I was intrigued to learn from the BBC Today programme on Tuesday that ‘buildings across the UK will be illuminated this evening to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, which commemorates the six million people murdered by the Nazi regime more than 80 years ago’. Who were these unfortunate ‘people’, I wondered? Just anyone at all? Was it a wholly indiscriminate spot of slaughter? I have some vague memory that it was one race in particular that was singled out for extermination, but the BBC dared not say their name.

In fact, the sentence I quoted is wholly inaccurate: the ‘six million’ figure relates only to Jewish people. If you include the homosexuals, Sinti, Roma, disabled and Russian prisoners of war, then you would have to come up with another figure – some say as many as 11 million – who were murdered by the Nazis.

Meanwhile, the Holocaust Memorial Trust is a little clearer about the business. ‘We commemorate the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust, and the millions more murdered under Nazi persecution. Prejudice still continues today within our communities and across the UK.’

Sho’ nuff does indeed, not least within the BBC. I suspect that it, like the left in general, is uneasy about a commemoration dedicated to one specific group of people, especially that group of people, a group of people to whom they perhaps do not feel kindly disposed. One might infer that from their speed at........

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