In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church sold indulgences—forgiveness of sin in exchange for money. The most famous indulgence-seller was Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar who promoted them with the catchy jingle: “As soon as the gold in the casket rings, the rescued soul to heaven springs”. And for the right price, Tetzel hinted, you could purchase forgiveness in advance—a moral insurance policy against judgement for tomorrow’s transgressions.
Tetzel’s theological snake oil was the ultimate fuel for the Protestant Reformation.
Today, we are all witnesses to a modern version of the indulgence, the Holocaust indulgence. No longer is money used to purchase forgiveness for future sin. Instead, the Holocaust indulgence trades on the deaths of six million Jews murdered by Germany between 1941 and 1945.
It is a moral license for genocide. Where Holocaust remembrance was once a shield against atrocity, a reminder of the constant need for vigilance against dehumanising hatred, it is now wielded as a sword to enable atrocities.
Not all Israelis are Jews; about a quarter of Israelis are not. And not all Jews are Israelis; just over half of the world’s Jews are not Israeli. Yet, Israel has worked carefully and decisively to conflate the two. It encourages the conversational mistake of saying Jews when what is meant is Israel or Israelis when what is meant is Jews. It is the keystone to the false claim that any attempt to hold Israel to account for its behaviour is a form of antisemitism, the false claim that to label Israel a racist state, an apartheid state, a colonial state, or a genocidal state is equivalent to calling for a pogrom against Jews. It is not.
European collective guilt for the centuries of antisemitism that culminated in the death of six million Jews is the grant of the Holocaust indulgence. They have allowed the State of Israel to trade on the death of six million people, many of whom would not have identified themselves as Jews until Germany did, many of whom would have abhorred the idea of genocide in their name.
Israel wields the Holocaust indulgence as a prophylactic absolution—a moral insurance policy that permits future transgressions in the name of “never again”. European governments grant it as a way of atonement for centuries of antisemitism. We have two different relationships to guilt, flowing in opposite temporal directions, yet both transactions use the same currency—the death of six million—to absolve modern atrocities.
The result is a closed, corrupted moral system where accountability becomes impossible. Israel can invoke the Holocaust to justify its actions, while Europe remembers its (justified) guilt to excuse its inaction or indirect support. Between them, they have created the perfect indulgence—one that absolves both past and future sin, leaving the present moment suspended in a moral vacuum where atrocity is not just permitted but sanctified.
Like Tetzel’s theological snake oil, the Holocaust indulgence has corrupted the very memory it claims to honour, transforming remembrance from a call to justice into a license for injustice.