Baroness Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the European Commission, issued a statement on January 27 marking international Holocaust Remembrance Day.
It was commendable that the EU at all chose to note the day, but what Ashton said on its behalf was surreal. She managed to use 121 words without ever mentioning Jews. Her glaring omission in the context of the Holocaust is quite remarkable.
Ashton even lauded “all those who acted with courage and sacrifice to protect their fellow citizens against persecution.” But who were these nameless “fellow citizens?”
It’s highly doubtful that Ashton’s lapse is inadvertent.
Not everything can be plausibly ascribed to unintentional slip-ups. The bizarre homage Europe’s spokesperson paid to “every one of those brutally murdered in the darkest period of European history,” without even minimal reference to their identity, constitutes too great a strain on the commonsense.
Perhaps Europe in general and Ashton in particular find Holocaust Remembrance Day a troublesome, even a disagreeable onus. Hence Ashton obscured the Jewish context with a short collection of hackneyed platitudes on tolerance and human rights.
This is a cogent example of how Holocaust history is increasingly watered down, especially in Europe. Yesteryear’s physical destruction is followed up by today’s distortion of remembrance.
This serves two purposes.
It firstly seems to cleanse European nations – not just the chief genocide perpetrators, but all those who collaborated and/or profited from the industrial extermination of the Jews. By dwarfing the Holocaust, robbing it of its uniqueness and likening it to any subsequent, yet essentially very different inter-ethnic massacre – it becomes less of a moral stain. Any corollary obligation to the Jewish people is also thereby expunged.
Secondly, the disingenuous pretense that the Holocaust’s victims were anonymous and faceless reduces friction with the Arab/Muslim world, which chafes against Holocaust commemoration lest it even theoretically imply sympathy for Jews.
Not mentioning who the six million were and why they were systematically put to death by Europe’s resplendent cultures appeases elements in the Islamic world – Iran foremost – which don’t conceal their sympathy for the Nazi genocide. It’s often overlooked that Hitler’s toxic Mein Kampf is still a best-seller in most Arab lands.
The Holocaust was specifically blueprinted against Jews. Not every last victim was Jewish but every last Jew was earmarked for annihilation.
This was plotted against no other group – not even gypsies, some of whom were persecuted but others left alone. It was haphazard. Much depended on way of life, even on place of residence. Ancestry, however, wasn’t an instant irreversible death sentence. Only with Jews it was.
Only Jews were singled out for eradication because of “tainted” lineage. For Jews their life’s choices were irrelevant. Even social climbers who betrayed the Jewish collective, who turned their backs on Jewish heritage and haughtily despised fellow Jews, weren’t spared thereby. Nothing could save anyone deemed too Jewish to live.
Ashton’s mind-boggling omission is all too reminiscent of her 2012 remarks on the deliberate assassination of innocent Jewish children in Toulouse, where she both appeared blatantly biased and incredibly insensitive.
She managed then to lump together the casualties of a bus crash in Switzerland (where 20 Belgian children died), youngsters caught up in assorted armed conflicts and, without specificity, “what happened in Toulouse.”
In effect, she equated the point-blank shootings in France of three small Jewish children and the father of two of them with an assortment of other misfortunes which are unrelated. She thus plainly diminished from the barbarity of the Toulouse crime.
The Toulouse victims weren’t felled by a chance stroke of bad luck. They were marked for execution with malice aforethought in the utmost extreme. The victims’ sole crime was that they were born to Jewish parents – just like the million-and-a-half Jewish children slaughtered d in the Holocaust.
In both instances Ashton astoundingly feigned ignorance. This moral obtuseness evidences anything but upright impartiality. The same can be said about the EU since Ashton speaks for it. Such recurring predispositions cannot be ignored when assessing EU attitudes toward the Jewish state.
Bucking the Trend ... 
Remember Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg cemetery where the SS were buried? They too had been “victimized” by the Third Reich. Continuing and advancing the lack of discrimination over who the real victims are makes it easier for those persecuting to also pose as victims.
The persecution of Jews has always had some claim of criminal or immoral activity on the part of Jews and always false. And so obscuring Jewish victimhood in the Holocaust is bound to be advancing some lie somewhere else used to persecute some other innocent people besides the Jews.
Look to the Balkans and what has been happening to the Serbs for more clues as to what drives Ashton.
