BBC admits error after claiming: ‘There have been other holocausts’

The BBC responded to a complaint that it used a lowercase ‘h’ for Holocaust by insisting: “There have been other holocausts.” 

In its website report on Jewish survivors of Nazi atrocities meeting the King and Queen, the BBC wrote that: “Mala Tribich became the first holocaust survivor to address the cabinet,” adding that she had asked “How, 81 years after the holocaust, can these people once again be targeted in this way?”

A reader who registered a complaint about the lowercase ‘h’ was told in an email, apparently written by an experienced BBC broadcast journalist who we have agreed not to name: “Historically there have been other examples of holocausts elsewhere.”

Contacted by Jewish News the corporation backtracked, added a footnote to the online article and said its initial email to a reader had been “sent in error”.

A BBC spokesperson said: “This response was sent in error. All references to the Holocaust in this article should have been capitalised and we have now updated it accordingly and added a note of correction. We will be writing again to the original correspondent.”

In its initial response the BBC had said its style was to refer to “Holocaust survivors” and “Holocaust Memorial Day” but had rejected the request to change its reference to Mala Tribich, who was imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen, as a “holocaust survivor” and did not explain why.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism accused the BBC of “peddling softcore Holocaust denial” by refusing to acknowledge the uniqueness of the Shoah.

It added: “Why is the BBC effectively joining far-right, far-left and Islamist propagandists and conspiracists in trying to downplay or deny the horror of the Holocaust? This is yet further evidence of an institutionalised dismissal or even hatred of Jews that permeates the BBC’s increasingly agenda-driven reporting.

“The Nazi slaughter of the Jews was so extensive that the word genocide had to be invented to describe it. While that word has since been applied to other attempts to wipe out whole peoples, the older word ‘holocaust’ was newly adapted to this event, with which it is uniquely associated. The BBC is peddling softcore Holocaust denial by trivialising the name of this horrific crime.”

The incident comes days after the BBC was forced to issue an apology after some of its coverage of Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January failed to mention Jews, saying only that “six million people” had been murdered by the Nazi regime.