Jews – it’s the word that BBC news readers were shockingly unable to utter on the solemn occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day.
Multiple presenters failed to mention that six million “Jews” had been murdered by the Nazis, referring to them merely as “people”. The backlash to the obvious multiple omissions pushed the BBC to apologise.
Presenters on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and BBC Breakfast both referred to “the six million people murdered by the Nazi regime over 80 years ago”, with a number of other presenters using similar language. It appears as though the BBC used the same script throughout the day.
Danny Cohen, former BBC Director of Television and Controller of BBC 1, said: “A failure like this on Holocaust Memorial Day marks a new low point for the national broadcaster.
“It is surely the bare minimum to expect the BBC to correctly identify that it was six million Jews killed during the Holocaust. To say anything else is an insult to their memory and plays into the hands of extremists who have desperately sought to rewrite the historical truth of history’s greatest crime.
“This will be very painful to many in the Jewish community and will reinforce their view that the BBC is insensitive to the concerns of British Jews.”
Why ‘Jews’ and not ‘people’ matters
While there were millions more civilians who died as victims of the Nazis, the Holocaust was specifically an antisemitic genocide. It systemically targeted Jews – all Jews. The overwhelming majority of victims of the Holocaust were Jewish – at least 6 million men, women, and children. Widening the figure to include all victims of the Second World War, or drawing comparisons with other conflicts, is an insult to Holocaust victims and survivors. It diminishes and eradicates the anti-Jewish nature of the Nazi regime. It also undermines the lessons of the Holocaust when viewing contemporary antisemitism. If we mean ‘Never Again’ what are we saying ‘Never Again’ to? Saying ‘six million people’ is detrimental to truly standing with the Jewish people against Jew-hatred today.
But why did the BBC repeatedly avoid stating the Jewish identity of the 6 million murdered in the Holocaust? The BBC have issued an apology and admitted that their bulletins should have referred to ‘six million Jewish people’. Calls have been made asking whether a senior editor approved the script which was read out on air and whether there will be an internal review into how this happened.
