Inge Woolf: The rising global tide of anti-Semitism

It's 70 years ago today since the Soviets liberated Auschwitz and the horrors of the death camp were exposed. Photo / AP

Jewish shoppers are held hostage and murdered in a kosher supermarket in France. More than half of British Jews tell pollsters that they feel unsafe in their own country. Elsewhere in Europe, in Greece, Spain and even parts of the United States, Jews report rising levels of the "oldest hatred". Welcome to 2015.

If there's anything good to be said about today having been designated by the United Nations General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it's the unexpected - and unfortunate - relevance of the commemoration.

It's a date, of course, when the world is being urged to remember and reflect on the six million European Jews who were killed between 1933 and 1945.

The timing of the commemoration has special significance because the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945. It's 70 years since the world was shown the horrors of that terrible extermination camp and learned the excesses of determined anti- Semitism. But what have we actually learned?

Students of history, and those of us old enough to have witnessed that time, know that Holocaust violence didn't just materialise suddenly in 1942 when the Nazis started rounding up Jews. It was preceded by the rise of Nazism in Germany and growing anti-Semitism there and in other European countries.

The death, violence and terror of Kristallnacht in November 1938 was a turning point from economic, political and social persecution of the Jews into physical persecution.

It is therefore deeply disturbing that, 70 years on, we are once again witnessing in Europe the resurgence of right-wing political parties, race hatred and anti-Semitism. Jews in France, for instance, have been leaving for Israel and other countries, including New Zealand, because they are subjected to murder, torture, rape, attacks on communal buildings and daily abuse and violence.

We commend Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Theresa May, the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, for the muscular stand they have taken in condemning the anti-Semitic attacks in their countries.

We sincerely hope that other leaders will follow their lead and take action to curb this rising tide of intolerance to those who are different, and particularly to their Jewish fellow citizens.

But we aren't immune from the subject here in New Zealand; it's not something to be considered merely from afar.

Although New Zealand is a country where Jews have generally been well treated since they started coming in the 1840s, we cannot be complacent about the situation.

In the last 10 years there have been attacks on Jewish individuals, schools and cemeteries, and anti-Semitic graffiti. Our Prime Minister, whose mother was herself a refugee from Hitler's Europe, was targeted during the last election campaign on account of his Jewish heritage.

Anti-Semitism has been called the oldest race hatred in the world. By remembering the anti-Semitism that developed into the extreme horrors of the Holocaust and how that happened, let us acknowledge that it will keep resurfacing unless we act together. We must ensure that people all over the world join to condemn it and all other manifestations of racism.

Because of our geographic location, New Zealand leads the world in the commemoration on International Holocaust Remembrance Day - and by dint of our generally positive record in treating Jews well, we also have a chance to be first in the world for asserting liberal, humane values against the convulsions currently seizing parts of Europe.

Let us also lead the world in fighting anti-Semitism and racial intolerance, and join the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand in standing against prejudice, hatred and, especially, apathy.