Genocide Denial in Holocaust Studies: Scholar Raz Segal on Gaza & 80 Years After Auschwitz Liberation

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

On Monday, Holocaust survivors and world leaders marked 80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp. Events were held in Poland, as well as at the United Nations here in New York. This is Holocaust survivor Dumitru Miclescu speaking at United Nations yesterday. At 8 years old, he lost his mother, sister and two of his brothers at Transnistria death camps.

DUMITRU MICLESCU: [translated] Death was a daily presence. I saw my mother, my sister and two of my brothers die. Only a few of us returned home. And when we did, we had nothing left.

AMY GOODMAN: A Roma survivor of the Holocaust. The commemoration came two days after the tech billionaire Elon Musk took a break from advising Donald Trump Saturday to give a surprise virtual address to the far-right AfD party, or Alternative for Germany. Musk’s appearance came just days after he sparked controversy for twice giving a Nazi salute at a Trump inaugural event. Among other things, Musk told attendees it’s time to move on from past guilt, an apparent reference to Nazism and the Holocaust, when he was talking to the AfD.

For more, we’re joined by the Israeli American Holocaust scholar Raz Segal, whose new article for Jacobin is headlined “Genocide Denial in Holocaust Studies,” associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, endowed professor in the study of modern genocide.

Professor Segal, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about the significance of this day, yesterday, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp Auschwitz, and how it relates to what’s happening today.

RAZ SEGAL: Well, hello, Amy, and thanks for having me on the show again.

I think that it was very significant to see a Roma survivor speak yesterday at the U.N. I was there with students. But it was also shocking, actually, to see that the rest of the ceremony focused on, you know, what we might call a genocide-generating world of lies, because the main speaker in the ceremony yesterday was Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and he came on basically to present Palestinians as Nazis, present Israel’s attack on Palestinians in the frame, basically, of, as he described it himself, the Jewish state defending itself from this ongoing attack — right? — Nazis in the past, Palestinians today — rather than the reality, which is a stateless population, Palestinians, under decades of Israeli settler-colonial rule, under siege, now under genocide in Gaza, an attack by a very powerful state backed by all the Western powers. And this is a person, of course, Isaac Herzog, that back in October 2023 defined all Palestinians in Gaza, as we remember, as responsible for the Hamas-led attack on Israel — that is, its enemies. In December 2023, he went on to talk about civilization and barbarism — that is, Palestinians are barbarians, and Israel is part of the civilized world. He repeated this discourse yesterday.

So, it was very shocking to see, you know, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the U.N., which, we have to remember and remind everyone — right? — Israel has killed now over 330 aid workers in this attack, the majority of them U.N. workers, right? So, the institute that Israel has killed so many of its employees, we see this, again, what I call, genocide-generating world of lies — right? — a world turned upside down, where people facing genocide become Nazis, become antisemites. And this is all a grotesque, again, display of lies. So, this is what happened in the U.N.

It’s important to say that the Roma survivor, which was, again, very remarkable to see, his message was that, actually, Roma continue to face attacks today, as they do. In states across Europe, also states that are committed, allegedly, to Holocaust memory, they continue to face persecution and discrimination. And he called, actually, called out, and he said, you know, “Help us end this. End this endless persecution that Roma continue to face still today,” right? So, he was also talking about the failure of what we call Holocaust memory in education. But then we saw it, truly in a grotesque way, displayed with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in attendance.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Raz Segal, could you talk — in your Jacobin article, you describe the partnership between Israeli and German Holocaust scholars as troubling. Can you explain how this partnership perpetuates the denial of Israel’s genocide in Gaza?

RAZ SEGAL: Yeah, so, I mean, in the field of Holocaust studies, Holocaust studies has always been based — just the study of the Holocaust itself. Then we have also genocide studies and what we call Holocaust and genocide studies. But Holocaust studies was also always based on the idea that the Holocaust is unique. And this also meant that Israel, the state of Holocaust survivors, or the state that portrays itself as a state of Holocaust survivors, the Jewish state, is also unique. And this is really the basis of Nakba denial — right? — the idea that Israel cannot perpetrate any crime under international law, let alone genocide. So, this was very central also in Holocaust studies always, this kind of protection for Israel from criticism and really the perpetuation of Nakba denial, the denial — right? — of the ongoing Nakba, as well, the continued assault on Palestinians.

And this is what we see today. This is the reason that since October 2023 — right? — so many Holocaust scholars have actually gone out of their way to protect Israel, to attack other Holocaust and genocide scholars, like myself, including many Jews, including Israelis who speak out about Israel’s attack on Gaza, who speak on the basis of the mountain of evidence that we have today about Israel’s attack on Gaza. But again, it’s very grotesque that we see it among Holocaust scholars.

I wrote this piece about an event that took place online, organized by Western Galilee College in Israel, where there is a Holocaust program and a strong collaboration between Israeli and German Holocaust scholars. And the whole event was actually designed as an attack against Holocaust and genocide scholars, like myself, who speak about Israel’s attack on Gaza. We were portrayed as anti-Zionists, and therefore antisemites — right? — so this equation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. But there was also just crude genocide denial. One of the speakers, Verena Buser, for example, who’s a German scholar in Berlin that teaches online in Israel in that program, outright said minimizing the number of Palestinians killed by Israel, saying that there’s no starvation — these kinds of outright, crude denials go against all the evidence that we have. But again, we see it in the frame of Holocaust studies now. And this is rooted in the history of this field that it was always based, again, on the idea that Israel is a unique state — right? — that Israel cannot perpetrate really any crime under international law, impunity for Israel in the international legal system, but also in this field. And therefore, we see this kind of denial reproduced today, and we saw it in this event that I wrote about.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor, I wanted to just end by asking you about what just happened at the American Historical Association. I saw you a few weeks ago here in New York at the Hilton when members of the group voted overwhelmingly, 428 to 88, to oppose scholasticide in Gaza. If you can talk about what happened next? I was talking to a past president of the American Historical Association. They said, “Oh, I’m sure they’re going to have to go along with that vote, because it was so overwhelming.” But they vetoed it. We have 20 seconds.

RAZ SEGAL: Yeah, I mean, the AHA Council, unfortunately, vetoed this vote. Of course, this is, you know, an insistence on defending Israel at all costs. I think that what we’re seeing, of course, is U.S. institutions standing behind the defense of Israel, because if we come to terms with what Israel is doing, which is Israeli settler colonialism, this then means that the settler-colonialism genie is out of the bottle. We have to talk also about settler colonialism here in the U.S. and settler colonialism [inaudible] —

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to have to leave it there. I thank you so much —

RAZ SEGAL: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — for being with us, professor Raz Segal, Israeli American historian, expert in Holocaust studies. We’ll link to your Jacobin piece. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.