International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

Lord Gold Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Gold (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate. In congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on securing it, I pay tribute to the wonderful speech that she has just made. I also congratulate the Government on their chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

The Government take up the chair as anti-Semitism is again rising in many places, as we have just heard. It is often excused as criticism of Israel or support for animal welfare as, again, religious slaughter of animals is attacked—or, as we have recently seen in Denmark, banned altogether even though no Jewish religious slaughter is undertaken there. The latest is that circumcision will be brought into question. The sight of young men making the quenelle gesture in front of concentration camps and before the Western Wall in Jerusalem demonstrates how the message of the Holocaust risks being lost only 70 years after being revealed to the world after the Second World War. My simple message to the Government is this: please use every opportunity to remind people, especially young people born long after the Holocaust, of what happened, and to reiterate that anti-Semitism and any form of discrimination will not be tolerated.

Much is done now to educate and the UK was a founding member of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. I pay particular tribute to Dr Stephen Smith, who leads the USC Shoah Foundation and the Holocaust Centre in Nottingham, which does wonderful work in educating our young people on this subject. This work, and the work of all those who teach and remind us of what occurred, is very important.

However, I fear for the future, for a time when there are no Holocaust survivors left to tell us what happened to them and when the Holocaust appears to many to be just another history lesson. Those who deny what happened are very clever. Even now there is distortion as to what occurred. Unbelievably and shockingly, there is blame on the victims; there is denial of the extent of what took place. Many records have been kept and the USC Shoah Foundation is dedicated to making audiovisual interviews with survivors so that their message is preserved for all time and never lost.

I have a fear that in the future—not in this century but beyond—those clever and despicable people who deny what occurred will dismiss these archives and the harrowing, grainy films of the camps and survivors as computer-generated films that were the product of clever film-makers. That is why educating every generation about the Holocaust and keeping it alive is so important. The creation of Holocaust Remembrance Day, taking place around the world on 27 January each year, has become a fitting reminder of what horrors took place within the lifespan of so many of us. Many people born long after the war are taught what happened and are shocked at the murderous acts that occurred as a barbarous attempt at racial cleansing.

I am therefore pleased that the Prime Minister has set up the Holocaust Commission to investigate what more can be done to ensure that Britain has a permanent and fitting memorial to the Holocaust, along with sufficient educational and research resources for future generations. I hope that the UK will use its chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance to lead all other nations in following our excellent example.