On 27 January, Eton College hosted a deeply moving commemoration, uniting the School community for a symposium dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust. The evening carried a particular urgency; we find ourselves in a moment where the language used to describe the Holocaust is increasingly euphemistic, blunting rather than preserving the truth.
Recent criticism of the BBC for referring to a neutral “six million people” rather than specifically naming Jewish victims highlights a pernicious drift toward ambiguity. In the effort to make the Holocaust “relatable,” there is a growing temptation to scrub the event of its specific identity–a belief that for tragedy to carry global weight, it must be stripped of its cultural character to show “this could happen to anyone.”
But the Holocaust did not happen to a generic “anyone”; it happened to a specific people. Hatred is rarely generic; it is targeted. To honour the victims, we must acknowledge exactly who they were and why they were chosen for destruction.
The goal of the evening at Eton College was not to sensationalise or evoke emotion through images, but to grant the victims dignity through unapologetic, precise language.
At 7.10pm, as guests gathered for a reception at the Vice-Provost’s Lodge, the atmosphere was one of quiet preparation. Following dinner, where Rabbi Hughes was invited to offer grace at 7.30pm, the conversation turned towards the active responsibility of memory. For many speakers present, this was not a matter of family history. They carried the weight of relatives who had survived or perished, and were preparing to step in front of an audience to relive their stories by speaking them aloud.
The weight of this responsibility became fully apparent at 8.30pm, as the assembled guests moved to the Election Hall. There, the Head Master and Lady Coleridge joined teachers, pupils, and families to bear witness to a programme that refused comfortable generalities about genocide. By describing the Jewish experience, the speakers did more than recount facts; they granted the victims a late-coming dignity and compelled the audience to witness a sobering programme of performances and speeches.
The choice of venue was especially apt. Speakers addressed the Holocaust beneath Odoardo Fialetti’s View of Venice (1611), depicting the site of the world’s first segregated Jewish ghetto. The setting drew a clear visual link between the institutionalisation of race-based exclusion and its eventual, murderous end.
The programme was curated with remarkable thoughtfulness. Dr Osborne explored Michael Morpurgo’s The Mozart Question, followed by a reading from Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s account of playing the cello in the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. There, the orchestra was forced to play at the SS’s behest.
The Chamber Orchestra, led by Mr Silvera, then performed Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. In introducing the piece, Silvera remarked that “culture survived despite every effort to exterminate it,” acknowledging art’s endurance in the face of attempted annihilation.
The audience observed silence throughout the evening. Only with the music did applause finally emerge, providing a necessary and cathartic release.
Student participation emphasised the importance of moving beyond the inherited memory of the Holocaust, towards understanding it. The contributions from the heads of the Jewish and Muslim faith classes were particularly significant, emphasising a shared responsibility across communities to resist all forms of hatred.
In my own address, I sought to challenge the comforting illusion that genocide is a relic that safely belongs to history. It remains a very real possibility, as seen in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. I traced the origins of the Holocaust back to 1933 to insist on a harder truth: the Holocaust did not begin with chambers, but with bureaucratic laws that stripped Jews of their place in public life. It began when the fear of difference was normalised.
However, I concluded by drawing on both Jewish and Christian traditions, stressing that while violence against minorities is never inevitable, exclusion is always its precondition. When individuals are driven from public life, they are denied the dignity that comes from being recognised as made in the image of God. Once the moral command to love one’s neighbour fails, exclusion becomes thinkable, and violence becomes possible. This is the danger of the so-called “neutral” language seen elsewhere: by erasing the specific identity of the victim, we risk softening the sharp edge of the very hatred we claim to oppose.
As direct memories fade and the last eyewitnesses pass, remembrance must shift from being a passive act to a deliberate choice. Tennyson reminds us that the New Year should not be about forgetting but about “ringing in redress to all mankind.”. This event signifies a pledge to keep the stories, images, and lessons of the past alive, and urges those present to live differently by choosing to remember.
