The Auckland Hebrew Congregation

It was about six weeks ago that I sat down with representatives of the Jewish Council, and with the cartoonist Malcolm Evans in a mediation hearing over some of his more invidious creations.

On the table was the original of a cartoon in which the thin, tattooed arm of a camp victim pointed an accusing, bony finger at an Israeli soldier - and an accompanying speech bubble cried out, "shame". A separately published version replaced the tattoo with the ragged and fraying striped sleeve of a concentration camp tunic.

Evans was delighted with the piece. He was delighted that it hurt. He didn’t understand our objections.

Your cartoon suggests that the Israelis are the same as the Nazis; and that the victims of the Holocaust would despise the State of Israel, we contended.

"Precisely, my point!" smiled the smug Mr Evans. "I’m so glad that you got it!"

We are, each of us, of course, entitled to our own view of what is going on in the world - who is right, who is wrong; what values we choose to uphold and where our loyalties lie. Thankfully, we live in a free society where we can express our own prejudices.

Malcolm Evans seems to have some difficulty in distinguishing between a defensive war for a two state solution and an aggressive, expansionist, genocidal campaign for a final solution. And if he cannot grasp that - then how can I expect him to understand the anti-Semitism of his images and the pain that we feel each time he goes to print.

We gather this evening to commemorate and to honour the souls of those who perished in the Holocaust. As when a train pulls slowly away from a station - each year there are fewer survivors among us. Each year the reality of the horrors in the public mind is a little more distant. Suddenly it feels that the world has moved on to different scenery and a changed perspective with fresh motifs of bloodshed and savagery.

Words like ‘holocaust’ and ‘genocide’ are used out of context. And not only are they cheapened - but with the words, the memories of the victims are cheapened. My great grandparents, and my great aunts and my great uncles - and their children are not figures for Mr Evans to caricature. They are not the stuff of cartoon. They are not a commodity for him to abuse with a speech bubble.

Would that they have lived to see a state of Israel. Would that they had seen Jewish soldiers, smart in their own uniforms, sworn to defend Jewish lives. Would that there had been defence or a refuge. And I would have had so many cousins - my mother would have known her grandparents - so many of us here would have seen their parents grow old, their brothers and their sisters, their little nieces and their nephews…

Should we ever forget them. Should we ever allow their memory to be dishonoured. Should we ever permit ourselves to become weak and vulnerable… should we ever abandon our identity and pride in our heritage - then, would they justifiably raise their bony fingers and cry "shame!"

Here, in New Zealand, we are about as far from Auschwitz, Majdaneck, Sobibor, Treblinka, Dachau, Mauthausen & Belzec as geography will permit. It may be no coincidence that here, in New Zealand, we are closer than anywhere else in the world to the extermination of those camps from public record.

It is here, uniquely, that a history department has accredited a thesis which denies the murderous agenda of the Nazis in the Holocaust. It is here, uniquely, that professors of a university faculty have placed pieces in the media defending the discredited research - even after it had been disavowed by its own author. It is here, uniquely in the English speaking world, that a newspaper has given a column inch (let alone a two page spread over three days) dignifying the suggestion that the Holocaust is in any sense a hoax and that Holocaust denial is a field of research protected by academic freedom.

We are fortunate to live freely in this country. We thank New Zealand for the refuge it granted to so many of us here - to our parents, our families and our friends. But to a society which will allow and will encourage and will accredit the turning of fact into fiction and history into travesty - I stand with the memory of my ancestors and cry "shame!"

Many are the philosophers and theologians who have suggested the message we should carry from the Holocaust. And with it they urge - "lest the 6 million deaths of the victims be in vain."

In some measure, having spoken to those who survived the camps, who suffered the ghettoes, who hid and fought as partisans - the sad truth is that these were lives taken in vain.

The victims didn’t choose a cause. They weren’t even selected because they posed a threat. They hadn’t chosen to identify. Nor could they choose to opt out. From eminent scholars to innocent children, their lives were wasted. The most senseless suffering for no fathomable cause. Lives taken in vain.

We, on the other hand, carry the burden of their memory. Their lives were stolen. But their memory must not be.

Chaim ben Shlomo Offen, disciple of the Stucciner Rebbe. Heinz Lewin, composer from Wiesbaden - they have no grave. I carry them - as we carry so many others in our heads and in our hearts. If we let them go - we let them down - then our lives, our living, our surviving, will be, to some measure in vain.

I cannot abide racism. I abhor the stereotyping of peoples, deflecting responsibility and rallying the masses around scapegoats. I deplore the rewriting of history to satisfy ideology.

My great-grandfathers did not die fighting for honest ideals. They died because the people around them - from the backwards peasants - to the most civilised Berliner, didn’t care for honest ideals.