Yearly Archives - 2021

Football pitch with floodlights

Joey Barton’s ‘Holocaust’ comment: Bristol HMD responds

Joey Barton, the manager of Bristol Rovers Football Club and a former professional football player, has caused offense and concern with his post-match analysis comments that compared poor football performance with the Holocaust. When Bristol Rovers lost 3-1 to Newport County on Saturday 23 October, Barton said at a press conference:

“Someone gets in for a game, does well but then has a Holocaust, a nightmare, an absolute disaster.”

All the members of Bristol HMD Steering Group were shocked by Joey Barton’s words, and we were approached by a BBC News journalist to share our response. Part of that response was reported in yesterday’s news article, along with quotes from Dame Helen Hyde, speaker at our 2020 HMD event, and trustee of the National Holocaust Centre and Museum; Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Education Trust; and local councillor Fabian Breckels.

Here is our statement in full:

‘Bristol Holocaust Memorial Day Steering Group finds Joey Barton’s comments really offensive. To compare the poor performance of a player or team to a Holocaust shows a lack of understanding of the true barbarism, torture and evil that was inflicted on vulnerable groups in society.

This insult is not simply felt by the Jewish community, but other victims of the Holocaust, the systematic and industrial murder by the Nazi regime, including the LGBT+ community, disabled people, Roma gypsies and others. Bristol is home to many members that identify with these groups.

Bristol, as a City of Sanctuary, is also home to refugees and survivors of the genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia and Cambodia. It is a city proud to welcome these survivors and help them rebuild their lives. It has become home to many families of those that survived indiscriminate slaughter and had to live with the trauma and impact of genocide.

As one of two professional football clubs that represent the city, it is saddening that neither the football club or the manager Joey Barton has issued an unequivocal apology.

Whilst we commiserate with the result and Bristol Rovers’ fall down the football league in recent seasons, there is no excuse for dismissing the horror and destruction of the murder of 6,000,000 souls.

We hope the Football Club contacts the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and ask for education on this matter to fully understand the hurt caused to so many communities in Bristol and beyond, many of whom are Bristol Rovers fans too.’

It should be noted that, as yet, neither Joey Barton nor Bristol Rovers Football Club has apologised for the misuse of the word ‘Holocaust’, and the Football Association will not impose any sanctions on the club for this incident.

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Holocaust Memorial Day 2021 related events in the Bristol area

Local events connected to Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

We are happy to pass on details of local events (following coronavirus restrictions) taking place in the coming months. Holocaust Memorial Day is marked once a year, but it’s important to raise awareness throughout the year, too.

If you know about an online event we should include below, please email us at chair@bristolhmd.org.

David Henryk Ropschitz

14 January, 7:30pm-9pm
Ferramonti: Salvation behind the barbed wire

Live-streamed online by DAVAR Bristol
Free – email info@davarbristol.co.uk for Zoom link

David Henryk Ropschitz’s novel, Ferramonti, drew on the three years he spent in an internment camp in Calabria, which became Italy’s largest internment camp for Jewish people during World War Two. His daughter, Yolanda Ropschitz-Bentham, used to live in Bristol and now lives in Somerset; she will talk about editing the book and how she went on to meet other survivors of Ferramonti and their descendants.

Wednesday 27 January 2021, 1pm-2pm
Holocaust Memorial Day – Holocaust Landscapes, with Professor Tim Cole
Online lecture organised by Bristol Libraries
Free – register via Eventbrite

Bristol Libraries presents an online lecture from Professor Tim Cole, to mark HMD. Professor Cole lectures in social history at the University of Bristol, and he is also the Director of the Brigstow Institute. He has published three books about Holocaust history.

Wednesday 3 February 2021, 3pm-4:30pm
Holocaust Memorial Day 2021: Be the light in the darkness – Steven Frank BEM and Dame Helen Hyde

Zoom course organised by The Ammerdown Centre
Free – book by calling 01761 433709 or emailing admin@ammerdown.org (course reference: Z0321)

Hear Holocaust survivor Steven Frank BEM and Holocaust educator Dame Helen Hyde (a Bristol HMD speaker in 2020) tell their stories.  

Artwork by Carol Isaacs from The Wolf of Baghdad

Thursday 11 March, 7:30pm-9pm
The Wolf of Baghdad: Memoir of a Lost Homeland

Live-streamed online by DAVAR Bristol
Free
– email info@davarbristol.co.uk for Zoom link

Carol Isaacs’ graphic memoir, The Wolf of Baghdad, is about the lost Jewish population of the Iraqi capital city. In the 1940s there were 150,000 Jewish people in Baghdad; in the space of a decade, nearly all had left, and some of those remaining were killed. Today, less than six Jewish people live in the city. Carol, a musician and cartoonist, will speak about her memoir.

Saturday 13 March 2021, 10am-4pm
Esther ‘Etty’ Hillesum

Day course (government guidelines permitting) led by Sue Glanville at The Ammerdown Centre
£50, including morning coffee, lunch and afternoon tea – book by calling 01761 433709 or emailing admin@ammerdown.org (course reference: D0521)

Esther ‘Etty’ Hillesum was a Dutch Jewish woman whose diaries from 1941-1943 were published in 1981. This course looks at Etty’s reflections on her life, her spiritual exploration, and her reactions to the persecution Jewish people faced.  

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