse purpose of protecting the State of Israel from accountability for its crimes. We seek to reclaim the memory of the Holocaust, away from the clutches of Zionist and colonial thinking, and remind the world: there is never an excuse for genocide.
