‘To imagine we are not victims is a terrible wrong in history’, Baddiel tells Anne Frank Trust

Comedian David Baddiel expanded on the thesis of his recent bestselling book Jews Don’t Count – that antisemitism is deemed a less legitimate form of racism – during Tuesday’s Anne Frank Trust UK annual lunch.

In conversation with political presenter Jo Coburn, Baddiel reflected on his own family history, in particular the story of his grandfather, sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht.

The family miraculously managed to get him out and just three weeks before the war started, they reached the UK, leaving behind their entire family who were murdered by the Nazis.

Baddiel said his grandfather was “in and out of mental hospital all his life”  with depression and that his “grandparents never stopped being German. My grandfather went to his grave saying Gotter was a better playwright than Shakespeare.”

He said he wrote his book, Jews Don’t Count, with the realisation that within UK identity politics, “Jews rank quite low”, and people are “less bothered about Jewish offence, Jewish inclusion and Jewish representation, than about other forms of discrimination.”

It crystalised for him the “thorny” issue “that there are many people who treat antisemitism differently to other forms of racism and discrimination.” Baddiel said the “mythic association between Jews and power, and Jews and money, continues to be stereotyped in a very deep way across the political spectrum. It tends to rob people’s sense of Jews as victims, despite the fact there is much else beside the Holocaust in our history that suggests that Jews are continually victimised by history.”

Baddiel continued: “If you think the only antisemitic thing is the killing of six million Jews, then you’re really making things difficult for Jews who suffer all the time from casual anti-semitism, micro-agressions.”

He wants to “shift the talk about anti-semitism onto the same platform that we’re talking about all other forms of racism and discrimination, which don’t require such an extreme and grotesque type of extermination to be recognised.”

Held at the Hilton Park Lane, guests were welcomed by chair of trustees, Daniel Mendoza, who said: “For the first time, I really am scared by what I can see coming down the track if we don’t take action. It’s a race against time.”

The lunch also featured a candle lighting ceremony with guests Annabel Schild, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, educator and Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich, Uyghur artist and activist Rahima Mahmut and Rabbi Rafi Goodwin from Chigwell and Hainault United. Young Anne Frank ambassadors from Summerswood primary school, Borehamwood, Bill Quay primary school, Gateshead and Starbank school, Birmingham delivered a creative spoken word piece, called ‘Dearest Anne’.

Having reached 92,438 young people in 2022 with their schools programming and the creation of young Anne Frank ambassadors, Tim Robertson, CEO said: “Our impact is proud, across the board, and long lasting.”