Holocaust Memorial Day

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sahota, and to wind up from these Benches a debate in your Lordships’ House. Sometimes that is also a privilege, and today clearly falls into the latter category.

It has, of course, been a pleasure to listen to the many fine speeches from all parts of the House. I hope I will be forgiven if I single out right at the start the three impressive maiden speeches that we have heard—those of the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans of Sealand, and the diamond-studded speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, who, not for the first and perhaps not for the last time, left the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, following in her wake. I must say in all seriousness that I have heard the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, speak many times in this Chamber but, even by his standards, today’s speech was outstanding and extremely moving. The fact that the three maiden speakers chose a non-party-political topic for their speeches means that I can congratulate them even more fulsomely than is usual. I know I speak for everyone here when I say we are looking forward to their many contributions in future years.

In this debate, as the annunciators remind us, we are asked to “take note of” Holocaust Memorial Day. Although that is the traditional form of the question for such debates in your Lordships’ House, I suggest that a debate asking us to take note is particularly appropriate for this topic. The Holocaust happened because people did not take note. They did not take note of what was being said on their streets, of what was being decided in their Parliament or when extremists marched through their streets, shops were boycotted and Jews were discriminated against in public services, in professions and in the public square. They simply did not take note. As my noble friend Lord Balfe said, they blanked themselves out.

The Holocaust did not happen overnight, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield reminded us. It was planned, and the plans were made public. It was actually founded on and in law. One of the overlooked casualties of the Holocaust, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, remarked, was law and justice. The murders in the gas chambers were preceded by concentration camps, the concentration camps by ghettos and the ghettos by discrimination, and that discrimination was rooted in law and upheld by the German courts, their lawyers and, yes, their judges. The fact that it did not happen overnight prompts us to ask: why did people not take note? Where were the protests?

Like others, I miss the presence of the late Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, especially on days like this. As he pointed out, there were no protests when, on one day in 1933, all Jewish lawyers in Germany came to their offices and cleared their desks—under compulsion of law, let us remember—nor was there a protest when doctors had to do the same, and then all the other professions. There was simply silence, indifference. No one took note. Nor was there any protest in Austria when, on one day in 1938, one-sixth of Vienna’s population, the Jews, were banned from owning property. That was one-sixth of a city, but there was not a single protest.

If Holocaust Memorial Day is to mean anything, it must encourage us to speak out and call out injustice. We have a duty to take note. I suggest that, as part of that duty to take note, we should consider Holocaust Memorial Day, which is now a quarter of a century old, and pay tribute to the work of many organisations. This includes the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust, so ably led by Karen Pollock, which work so hard to commemorate and educate. I also commend respectfully the work done by my noble friend Lord Pickles in this area.

Let me make three points. First, let us be clear about the unambiguous aim of the Holocaust. It was the systematic and industrial murder of Jews with the aim that there would be no Jews left in the world. The Holocaust was put into effect by means of laws which explicitly referenced Jews and made special provision for them. The Nazis had no trouble using the word Jews. They knew who their victims were and, just as importantly, why they were the victims. The Jews were to be murdered simply and only because they were Jews.

So, in common with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, I ask: why do so many organisations seem to find it so difficult to use the words Jews or Jewish when commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day? The Royal Free Hospital referenced

“millions of people killed during the Holocaust”—

no mention of Jews. Barnet Council referenced the “victims of the Holocaust”—no mention of Jews. Cambridge City Council is another entity for which the word Jews appears to have become verboten. This is not a party-political point, so let me single out for praise Islington Council, with its solid Labour majority, which referred to

“the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust”.

If Islington Council can do it, so can everybody else.

Of course we can, should, will and must remember other victims and why they were victims—because they were gay, or Roma, or had mental or physical disabilities—but the overwhelming majority of the victims of the Holocaust were Jews because they were Jews, and they deserve to be remembered as Jews. We do not remember the victims of the Holocaust by denying who the victims were or why they were the victims.

Secondly, let us be clear about the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Just as we do not remember the victims by denying why they were victims, we do not commemorate the victims by lumping the Holocaust together with other genocides and tragedies. We must not globalise the Holocaust, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, put it. There is space in the human heart for all victims. To recognise the uniqueness of that appalling enterprise the Holocaust in terms of its numbers, its industrialised systems of murder, and its use of entire state apparatus for one purpose only—to rid the world of Jews—is not to denigrate, demean or ignore other genocides, whether in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, or anywhere else, a point powerfully made by the noble Lord, Lord Parekh. We do not remember the victims of the Holocaust by denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust.

