Holocaust Memorial Day

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate and a particular pleasure to speak in a debate where we have heard three varied, enjoyable, interesting and informative maiden speeches.

I was 14 at the end of the war. I was at boarding school in Winchester, and my memory tells me that we did not know about Auschwitz. However, we were told about Belsen, and noble Lords will all know, I am sure, why Belsen came into the knowledge of the general public in this country, as the first of the camps that we really knew about. We learned about the camps in stages, and we learned about what had been happening in stages: arbitrary imprisonment, forced labour, cruelty, neglect, disease, starvation and industrialised murder.

This was so far beyond our 14 year-old experience, knowledge and imagination. It was a shattering blow to our experience of the war. After all, we had been through a period when it seemed that we were going to lose the war—and then we looked at this and what we were supposed to understand. At evening prayers, who ever took them faced a very troubled congregation.

Then, we thought to ourselves, “How could people be found to run such a system—who would be the guards, bookkeepers, managers and commandants?” We found it very difficult to cope with that. Then there were the misfortunes, the betrayals and the widespread collaboration—all these aspects came out, stage by stage. Then we got to hear about the text of the final solution. Again, that was quite beyond our comprehension. All we could conclude was that it was unattainable and massively evil.

Time goes by and our nature is such that we have to learn to cope. At that time, we did not have the 6 million label. We came to cope by somehow thinking that it was individuals to whom these things had happened. We thought of it as a whole series of individual tragedies and the effect they had had upon their close families and relations. This is probably still the way I think about the Holocaust—as a massive list of individual stories.

Eighty years later, there are two other ways in which we might usefully accept the challenge of thinking about the Holocaust. How did Europe come to create the conditions where the Holocaust was mounted, from the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires through Bismarck and competitive rearmament to the First World War, Versailles and the Weimar Republic, the rise of Hitler, the Second World War and the final solution? I believe that, although we have looked in some detail at that story—that long journey—it merits being looked at in ever more detail to try to come to some resolution about how this could have happened. Whatever one thinks about the Holocaust, it was one outcome of that long journey.

There is a second journey about which we need to think very carefully, and that is what has happened since 1945. During my national service, some of my colleagues had come recently from Palestine, which was still briefly in its mandate condition before the creation of Israel. They told pretty wild, difficult and dangerous stories of the Stern Gang and the PLA. It behoves us to consider what part the Holocaust has played in geopolitical outcomes since 1945 and, indeed, up to today. What part does that appalling event play in the way in which we think about where we are now and where we are going? Again, I feel that the study of and research about this are extremely important.

To sum up, we do our best in our efforts to cope with what is happening to us and around us. In coping, we have more than enough to think about, to study, to research and to remember.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure we all agree that the Holocaust should be marked, remembered and studied, and I do not believe that anybody in this House would dissent from that. But in thinking about where we are, I am very conscious that we have a new Government. I want to go back to the commission’s excellent report and ask the Minister and his department to study carefully how we have got from that report’s conclusions to today’s position.

Let me give an example. The report firmly said that an executive body should immediately be formed to implement the commission’s recommendations. At the very beginning, it was thought that that would happen, but it did not; instead, we have an advisory body, which of course is much less expensive—and much less committed. An explanation of why that recommendation was not accepted and carried out is due. It has been a feature of this long story that, when one has asked questions about the commission’s conclusions, it has been very difficult if not impossible to get answers.

The other thing that should be carefully thought through is the complexity, thoroughness and ambition of the commission’s conclusions. It went all over the world, and it definitely wanted to see this country come up alongside the leading exponents of Holocaust memorial and study. It is not easy for us to argue that we have succeeded in doing that. For example, the bar set by the commission for the characteristics of the memorial and of the world-class learning centre was pretty high, and I do not think we can in any way argue that we have reached it. We have accepted some sort of compromise.

I would very much like the Minister to look into the effect of the £50 million, which was the only funding promise given when the commission reported. If you think about the report’s implications and implementation, and take account of the fact that the commission did not consider or, at least, report on the expected costs of its proposal, you will conclude that matching the commission’s recommendation of £50 million—or, indeed, £75 million, or £75 million plus the promise of another £25 million from philanthropic sources—was very difficult. It was an enormous stretch. Throughout the period, we have been facing compromise.

I shall give two examples. First, it was freely said when Victoria Tower Gardens was chosen that one reason was that it would come free. It was also said—and it is there for us to see—that there was no hope of having a separate memorial and learning centre in association with a campus. If you read what the commission said it wanted to see, you will see that it was way beyond anything we are being offered now. So I urge the Minister to think through the situation with some care, because I truly fear that, if the present proposals are carried through, in the longer term they are likely to fail.