Ashton is an embarrassment to myself who was born in England, I and my family have immense love for the Jewish people and Israel and do all we can in supporting that tiny yet so blessed nation called Israel. We visited the concentration camp museum in Poland a few years ago and even today I cannot comprehend the brutality of Hitlers SS and any others who carried this massacre out over the Second World War. What shames me most is the fact that the so called friends of Jewish people knew what was going on but did nothing to stop the Holocaust . During my school years I knew nothing of the Holocaust but today’s youngsters need to know about it and to be warned that this is Never to happen again.
Israel is back in its land of promise which was given by God to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ( Israel ) and as scripture says they are back and will never be uprooted again.
Shalom Israel we love you.
Thank you as always. This really mind-boggling and I hope this article will appear in not only the Jerusalem Post but also the online edition.
Ashton is a symptom of Europes virulent Antisemitism…she is REALLY EVIL !
ONLY a vibrant Jewish state, a state NOT split up to the likings of Europes new Nazis, can give the answer !
Baroness Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the European Commission, is treated by you with a far greater degree of charity than she deserves.
As you are very much a true lady, Sarah and thus wish to write without appearing to denigrate or be guilty of overly offending the subjects of your articles, may I be permitted to say what we all know but which most people are reluctant to express openly.
This so-called “Baroness” is a dyed in the wool, unrepentant, anti-Semite in the opinion of large numbers of people.
One need only take the time to note how obtusely and grotesquely crooked her two front teeth are to not be surprised by what you refer to as her “moral obtuseness”.
What person with even a remotely normal mind in the 21rst century would not go to the small trouble to fix teeth that are so obviously out of joint.
But just as the “Baroness” seems not to be aware and/or care about her physical, easily correctable, dental deformity, the “Baroness” is equally disinterested and/or aware that both she and all her ilk, are the easily recognizable “Poster Children” of the proverbial European anti-Semites who averted their eyes while the Six Million were being slaughtered, including members of my own Family.
How pathetic that the “Baroness” does not apparently realize that the entire civilized world easily sees her for what she is- a revoltingly ugly human being in mind, body, spirit and deed.
Indeed, the Baroness Catherine Ashton’s absurdly lofty title, “the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the European Commission” is surely the icing on the cake.
Why not simply say it plainly: “The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the European Commission for the perpetuation of rabid Anti-Semitism”.
Why all the mincing of words, titles and verbal niceties ?
Ah- but then that would give the “game” away- wouldn’t it ?
Fortunately, after so many thousands of years of endless, undeserved persecution, we again have a State of Israel, an Eternal place of refuge and protection from all our enemies .
The “Baroness” can indulge in her lowly attempts at insult all she wishes. We no longer need pay her and those she represents the slightest attention. Indeed they are not deserving of our least attention nor time.
Congratulations Sarah.
She looks like a concentration camp guard
Dear oh dear Baroness Ashton!!! I suppose you had had no choice but make some comment on International Holocaust Remembrance day. But God forbid you should upset your ever so pro Israel – Ha Ha!) chums in the European government by mentioning Jews in any way shape or form!!!
Of course “lady” Ashton is an Iranian agent, eager to serve her raghead masters…
She, as the rest of the EU is in full support of Irans nuclear Holocaust project.
Again, I remember the IAF jets flying over Auschwitz…
Never Again?
What an ugly, sick, twisted, evil (I hesitate to say) human being. Her “Bad vibes” radiate from every picture she appears in.
Ashton? Yes, there are a ton of ashes, many of them, in Majdanek, Birkenau, Ebenze, all Jewish. Barrenness? It does not apply only to deserts, or distant planets, but also to those morally bereft.
I keep saying Europe is no longer a place where Jews can live openly and in safety. Immigration to Israel is the best solution.
Say it like it is Sarah! Another stunning piece!!
one must agree Sarah, it would be slightly generous to assume that this was merely an accident… I think you are spot on again, she does not wish to offend those in the Islamic world or the former perpetrators of these crimes, the guilty countries, but the truth is the truth, it would have been better had she not commented at all about this day, she demeans it, her comments expose her and her organisation for what they really are, leftist, watered down, and without the back bone to speak/state whats really happening in this world….its the blind leading the blind…tick tock tick tock, wake up Europe, you dont appease evil by ignoring or denying it…surely Europe has learned that lesson????, sadly it appears not….
Sarah, great piece you wrote there but what are we all to expect from the European Union and what has “really” changed since the times when european democraties were selling off Tchekoslovakia to Hitler? They’ll do it again and again because at the political level they have got no moral and their latent antisemitism is still there like it has always been.
Our sole determination never to give way again doubled to our vigilance to never trust anyone when it comes to our security will prevent another holocaust.
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Moral obtusenes is a kind way to call criminal psychpathy. What a shame to Europe to have such a pearson as an Official representative…What a shame!