Holocaust Memorial Bill

Debate between Lord Pickles and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I absolutely agree and I will try to finish within the 10 minutes, and I believe that there is going to be a vote in a moment anyway. I believe that if the Minister were to listen to the witnesses available in your Lordships’ House, we would have a different conclusion. I promise the Minister, not because I know it but because I know it in my bones, that if we were allowed to build a Holocaust learning centre elsewhere, with the subvention that is already promised by the Government, we would have no difficulty in raising the money for an establishment that would rival the great POLIN museum that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, mentioned.

I finish by saying that if the noble Baroness will allow me to say so, and she knows that I love her dearly, I thought she was a little unkind to some members of the Committee. I do not believe that anybody is ill motivated about this in any way. I believe that, unfortunately, they are just wrong and should recognise it.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, that is my cue. I was going to take the noble Lord up. He quoted me earlier as saying something I had not said, but I realised that it is the kind of thing I would have said, so I did not object to being misquoted.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I did not quote the noble Lord.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

Oh, it was you.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

On the improvements to the park, the grass is not of very high quality, but it will be returfed. The paths will be redone. Those paths are important because, as they stand right now, they are strangling the roots of the trees and causing long-term problems. It will be possible to get water to the existing trees, there will be access to the Embankment for wheelchairs for the very first time and there will be extensive tree planting.

Some very interesting points were made about fire, flood, transport and, of course, planning matters. We will discuss any new planning application. I just want to address the questions of whether it is too small and what new things have been found. In terms of its size, it is by no means unusual among Holocaust museums. I talked about the Berlin museum, which is subterranean and roughly that size. Jasenovac is roughly that size. If we talk about museums in Warsaw, a short walk from the POLIN museum is a museum dedicated to the uprising, which is roughly the same size.

As for new things, we have discovered, hidden for 80 years, some tapes by Patrick Gordon Walker, who many here will remember. He went in the week after Dimbleby did his famous interviews and interviewed inmates of the camp as well as perpetrators. We also have the first recording of the singing of Hatikvah after liberation. As the Government took the decision to release all the documents relating to the Holocaust, we have lots of new material that has simply not been seen. It will certainly address what we knew and when we knew it.

In terms of getting an idea of what it would look like, if Members have visited Hut 27 at Auschwitz, which is an audio-visual experience of the book burning and the effect that it had on Jewish life and young people, they will know that that gives you an idea. You cannot say, “We need to embrace new technologies”, then criticise us for doing precisely that. It is not as though we are in a position where we are waiting for this to happen; the United Kingdom has already created a portal of evidence. Everyone here can now see the testimonies of Holocaust survivors going down the years, no matter where they were given. It is a big leap forward. Other countries are following suit because, to ensure that our stuff is worth while, it must be accessible.

My noble friend is right about TikTok and other social media, which is why we produced—it was just a tentative idea—80 Objects/80 Lives in which Holocaust survivors describe a particular object that kept them going through the Holocaust. That was repeated in 35 countries. It is not an answer in itself, but it is a fact that we are trying to lean out and to make a difference.

There will be natural light. There is going to be light; it is going to be used extraordinarily well with regard to a staircase.

I am very pleased that Members have gone to see the Imperial War Museum. It is a magnificent new exhibition, particularly about the use of the V-2 rocket, because it manages to bring the whole of the Second World War galleries together and demonstrates—better than the previous exhibition, I think—that the Second World War was a war of annihilation. I am pleased to say that that the past chairman of the Imperial War Museum is on the foundation’s board and that the Imperial War Museum is a key partner. I am also pleased to say that the former director of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, which is apparently well disposed to here, is also on the board. In order to ensure that we never lose sight of the Jewish nature of the Holocaust, our director of the exhibition is a former deputy director of Yad Vashem. We work regularly with Yad Vashem on this, and there is a lot of interest.

I want to say something about numbers. I was quoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. If she is going to quote me, let it be right. I do not take credit for that; it was from the widow of the great historian Martin Gilbert, who, in talking to her before his death, said that it should be about coming out of a building and recognising that democracy is there as a bastion against tyranny. It is not about the Jews to say that; it is a bastion against tyranny. However, it is also for the people in this building to look the other way and understand what happens when a compliant legislature passes various things.