Communists ‘don’t hate the Nazis because they did the Holocaust. They hate the Holocaust because the Nazis did it.’

I can’t stress this point enough: the Shoah and the Samudaripen were not the sole responsibility of one nationality, let alone their head of state. Perpetrators included Austrians, Balts, Finns, Frenchmen, East Slavs, West Slavs, South Slavs, Italians, Romanians, and many others, often without orders from Berlin and often without enrolling in any of its forces. I don’t like it when we say that ‘the Nazis’, or specifically their leader, killed millions of Jews, because it was really an atrocity that Europe’s fascist upper classes ordered, of whom the Third Reich’s government was only one large part.

Soviet antisemitism, like antisemitism elsewhere, does sadden me. Just because I don’t take every accusation thereof at face value doesn’t mean that I must be ‘fine’ with it. Some people make an accusation in good faith; most of them don’t, so I want to be circumspect before I make up my mind. I’m not a Judeopessimist, and hopefully you’ll agree when I say that I have good reasons not to be.

The Shoah is one of many reasons why we hate the Fascists. I think that we usually don’t say that out loud because it’s a given, but when we drily or pragmatically explain how antisemitism harms the lower classes, I can see how we come across as loveless. So I want to take this moment to state that it’s okay to say that you oppose the Shoah and the Nakba because you love Jewish people and their Palestinian siblings, or just love humanity in general. In certain contexts it does sound strange to say that you love somebody else’s heritage, but as an explanation for your good deeds, you don’t need to be afraid to say it.