Holocaust Memorial Day

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Percy)]

It is a real privilege and honour to respond to a debate from this Dispatch Box for the first time since becoming a Minister, not least because this was such a consensual debate and because I was a secondary school history teacher in Yorkshire before I was elected to this place, so I used to deliver holocaust education to young people. It is also a privilege for me because of my own journey within Judaism, which has become so important to me over the past couple of years.

I am grateful for the contributions that have been made across the House, which have been thoughtful, insightful and, in many cases, moving. I thank the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) for securing the debate.

Many of us know the Holocaust Memorial Day events in our constituencies well, and we take part in them. I pay tribute to the ones organised in my constituency; it does not have a big Jewish population—as my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) pointed out, that is the case in many seats—but the community wants to mark the day and to remember the horrors of the holocaust. So I pay particular tribute to Brigg Town Council for its work in organising the event in Brigg on the same basis as happens in many other constituencies.

As so many colleagues have said today, the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day is, “How can life go on?” It is a powerful and thought-provoking question, and I wish I was back in the classroom so that I could pose it to the young people I used to have the privilege of teaching. We have heard many moving testimonies today from people who prove that life actually can go on. I want to reiterate their names—I have tried to make notes as we have gone on—because it is important to repeat that people came to this country after the holocaust, and their lives did go on. We have heard of Renee Salt, Kitty Hart-Moxon, Arek Hersh, Gena Turgel, Ben Helfgott, Mala Tribich, Ernest Simon, Eve Gill, Reverend Levy, and Alicia Goldschlag and her husband, Adam.

I have heard some of their testimonies myself, and I want to pay particular tribute to Zigi Shipper BEM, who survived the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau, another camp near Danzig and a death march. He came to the UK in 1947. He is now married, and he has children and grandchildren. With the Holocaust Educational Trust, many Members will have seen the film produced by the trust and one of his grandchildren, which was shown in the House of Commons not so long ago. He proves what can be achieved as life goes on, and we should thank him and all the survivors who came to this country who have kept the memory of all those who perished alive in the work they do going into schools and communities to speak about the horrors that took place.

We heard a lot today about the “Antiques Roadshow”, which was aired at the weekend. I got a text from my mum saying, “You must watch this,” so I went on iPlayer. It was truly moving, as she said, and so many colleagues have made reference to that today. It was very moving to see those items—often the only connection people have to people in their families and in their lives who were so brutally murdered in the holocaust—and to see just how important they were to them.

That programme showed us what a story of survival this is. Despite the horrors of the past, and despite their unimaginable experiences, survivors have gone on to become Nobel laureates and to make a contribution in this country and internationally in the worlds of science, medicine, politics and so many others. There are also people who just came here and got on with their ordinary lives, building, out of that horror, a family and a future for themselves. They overcame terrible odds, and that is why this year’s theme is all the more poignant: it is very personal, and it can resonate with all of us.

All of us in here will have experienced the loss of a loved one and wondered how we would cope—how would life go on? Let us imagine someone’s feeling of loss when it involves generations of their family; that is unimaginable to so many of us. Great-grandparents, grandparents, children, nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters—all lost. And beyond all that very personal loss, there is the loss of their very way of life, their home and the community they grew up in—a place that has gone and that will never be again. That is so difficult for so many of us to imagine.

We can all look at the black and white photos of loved ones in albums; we look at them from time to time, and we remember. I just imagine looking at those same pictures and realising—as we saw with some of the photographs on the “Antiques Roadshow” last week—that everybody in them apart from you had perished in a death camp or in more recent conflicts, such as the killing fields of Cambodia, in Rwanda or in Srebrenica.

However, such photographs, and some of those we saw on the programme last week, also invoke strength and renewal, and they encourage new lives and new memories. That is why Holocaust Memorial Day is not only about commemorating past genocides and honouring those who died, but about standing with those who survive and about the new lives they have built. It is also, as many Members on both sides of the House have said, about standing up against intolerance and hatred, whatever form it may take. Today, for most of us, standing up against intolerance does not involve the same risks as it did for those who stood up against the Nazis or Pol Pot. Hassan Ngeze was a journalist sentenced to 35 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for spreading anti-Tutsi propaganda that led to the slaughter of 1 million Rwandans. We all know very well the crimes against humanity committed by Radovan Karadžic. For us, standing up against intolerance does not involve imprisonment, staring down the barrel of a gun, or thinking that somebody is going to come and round you and your family up in the night, but it does require us to speak out and to stand firm, because we all know, as many colleagues have said, that evil flourishes when good people stand idly by.

