Holocaust Memorial Day

Alistair Burt Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on way he introduced the debate. I am not Jewish; I am Catholic, but I would have been proud to be born a Jew. As I look around the Chamber, I can see that many of us are post-war babies. We cannot imagine the horrors that took place all those years ago. For that very reason, we must never forget what happened.

The 27th of January this year marks 15 years since representatives from 46 Governments met in Stockholm to sign a declaration committing to educate, remember and research the dreadful events of the Holocaust. As my hon. Friend said, the date commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp —a place that was witness to perhaps the greatest failure of humanity ever. Holocaust memorial day also commemorates other genocides that took place in the decades after the second world war, including the genocide that took place between 1975 and 1979 in Cambodia under the radical leader Pol Pot, the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, the genocide in Bosnia in 1995, and the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

It is pitiful to see that the world has not learnt enough from the Holocaust. As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) just said, we once again find ourselves watching such events without making a sufficiently decisive response. But the genocide in which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews still remains the most appalling failure of humanity: millions of human beings were tortured, used for forced labour and killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kulmhof, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and other places across Europe. Many of the victims underwent inhumane pseudo-medical experiments carried out by Nazi doctors in concentration camps before being sent to gas chambers.

It is now our duty to remember and to learn lessons from the terrible events of 1941-45 and make sure that we prevent genocide from happening again. Professor Gregory Stanton, who is famous for his work in genocide studies and prevention, has identified eight stages leading to genocide. The classification stage is when differences between people are not respected and a simple division between “us” and “them” is created—German and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi. That leads to the stage of symbolisation, when various symbols are applied to members of groups: as part of the symbolisation process, the yellow star was forced upon Jews under Nazi rule, as was the blue scarf upon people from the eastern zone in Khmer Rouge Cambodia. That leads to dehumanisation, where victims are refused any human rights, liberties, or dignity. During the following stages of genocide—organisation, polarisation and preparation—the destruction of a people is planned by the regime. That leads to extermination. What follows is the last stage, denial, where perpetrators or later generations deny the existence of the crime.

The Holocaust was more than a war crime or a genocide. It undermined the foundation of our civilisation, as it was carefully planned and executed by the authorities of Nazi Germany. That is why it is so important for us today to understand the mechanisms leading up to genocide—to ensure that we are ready to prevent it in the future by promptly punishing any hate crimes or atrocities.

As I said, the Holocaust was the greatest failure of humanity, but it was also a display of humanity at its finest. The Talmud teaches:

“He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.”

It is important that we remember those who, in the dreadful circumstances of Nazi propaganda and callousness, put their own lives at risk to save others. Irena Sendler, a Polish nurse and social worker, smuggled some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, providing them with false identity documents and safe housing. Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and member of the Nazi party, is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunition factories. Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian, is recognised for saving tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during the second world war through his Schutz-Pass device. That hero is especially close to my heart, as I campaigned for many years to have a statue erected in his honour. I am pleased that the statue was eventually installed at Great Cumberland place in London, where it was unveiled by Her Majesty the Queen and the President of Israel. More than 25,000 non-Jews were recognised as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, which speaks volumes about the good side of human nature.

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I need to be somewhere else at 10 o’clock, so I hope my hon. Friend will forgive my intervening. Before he leaves the topic of the triumph of the human spirit, will he also reflect on one of the memories that all of us who have been to Auschwitz-Birkenau carry with us, of the number of young people from Israel carrying the Israeli flag who go round singing songs, whose spirit has not been dampened by what has happened and whose existence is a demonstration of the triumph of the human spirit over the evil that they are confronting?

[Sir David Amess]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. What he describes gives us hope for the future.

I am happy to see many wonderful initiatives taking place in my constituency to mark Holocaust memorial day, including a tree planting in Cockethurst park in Eastwood organised by the wonderful Southend and Westcliff Hebrew Congregation. As the Nobel peace prize laureate Elie Wiesel warned some years ago:

“To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice.”

I am therefore pleased to see that Holocaust memorial day has gained such momentum in the past 15 years, reaching out to thousands of people across generations and inspiring them to learn lessons from the past and keep the memory alive.