Thirdly, we certainly do not remember the victims by denying that there was a genocide at all or by using the murdered Jews of the Holocaust in some perverted form of inverted history to attack living Jews. We are used to the ramblings of Holocaust deniers and those who refuse to confront the reality of the Nazi genocide and we rightly ignore them, but denial comes in many forms. To give the most egregious example, the President of Ireland, in his speech at a national Holocaust commemoration event, began by saying that the Holocaust started with the “manipulation of language” and then, astonishingly, referred to the Holocaust an as “attempted genocide”, twice. If you talk about an attempted genocide, you are denying that it was a genocide.

The President of Ireland also used his speech—at a national commemoration event for the Holocaust, let us remember—to deliver his views on Israel and Gaza. I will not trouble the House with what he said, as it does not merit repetition in Hansard—or, frankly, anywhere else. His words were so incendiary that Irish Jews who protested the president’s use—or, I should say, misuse—of that sacred platform were forcibly removed from the venue. Jews being manhandled out of a Holocaust commemoration event; how could that happen? It happens because there are too many people who are only too willing to attend and speak at events commemorating dead Jews but who are nowhere to be seen when it comes to protecting living Jews.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester was absolutely right when he reminded us that the hatred of Jews did not begin in Nazi Germany in 1933. My noble friend Lady Eaton was equally right to remind us that the need to protect Jews did not end in 1945. For all the talk of a Jewish diaspora, living Jews today —the Jewish community—are overwhelmingly based in two locations only: North America and Israel. The former, at least for the moment, can look after itself, but the latter needs and deserves our support. It is not just that Israel was born in the shadow of the Holocaust; it is that if there had been an Israel, there would not have been a Holocaust. It really is that simple.

When the first Zionist Congress met in 1897, no one then knew which of the various strategies for the survival of the Jewish people would prove successful. Would it be to embrace communism or socialist Bundism? Would it be to advocate for western assimilationism, or even to join forces with Arab nationalism? They all had their supporters, but which was the was the right path? Today, we know the answer to that question. The Holocaust gave its final, bloody say. The answer of history was found in the piled bodies and heaps of ashes at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and elsewhere.

As in 1945, so also in 2025: the simple fact is that Israel and Zionism, which is no more and no less than the right to Jewish self-determination, is essential for the future of the Jewish people as a nation. We do not have to like modern Israel any more than we like or do not like modern Greece. We can agree or disagree with its Government, its policies and its actions. However, we cannot commemorate Jews, who were victims in the Holocaust because they could not defend themselves, if we deny Jews today, whether individually or collectively, the right and the means to defend themselves.

Where others did not take note, we will take note and we will do more. The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, asked what is meant by “Never again”. I will answer that large question with a very short answer, building upon a point made by my noble friend Lord Gold. It means that we will not stand by silently at a time when pictures of starved and emaciated Jews—who have been starved and are emaciated only because they are Jews—which we saw as black and white pictures in our history books, have reappeared as colour images of released Israeli hostages on last night’s TV news.

In accordance with Jewish tradition, I will not end these remarks on a sad note. Let me end by congratulating the usual channels—the powers that be, if I can borrow William Tyndale’s magnificent phrase—for arranging this debate today. Holocaust Memorial Day was a few weeks ago, but today is a very appropriate day for this debate. That is because today is a Jewish festival known as Tu Bishvat, celebrated each year on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat. It is one of the four new years in the Jewish calendar—the monarch may have two birthdays but we have four new years. Each serves a different purpose: Rosh Hashanah in the autumn begins the Jewish new year for many purposes, but Tu Bishvat was the date for calculating the agricultural cycle for the purpose of biblical tithes. In modern times, it has become a celebration of ecological awareness, when many trees are planted. It is often known as the “new year for trees”.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, we commemorate the many Jewish communities who were uprooted, and the millions of individuals—men, women and all too many children—who were cut down. Family trees, such as mine, are shorn of many branches because they were consumed in the fire and the horror of the Holocaust. But in the spirit of Tu Bishvat, we will today pledge ourselves not only to take note of the destruction wrought by the Holocaust but to plant afresh, to nurture new growth and to help those communities, both in Israel and throughout the diaspora, to blossom and flourish again. Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must loudly and confidently proclaim: “Am Yisrael Chai”—the people of Israel lives.