Anti-Semitic incidents referring to the Holocaust increased by 104% across the UK in 2023, new figures obtained by Sky News show.
Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that protects British Jews from anti-Semitism, last year received 955 reports of Holocaust-related anti-Semitism, defined as incidents containing some sort of reference to the Holocaust, the Nazis, Hitler or the swastika.
This number is more than double the 469 incidents reported in 2022.
Of these cases, more than half occurred after the October 7 attacks, when Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 200 others.
More than 26,000 people were killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli retaliation, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-controlled enclave, and more than 64,400 others were injured.
Incidents involving Holocaust denial also rose significantly in 2023 – a 268% increase on the previous year, the CST charity said.
The figures were released as the UK marks Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 78 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
“I can't believe this is England”
Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorates the victims of the Holocaust and the recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust by the Nazis.
Holocaust survivor Kurt Marx as a child and 98 years old. Photo: Jewish Refugee Association/Kurt Marx
People across the UK are being urged to light a candle in memory, while London landmarks including the London Eye will be lit up in purple to mark the occasion.
Lady Melina Grenville Baines was one of hundreds of Jewish refugees rescued in 1939 by Sir Nicholas Winton, who rescued 669 children from Czechoslovakia, brought them to the UK and saved them from Nazi persecution.
Sir Nicholas Winton with Lady Melina Grenville Baines. Photo: Jewish Refugee Association/Mrs Grenfell Baines
More than 80 years later, Lady Melina, who now lives in Preston, believes it is vital that survivors like her teach others.
“I think so very much,” she told Sky News [antisemitism] Built on ignorance.
“While we're still here, we can prove it [the Holocaust] “It was really true.”
Holocaust survivor Lady Melina Grenfell Baines, 94, when she was a child. Pic: Mrs. Grenville Baines/Jewish Refugee Association
CST data shows UK incidents glorifying or calling for another Holocaust have increased by 130% in the past year, with the 96-year-old saying the rise was deeply worrying.
“For me, as a refugee, I cannot believe that this is England, and no one expected this kind of thing in England,” she said.
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“There is no safe place to be Jewish.”
“They walked through the streets singing blood-curdling songs.”
Another survivor who fled Nazi Germany was Albert Lister.
He was only 11 years old when the Nazis raided his school in 1938 as part of Kristallnacht. – “Night of Broken Glass” – when Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were attacked in Germany and Austria, and up to 30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps.
“They walked down the street singing these horrific songs – we were told we shouldn't wear the kippah,” Lister told Sky News. [Jewish skullcaps] Because the children were throwing stones at us.”
Albert Lister as a child and 96 years old. Pic: Jewish Refugee Association/Albert Lister
Kurt Marx was also living in Germany during Kristallnacht, and remembers the devastation he witnessed that night.
He said: “My uncle's store was completely destroyed, and there was smoke coming out of my school because they set fire to the synagogue inside it.”
The 98-year-old added: “There is an undercurrent of anti-Semitism everywhere, it has been there all along.”
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'Shocking and insulting'
Dr Dave Rich, policy director at CST, said the recent rise in Holocaust-related anti-Semitism has become more systematic since the October 7 attacks.
“When there is anti-Semitism, it is often accompanied by offensive and shocking references to the Holocaust,” he said.
“This is an unprecedented rise, and I think education about the true horrors of the Holocaust is a really important part of trying to reduce it.”
