Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a great honour to speak in this debate, and I apologise to those Members whose speeches I may have missed, including the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), who made his maiden speech. I congratulate him on that and look forward to reading it in Hansard. I was meeting a group of young people who have autism, and as we debate this issue of the holocaust it is striking to think that people we would now describe as neurodiverse were also victims of the holocaust.
As Chairman of the Select Committee on Education, I wanted to join so many Members who have spoken today, from so many parts of the House, in paying tribute to the work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust, as they make a profound difference in our schools. The work they do in bringing the testimony of survivors directly to children in schools is vital in informing our understanding of one of the most terrible examples of human behaviour in history, but it is so much more than that; it inspires an understanding not just of history—my subject at school and university—but of poetry, literature, music and so much more that children can benefit from. The work they have done to make sure that the voices of that generation of survivors that we are sadly now losing are perpetuated and protected for the future is essential, as we all recognise the importance of educating about the holocaust and dealing with the difficult issues it raises for the students of today.
The trips that those bodies have organised to take students directly to Auschwitz, to see for themselves the reality of the horror undertaken there, are also an important part of their work. In all our constituencies, up and down the country, events are taking place tomorrow that will bring together the pupils of today and the testimony of holocaust survivors, and civic and religious institutions. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) said in his excellent opening speech, this is something that should matter to people of every religion and every community. It was fantastic to hear him speaking out in that way.
I wish to touch on a recent event we had in Worcester, which was a reminder that although the holocaust was a peak of the terrible antisemitism and mistreatment of Jewish people, it was not isolated in history as an incident of antisemitism, bias and appalling behaviour against them. We recently held an event to commemorate the expulsion of the Jews from Worcester in 13th-century England. We brought representatives of Jewish communities from across the midlands together in Worcester, at the site of the former Jewish ghetto, to unveil a plaque, and to hear a profound speech and an apology from the Bishop of Worcester for the role that the Church played in that incident. It is important to remember that context and the long history of antisemitism that built up to the terrible events of the holocaust.
Today there is a very small Jewish population in Worcester, but the lessons of the holocaust are relevant to everyone in my constituency. I am very proud that schools such as the King’s School Worcester, RGS Worcester, Christopher Whitehead Language College and Sixth Form, and Nunnery Wood High School, will be holding holocaust memorial events and engaging in that event with our university, with civic dignitaries at the Guildhall in Worcester, just a few hundred yards from where that Jewish ghetto stood.
I very much look forward to hearing from Mindu Hornick tomorrow. She is a holocaust survivor who will be addressing that group. In paying tribute to the many profound speeches that we have heard from all parts of the House, I think it is very welcome that the Government have made the commitment about the holocaust education centre sitting at the heart of our democracy. That will benefit generations of schoolchildren in the years to come.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I just want to say to those on the Front Bench that the small number of people who are taking part in the holocaust memorial service in Portcullis House will not be able to be here for the wind-ups. I know that they will understand exceptionally why that is the case.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)
It truly is an honour and I feel humbled to reply to this powerful and moving debate. I truly think that we have seen the Chamber at its best: serious, compassionate, collegiate and learning from the past, but looking to the future. I start by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) for securing this debate and for his powerful speech that set the right tone. I also pay tribute to him as the first Muslim to start this debate.
There have been so many powerful speeches. I feel bad at mentioning just a few, but I start by paying tribute to the maiden speech from the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western). It was an assured performance. I am delighted to hear that he has interests in housing, as I am one of the housing Ministers. I look forward to getting to know him in the future. There have been so many powerful testimonies about family members and constituents. I pay particular tribute to the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), who gave such moving testimony about her own grandmother. She also talked about Frank Foley in the British embassy in Berlin, who bent the rules to get thousands of Jews out.
I pay tribute to the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) who talked about his own extended family. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) who talked about the importance of upcoming Bills such as the boycott, divestment and sanctions Bill and the holocaust memorial Bill. The hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) gave a powerful speech, and I was struck by her words that we need to remember for the future. My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) talked movingly about his staff member Nina Karsov, who works here on the estate. She was thrown from a train as a two-year-old on the way to Treblinka, somehow survived, but later was imprisoned for two years in communist Poland. If anything does, that shows that these tragic and dreadful events are not one-offs, but sadly happen again.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) gave an immensely powerful speech talking about his time as the United Nations commander in Bosnia, where he was witness to the genocide at Ahmići. He rightly said that ordinary people suffer, but they also carry out such atrocities.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) and the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) talked powerfully about Jane Haining, the only Scot to die in Auschwitz. Her devotion to the children under her care was truly remarkable. My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti) talked about his constituent Paul Oppenheimer, an ordinary man with an extraordinary experience. I was struck by the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who said how difficult it was to conceive of the numbers—6 million is a number, but it represents real people.
I was struck by the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), who talked about the enforced starvation of Ukrainians under Stalin in the Soviet Union. Many hon. Members talked about the importance of education, including my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) and the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards), who talked powerfully about education. I was struck by her words,
“whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness”.
By joining and by contributing to this debate we are all playing our role in keeping the memory of the holocaust alive.
