The British Broadcasting Corporation apologized Tuesday evening after Holocaust Memorial Day coverage omitted any reference to Jewish victims, with the exclusion characterized as "hurtful, disrespectful and wrong," The Times reported.
Presenter Jon Kay delivered the introduction on BBC Breakfast Tuesday morning, describing Holocaust Memorial Day as "for remembering the six million people murdered by the Nazi regime over 80 years ago," according to The Times.
Campaign for Media Standards drew attention to comparable introductions delivered by several of the broadcaster's prominent presenters, including Matthew Amroliwala and Martine Croxall, charging that the network had "used the same script all day," The Times reported.
Lord Pickles, who served as special envoy for post-Holocaust issues from 2015 through last year, characterized the failure to identify Jewish victims in the introductions as "an unambiguous example of Holocaust distortion, which is a form of denial," The Times reported. "This kind of obfuscation was common during the Soviet control of parts of Europe," stated Pickles, currently co-chairman of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, according to The Times. "For the BBC to use it today is shocking. They should be fighting antisemitism, not aiding it."
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, stated: "The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jewish men, women, and children. Any attempt to dilute the Holocaust, strip it of its Jewish specificity or compare it to contemporary events is unacceptable on any day. On Holocaust Memorial Day it is especially hurtful, disrespectful and wrong," The Times reported.
The Times disclosed concerns Monday that Holocaust education was approaching a "uniquely dangerous moment" as final survivors pass away while antisemitism increases, according to the report.
The network's Holocaust Memorial Day coverage on its digital platform featured King Charles and Queen Camilla lighting candles at Buckingham Palace to commemorate the anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp's liberation, which acknowledged the remembrance of "the six million Jewish people murdered during World War Two," The Times reported.
The monarch, serving as patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, became the first British royal to visit Auschwitz last year on the 80th anniversary of its liberation from Nazi forces, according to The Times. He commissioned portraits of seven Holocaust survivors in 2022 and met Tuesday with surviving subjects or families of deceased subjects, The Times reported.
Lorraine Lawrence, whose father, Zigi Shipper, was one of the portrait subjects who has since died, told the monarch: "We feel like they should all be with us today," according to The Times. Charles responded: "They are in spirit," The Times reported.
Danny Cohen, former BBC director of television, characterized the broadcaster's failure to reference Jews in coverage introductions as "a new low point for the national broadcaster," according to The Times. "It is surely the bare minimum to expect the BBC to correctly identify that it was six million Jews killed during the Holocaust," he stated, The Times reported. "To say anything else is an insult to their memory and plays into the hands of extremists who have desperately sought to rewrite the historical truth of history's greatest crime."
The broadcaster issued a statement: "This morning's BBC programming commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day. The Today programme featured interviews with relatives of Holocaust survivors and a report from our religion editor. In both of these items we referenced the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. The chief rabbi recorded the Thought for the Day. BBC Breakfast featured a project organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust in which a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust recorded her memories. In the news bulletins on Today and in the introduction to the story on BBC Breakfast there were references to Holocaust Memorial Day which were incorrectly worded, and for which we apologise. Both should have referred to 'six million Jewish people' and we will be issuing a correction on our website," The Times reported.
