Eighty years since Auschwitz and swathes of the Left can’t see Hamas for who they are

When it comes to memorialising key moments in our history, milestones are of huge impact and significance. Since the number adds power and poignancy to the act of remembrance.

Though when it comes to commemorating the horrifying magnitude of what happened at Auschwitz, every passing year — including this, the 80th anniversary — is of equal importance.

Not least since the number of survivors who witnessed first-hand the atrocities which took place are sadly dwindling.

For Auschwitz was the Holocaust.

As was every other camp, ghetto, piece of woodland or mobile gas chamber where, collectively six million Jewish people were rounded up, brutalised and slaughtered for their religious identity.

This was state-sponsored murder on an industrialised scale. How can anything else be held up in comparison? Why does 80 years matter more than 79?

And yet, timing is everything. For as dignitaries including King Charles gather at the world`s largest graveyard, today Hamas, once again play cat-and-mouse with news of the hostages brutally snatched 15 months ago.

The two world events are not mutually exclusive. What happened on October 7th follows a trajectory that springs directly from the Holocaust.

The two have a profound connection.

Yet those determined to demonise for its response to Hamas fail to see that.

Consequently, they rail at any comparison. In mitigation they say that horrific as October 7 was, this was political. The Holocaust was not. But October 7 was not about politics.

And as soon as we insert the word `but` after dutifully lamenting the numbers raped, maimed, burned and murdered, we make it so.

What happened on October 7 was the single deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

More than 1,200 men, women, and children were brutally murdered. Over 250 were kidnapped. Just as in the Holocaust, Jewish lives were systematically targeted – some of them Holocaust survivors and their descendants.

Meanwhile the very nature of the atrocities, including the desecration of the bodies, draws an exact parallel.

This unconscionable act of savagery cannot be explained by anything other than evil and blood lust. A desire as per the Hamas charter to wipe the state of and indeed the Jewish people off the map. How can there not be a connection to what is being remembered today on the frost-hard ground of Auschwitz?

Not least as antisemitism spirals and chants for ‘s destruction are roared aloud on hate marches across the world.

I have had the privilege of speaking to Holocaust survivors in the 15 months since October 7. One, a wonderful lady, who recently passed away and who was arrested by the Nazis at the age of 10, told me she couldn’t believe what had happened in , on that day and in her lifetime.

Another gentleman, who had survived several concentration camps and who was brutally separated from his family at the age of 12, echoed the same sentiment. For them never again was now.

It`s why on this momentous anniversary when we remember the Holocaust and Hitler`s murderous intent to exterminate the Jews of Europe, we cannot obfuscate the lineage to October 7.

In fact, as other acts of genocide such as Rwanda and Darfur are referenced on Holocaust Memorial Day, what happened at the Nova Festival and in the kibbutzes of Southern should be added to this devastating roll call.

Of course there will be those who will maintain `s response to October 7 was an act of genocide. An ugly myth powered by antisemitism. The UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.

It is heartbreaking that ‘s military actions in Gaza have caused significant loss of life and destruction for innocent people. But there was no genocidal intent — otherwise wouldn`t drop leaflets, give warnings of imminent attack.The intention has been to target the terrorists of Hamas not the Palestinian People.

In Auschwitz today, the souls of the slain are remembered with both profound sorrow and a pledge to prevent history from repeating itself.

The ghosts of October 7 today, more than ever, should be remembered on this day too. Not least as a reminder that the world still has so much to learn.