In the United Kingdom tomorrow, on Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember the 6 million Jewish men, women and children murdered during the holocaust. We remember hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti; the 250,000 disabled people who were murdered, and many more sterilised; the 10,000 to 15,000 men accused of homosexuality who were sent to concentration camps, and up to 40,000 more who were brutally mistreated in prison. We also remember the 1.5 million to 2 million murdered in Cambodia; the 8,000 Muslim men and boys murdered in Srebrenica; the 1 million Tutsi murdered in Rwanda; and the 100,000 to 400,000 men, women and children murdered in the ongoing conflict in Darfur, which the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) talked powerfully about.
As we have heard, the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “ordinary people”. Thankfully for all of us, there have been and are so many ordinary men and women willing to stand against hatred, and those who demonstrated extraordinary bravery in their efforts to protect and save Jews. Their selfless acts represent the best of humanity. Two women who epitomised that selflessness were Ida and Louise Cook. Between 1934 and 1939, these two women were regular visitors to the opera houses of Germany and Austria. But they also went there to save Jewish lives. They said,:
“The funny thing is we weren’t the James Bond type. We were just respectable Civil Service typists.”
When asked why they did it, they replied,
“because it was the right thing to do, nothing more, nothing less.”
There are countless other examples from many more genocides and tragedies. Those people are beacons of inspiration for us all. They should serve as a powerful reminder to everyone that people have choices. Unfortunately, just as there were people who showed the best of us, there were ordinary people who actively participated or were complicit. The choices that people make across the world today, tomorrow, next week and next month are the choices that will help us to live in a world without genocide. We would all like to think that we would have stood up as one of the “extraordinary”, but it is important to realise that we all have the capacity to look the other way.
I want to touch briefly on two topics, one of which is the UK holocaust memorial and learning centre, which the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) mentioned. I am delighted to say that the UK Government are committed to the creation of a new national memorial and that, at Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday, the Prime Minister confirmed that the Government intend to bring forward legislation to remove the statutory obstacle to the memorial being built in Victoria Tower Gardens. We will do that as soon as parliamentary time allows.
It would be remiss of me not to mention antisemitism in this debate. Antisemitism and hatred did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany. We have heard that just last week, the Community Security Trust—the UK’s leading organisation monitoring antisemitism—published a report outlining a 22% increase in antisemitism on university campuses in 2020 to 2022 compared with the two years prior to that. That is truly unacceptable.
I pay tribute to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and its CEO, Olivia Marks-Woldman, to the Holocaust Educational Trust and its CEO, Karen Pollock, and to their teams. I should add that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, of which the UK was a founding member, conducts vital work to strengthen, advance and promote holocaust education and remembrance. The Government are proud to have backed the IHRA’s working definition of holocaust denial and distortion in 2013, its working definition of antisemitism in 2016 and, more recently, its working definition of anti-Roma racism in 2020. The UK has the honour of chairing the IHRA next year, and I thank those working hard behind the scenes to ensure its success.
Sir Julian Lewis
Given that the Minister mentioned antisemitism in universities, may I draw her attention and the attention of the House to the excellent work of the Council for At-Risk Academics, which was founded in 1933 to rescue eminent academics who were being barred from German universities and has functioned ever since? Tomorrow, I hope to meet a young female academic who has been enabled to come to the University of Southampton by CARA, doing the work that it started back then. A lot of good work goes on in universities, including more than 100 of them affiliated to CARA that fund CARA fellowships to enable rescued people to continue with their academic career and one day, hopefully, go back to a free Afghanistan, among other places.
Felicity Buchan
I thank my right hon. Friend for updating the House on that important work.
Charlotte Nichols
I am grateful for some of the actions being taken by His Majesty’s Government that the Minister has outlined, but I want to push her on one more. In 1988 the Conservative Government set up the Hetherington inquiry, which led to the War Crimes Act 1991. That meant that for the first time, Nazi war criminals living in the UK could be prosecuted for war crimes, but those prosecutions have rarely taken place. I gave evidence in my speech of cases where the police, the CPS and British intelligence services covered up Nazi war criminals living in the UK. Could the Minister commit to making representations to His Majesty’s Government for an inquiry into this, as called for by the Board of Deputies, as one of the actions to take away from today, so that we can learn from this and ensure it never happens again?
Felicity Buchan
I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. In the interest of giving my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove some time, I suggest that we sit down and talk about that following the debate.
We cannot allow one of the darkest chapters in history to be forgotten. I am reminded of the words of the Spanish philosopher George Santayana, who said in 1905:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Before I call Sajid Javid, may I say what an honour it is to have chaired this debate? I thank all hon. Members who have taken part. A few years ago, I went to Poland to visit Auschwitz. I cannot hear the haunting but brilliant theme music to “Schindler’s List” without reflecting on that visit and the possessions of those who had their lives brutally cut short in that concentration camp by acts of extraordinary evil. We remember them on Holocaust Memorial Day today, and we remember the extraordinary acts of courage of people who helped to defeat that regime and of people today who suffer at the hands of other rotten regimes around the world.