Holocaust Memorial Bill

Debate between Lord Robathan and Baroness Altmann

Report stage
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as being on the Chief Rabbinate Trust and the Jewish Leadership Council, and as someone whose family was mostly wiped out by the Holocaust. My parents escaped and came here, and have always been hugely grateful for the protection of this country. I am deeply saddened at the controversy created by this proposed memorial and learning centre to support the promise to remember, which I have always believed is so important and so valuable.

I would like to put on record my gratitude for the support for this important project from both the previous and the current Government, and for the work put into it by so many Ministers, noble Lords and people who, as we have heard, have no direct interest and are not Jewish themselves. I recognise that we are a tiny minority of the population, but the work that has gone into this by so many is something that I am most grateful for. I understand the many objections and concerns that have been raised by noble Lords. I know that they are deeply and passionately held, and I do not believe they stem from antisemitism in any way, but this amendment would undermine the vision and purpose of this project.

Both the memorial and a learning centre are essential and are part of what this original project envisaged. Without the learning centre, I do not believe that it would achieve the aims. Noble Lords may or may not like the design, and I have enormous respect and admiration for the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Blackstone and Lady Deech, all of whom I know have good intentions.

The Berlin museum is underground and actually, that subterranean environment contributes in some way to the power of the horrors portrayed. Not everyone will agree, but that is how it struck me. All the elements outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, can and will be incorporated into the learning centre—and she is right: they are all so important.

The bottom line is that at this stage, after so many years of such regrettably bitter controversy, I sincerely believe that if this project as proposed, with the support of both the current Government and the Opposition, does not go ahead now, there will be no memorial and no new visitor or education centre to explain what happened. In the context of Parliament, of democracy, and of moral and historical issues, the siting next to Parliament is important. I hope that noble Lords will be able to accept this now.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, may I briefly intervene? I hate to disagree with my noble friend Lord Howard, not least because I have great respect for him, but I was made to speak on this by listening to the noble Lord, Lord Russell, who spoke extremely well, if I may say so. I too have read The Scourge of the Swastika—I was appalled by what I read, when I was about 15 or 16—and The Knights of Bushido. It is appalling.

Yesterday when I went to lunch, purely coincidentally, there was a man there who told me that his mother had been on the last train to Auschwitz. She was a German Jew, and her father had been killed on the eastern front. The mother, who was Jewish, put the girl in a convent, but she was found in the last few weeks of the war and sent to Auschwitz—and, luckily, survived, obviously, because this young man was there.

The point about that story is that it is not just the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, and everybody else in this Chamber; there are people still alive who saw the awful things that happened in the Second World War, and we need to remember that. I know that many people here will have been to Yad Vashem. What an astonishing experience that is, to go to Jerusalem and to see that shocking display—certainly shocking to me, anyway.

I have also been to Poland, only once. I went courtesy of the Holocaust Educational Trust to Auschwitz, and thanked them for it. It was amazing. Again, it was literally tear-jerking. By the way, I would point out to my noble friend Lord Pickles, who mentioned the underground bit of the Polish war memorial, that it obviously has not had very much effect on the Polish president, whom he said might have anti-Holocaust beliefs. Is that right?