Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Gold Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gold (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, even though I am not in full agreement with what she had to say. It saddens me very much that the debate so far has concentrated on location. I will come to that in a moment, but let me start by talking about the need for a fitting memorial.

For many people of my generation, born after the war when so many had lived through it and served our country bravely, knowledge of the Nazi atrocities, the murder of 6 million Jews and so many others was known by the majority of us, subscribing to the statement “never again”, but now it is different. Few survivors of the war are still living, let alone survivors of the murderous camps. There are only a handful of people able to provide their testimony of what they lived through—of what the Nazis did and of how they tried to wipe out the Jewish race. Yet despite the Holocaust being on the national curriculum there are so many people, especially young people, who do not know what happened or do not believe it.

As an example of how little is known, I am shocked that in a 2023 survey over a third of people polled had no idea that Winston Churchill was our wartime Prime Minister. Indeed, in a US survey in 2020, 63% of those polled did not know that 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust.

In 1994 the film director Steven Spielberg recognised the need to create a permanent record of what had happened, so he launched the Shoah Foundation to interview and record the testimonies of Holocaust survivors in order that this evidence would always be available when those who had suffered the Nazi regime were no longer alive. This was an unprecedented effort to record, preserve and share the facts. It gave me considerable comfort that knowledge of the Holocaust would be engrained in our minds and that of our children and grandchildren for ever, but I now have real fears that this may not be the case.

Advances in social media and the creation and dissemination of false news have enabled wicked people to deny the Holocaust and challenge the authenticity of the testimony that has been recorded. The creation of false images provides Holocaust deniers with an excuse to challenge the authenticity of the filmed testimony. As a result, in a 2023 poll a fifth of US citizens between the ages of 18 and 29 believed that the Holocaust was a myth. This confirms my fear that the frightening rise of anti-Semitism, especially since 7 October 2023, shows that the lessons from the Holocaust have been forgotten by many and how the recent history of the Jewish people has been totally ignored.

This all demonstrates how important it is to have a permanent memorial to the Holocaust and a learning centre that can educate and inform, not watered down by attempting to equate what happened to other acts of genocide. This is essential if we are to ensure that present and future generations truly know what happened. But I go further: as we have heard, a great number of noble Peers who support the creation of a Holocaust memorial believe that it should not be located in Victoria Tower Gardens. We have heard today why that is so, but I consider that no place in Britain is more suitable for such a centre than there.

It is right next to the mother of Parliaments for the whole world and at the very heart of our democracy, where Winston Churchill’s famous speeches against Nazism were made during the war. The symbolism is enormous. This is a statement to our people and the world that we truly remember the Holocaust and recognise its significance. Millions of people from all over the world visit London every year, and many will come to see our Parliament. What a statement it will be to them if they see that we regard a Holocaust memorial and learning centre as so important that we locate it there. As to the logistical issues and security problems, of course those are serious but we have shown before that we can cope.

Nevertheless, today we have heard some most important points of concern, not least in the speech by the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, which I hope the Government will answer. There have been suggestions that the memorial should perhaps be separated from the learning centre, and the Government should consider this. Around the world there are tremendous memorials to the Holocaust —in New York, Washington and Berlin. The buildings themselves tell you what has happened. They are very moving. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, pointed out, Yad Vashem is a tremendous memorial to what happened. That is what we should be creating in the gardens nearby, and we can look after the other issues that have been raised today.