The millions of non-Jewish people exterminated by the Third Reich were not discussed at all
The BBC has apologized for not initially stating that the victims of Nazism mentioned in its coverage of Britain’s Holocaust Remembrance Day were Jewish.
Both the UK event and International Holocaust Remembrance Day are observed on 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Red Army in 1945.
Opening the news bulletin, BBC presenter Caroline Nicholls said: “Buildings across the UK will be lit up tonight for Holocaust Remembrance Day in memory of the 6 million people murdered by the Nazi regime more than 80 years ago.”
A similar phrase was used elsewhere by Britain’s state-run radio when it made accusations of covert anti-Semitism and glossing over Jewish suffering. The BBC said it was a performance “incorrectly worded” and should have referred “6 million Jews.”
Jews were the main target of the Nazi extermination policy. Other victims included 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, 1.8 million ethnic Poles, hundreds of thousands of Roma, Serbs and people with disabilities, and tens of thousands of German political prisoners, career criminals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and blacks.
Portraying the Holocaust as an exclusively Jewish tragedy has long been used to justify the creation of the State of Israel. Pro-Jewish state figures have previously accused the BBC of bias in its coverage of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, launched after the October 2023 Hamas raid and hostage-taking. Critics say Israel used disproportionate force and was likely trying to ethnically cleanse the blockaded Palestinian enclave.
Allegations of entrenched anti-Semitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labor Party helped Prime Minister Keir Starmer win the party’s 2020 leadership.
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