Holocaust Memorial Day

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I grew up in a household where it was common to hear family members discuss world war two. I knew about Hitler, the Sudetenland, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill, and I had heard about Barnes Wallis and the Dambusters. To my shame, however, I have to say that I was an adult in full-time employment before I began to understand the meaning of the holocaust. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) for securing today’s debate and for her personal testimony. I also want to commend the other speeches we have heard, particularly the contribution of the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart).

My education has been assisted by a few very specific things. One is the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust. I will never forget going with a group of sixth-formers from a local school to Auschwitz one bitter cold February morning. I do not know who was more distraught by what we encountered, these young sixth-formers or me, but it was a total education and it left an impression on me that I will never forget. I am also extremely grateful to Scott Saunders, the chairman and founder of March of the Living, who has done so much to help inform and educate people, particularly about the events in Poland, but also about what happened in the concentration camps. I am indebted to him for helping me to learn that, before the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, there were 3.3 million Jews living in Poland, but by the end of the war, less than 400,000 of them had survived.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, including in highlighting the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust.

Mine was one of those families in Poland. There are now very few survivors left, and I think it is important that we recognise the experience of my father’s generation, or the baby-boomer generation—I went with him and my own children to Auschwitz last year—but also the work of independent researchers and organisations such as the Wiener Holocaust Library in bringing home to us what happened. We have the very last of that living testimony, so we need to encourage all those in the second generation and those research bodies to keep holocaust education alive.

[Steve McCabe]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is something of a theme today that we must do everything to remember and to preserve that memory so that people do not forget.

As I have said, Scott Saunders was one of those who assisted me. I also read fairly recently a book about Witold Pilecki. There have been lots of excellent books about the holocaust and about certain aspects of it, but he was the Polish resistance fighter who actually volunteered to go into Auschwitz to gather information about what was happening. That was then given to the allies, and we chose not to act on it. We heard earlier in the debate how we maybe should not always feel so proud of our own record, and I think that is another example of where—with hindsight, admittedly—we should have done better.

Going back to my hon. Friend’s point, the other thing that has really helped me has of course been listening to the testimonies of holocaust survivors. They are all amazing people, but two in particular have had an impact on me: Mindu Hornick MBE, who lives near Birmingham, who was sent to Auschwitz when she was 12 years of age and never saw her mother or her brothers again; and Harry Olmer MBE, who is just an incredible man and an inspiration to anyone who meets him.

When I hear protests about current events in Gaza, I wonder what we have learned. I deplore the killing and the suffering we are seeing there. I want a ceasefire and an end to the killing, an enduring peace and a two-state solution, with Palestinians and Israelis living side by side in recognised and secure independent states. I want that as much as anyone else. But I struggle when I hear marchers, demonstrators and protesters chant “Ceasefire now” in one breath, and “From the river to the sea” in the next. What are they saying? What have they learned, and what are they advocating? Some know well what they are doing, but others need to stop and spend a little more time learning the lessons of the past. They need to reflect on how little their behaviour shows a desire for peace, and how much it is encouraging division and hatred.

I also wonder at the genuinely concerned people who contact me about the deaths and suffering in Gaza but skip over the 7 October attack, and who use with ease terms such as “war crimes” and “genocide” to condemn Israel and the Israelis, but seem to have overlooked an attack on Israeli civilians that was based on torture, mutilation, rape, murder and hostage taking. Some even tell me that the Hamas attack needs to be understood because of Israel’s previous behaviour. They usually show little knowledge that Israel pulled out of Gaza and removed all its settlements there in 2005, in accordance with the peace accords, and was promised in return a demilitarised Gaza that could become something like a Singapore of the middle east. Two years later, Hamas took over Gaza, and it has been a launch pad for attacks on Israel ever since.

The Nazis took people in. They used excuses and demands. They talked about the suffering of the German people. They blamed the Jews. They offered seemingly plausible explanations for their actions, and they lied about their intentions, while laying plans to exterminate 6 million people.

I am, and I always will be, a friend of Israel and the Israeli people. I am not a fan of the current Prime Minister, and I totally disagree with him and others who oppose a two-state solution. I believe such views are an obstacle to peace, and that such attitudes and behaviour risk giving succour to those who oppose the very existence of the Jewish state. But I will not accept the blaming of the entirety of the Jewish people for things I dislike, and I will not demand higher standards of the world’s only Jewish state than we do of any other nation. We need to remember the holocaust, and the way that seemingly decent people resorted to cowardly, wicked and savage behaviour, designed to wipe out the Jewish people. Those who shout for peace and ceasefires but not for peace and reconciliation have not learned those lessons. Their shrill cries and disruption of meetings and events organised by those who will not support them are dishonest and irrational, and show how much more we need to strive to learn the lessons of history, and why we cannot ever afford to ignore real genocide and the events of the holocaust.

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