International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on securing this important debate, which is very timely given that the United Kingdom took over the chairing of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance just this week. It is also very timely in view of the address we heard this morning from Angela Merkel and the great grace and dignity with which she spoke of the awful events of the previous century.

The Foreign Secretary, my right honourable friend William Hague, in launching the chairing of this important alliance, noted that the United Kingdom was,

“one of the three founding members of the Alliance”,

and was “proud” once more to take up the leadership. He continued:

“We pledge to use our chairmanship to strengthen the efforts of the IHRA’s 31 member states”.

I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Finkelstein that that is not nearly enough members in an international community of some 180 or 190 states. We must see it as a major aim to extend that. The aims of the international body are of course, as the Foreign Secretary said,

“to promote education, remembrance and research”—

interlinked aims—

“to strengthen the moral commitment of our peoples, and the political commitment of our governments to ensure that future generations can understand the causes of the Holocaust and reflect on its consequences”.

The Foreign Secretary went on to say:

“Among our aims for 2014 will be to intensify work on the IHRA’s programme of academic, educational and commemorative research and to continue to extend the influence of the organisation beyond the confines of Europe and North America”.

I will return to that aim because it is an important one.

The Foreign Secretary’s stated aims reflect the Stockholm declaration, which is, in effect, the founding document of the organisation as an international body. It emphasises the importance of upholding the terrible truth of the Holocaust against those who deny it and of preserving the memory of the Holocaust. That is an extremely important aim and a touchstone in our understanding of the human capacity for good and evil—there was of course good in those times as well, that of people who sought to combat that dreadful evil. The declaration also recognises the responsibility of the international community to combat genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. I will come back to the genocide point, which the noble Lord, Lord Wills, also mentioned.

The three core themes, as I said, are interlinked and grants are awarded for promoting these aims. I was pleased to see, just this month, that some school pupils from Pembrokeshire—an area that I used to represent in the National Assembly for Wales—are going to Poland to visit Auschwitz. I appreciate the point about the danger of a sort of Holocaust tourism industry but it is important that the memory of these dreadful events is kept alive. On the basis that hearing is not like seeing, these visits are important and vital. Indeed, there is a very real danger if we do not do these things that Holocaust memory will die. There is evidence, as has been stated, of many schoolchildren and others not really understanding this. This will certainly be perpetuated as people die who have direct memory of those dreadful events.

I agree very much with what the noble Baroness said about property restitution. This is a vital part of our chairmanship of the international institution. Through the EU and other organisations, we need to put pressure on Poland and other states. Poland is perhaps the most obvious state that is not fulfilling its obligations, but there are others and they need to be pressurised during our chairmanship to live up to their international obligations. That is an important priority. As has been said, there is an urgent need for action because the longer this goes on, the more difficult it becomes and the fewer direct survivors there are.

Finally, I applaud the work of the alliance and its important aim of extending its influence beyond Europe and North America. The link between holocaust and genocide has been noted and is important. In the past year I visited the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, which is a deeply moving experience: you see people of all ages and racial and religious backgrounds in tears and hugging each other, which is a measure of its impact. I also visited the site of the killing fields just outside Phnom Penh, and there was a similar thing going on there. I remember as a younger man, probably in my teens, visiting the Anne Frank House, and these things are important. Restitution is also important. I associate myself with everything the noble Baroness said and I look forward to the Minister’s response.