In the context of the Holocaust, we are also required to bear witness—we hear that all the time. We must not trivialise the Holocaust. We have to recognise the peculiarly unique evil of the Holocaust, and that is why we must bear witness to it. There are many ways that I personally, and colleagues here, have done that; it can take many different forms. A lot of colleagues have mentioned Yad Vashem in Jerusalem—a place I have visited a number of times. I think that anybody who has been to Yad Vashem will be very touched by how it is put together in telling the story of the development of hate and the horrors of what happened. The most powerful thing, which really touched me, was that on leaving, having seen all that horror, one goes slightly up an incline to a balcony that overlooks what must be the most peaceful scene in Jerusalem of trees and quiet below. When I looked at that, I thought that it symbolised the hope of people who survived the Holocaust, and how sad it was that people who were murdered in the Holocaust will never know the peace and tranquillity of a new life that it represents.

Closer to home here in London, at the synagogue I am proud to attend—Westminster synagogue—there are 1,564 Czech scrolls, of which there are many around the world being used in prayer in synagogues. They are housed at the synagogue in the Czech Memorial Scrolls Museum, which is well worth a visit. Each of those scrolls represents a community that does not exist any more—hundreds of years of Jewish history in eastern Europe were wiped out.

Many of us have mentioned how we have borne witness at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Like many others, I took the opportunity to visit with the Holocaust Educational Trust, and with 200 post-16 students from across Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire. I had never been there before, despite teaching and delivering education on the holocaust in schools. I had visited Dachau—another evil place—but had never taken the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau to pay respect to those who were murdered by the Nazis and more fully to understand the scale of that killing operation.

I found the experience incredibly moving, but the place I found most moving was the Jewish cemetery in the nearby local town, where the Nazis took the headstones from the cemetery and used them on roads and pavements. Many of the headstones were recovered and are looked after by the Jewish community from Krakow, but they are not looked after by the Jewish community in that town because that community does not exist any more. The saddest thing about the cemetery is the burial of the single Jew who, almost in an act of defiance, went back and lived in the town following the end of the war.

Perhaps what I found most difficult about visiting Auschwitz was the time of year that I went, because it was a beautiful, warm spring day. Colleagues have referred to being there in the depths of winter at minus 5° or minus 10°, but for me, going there on a spring day, it was very difficult to understand how such horror could have taken place in that setting with the trees and woodland around; it simply defied belief. As many colleagues have said, we hear and read the stories and poems, and see for ourselves the true horror of what took place there.

As I have said, I used to deliver holocaust education to young people in Hull. I agree with Members from across the House that we must ensure that holocaust education remains in place across all these islands. I used to find with the young people I taught that the problem was not denial, fortunately, but disbelief. As I showed them the photographs and the footage of the holocaust, the young people were silent and some of them were moved to tears at having to believe that this had actually happened, and that human beings could be so cruel.

One piece of film that I used to use was a scene from “Schindler’s List”. There is always a debate about using Hollywood movies in holocaust education, but the scene in that film showing the liquidation of the ghetto is so powerful that I used to use it, and young people were stunned into silence at the thought that that could have happened. That is why visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau help to ensure that the holocaust is never forgotten, and it is why we should all do everything we can to ensure that holocaust education is at the heart of the curriculum, in this country and across the world.

I thank all the holocaust organisations that are involved. They have been mentioned a lot today, but I am going to refer to them again. I particularly thank Karen Pollock, the CEO of the Holocaust Educational Trust. She and her team are an inspiration for us all. I sat down with Karen and young people in Auschwitz-Birkenau on my visit, and in Tel Aviv in Israel. The work of the trust is absolutely fantastic. I pay tribute to the trust for campaigning to ensure that the holocaust is part of the national curriculum and particularly for advocating that the subject be taught at the later stages of key stage 3, when young people are emotionally developed enough to understand the full horror of it all; I know that that is important to the trust.

I pay tribute to the work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and its CEO Olivia Marks-Woldman. Along with her team, she delivered a most successful Holocaust Memorial Day last year.

I would also like to mention some of the other holocaust remembrance, education and survivor organisations, as colleagues have done. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon spoke about the Holocaust Survivors Centre in his constituency. The Anne Frank Trust uses Anne’s diary, and the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) made reference to her visit to Anne Frank’s house. I also want to mention the Wiener Library, the Association of Jewish Refugees and the National Holocaust Centre in Newark, Nottinghamshire.

I pay tribute to the businesses that are playing their part in marking Holocaust Memorial Day. I met the Royal Bank of Scotland yesterday, which informed me of the work it is doing through its Jewish society and by encouraging its employees on Holocaust Memorial Day to take time out and reflect.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the work of the Prime Minister’s post-holocaust issues envoy, my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir Eric Pickles), who spoke brilliantly, particularly about his recent visit to Treblinka and about holocaust denial. He has not only focused on the restitution of property and art, but has been the driving force behind the Government’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of anti-Semitism. The definition, although not legally binding, is an important tool to help criminal justice agencies and other public bodies to understand how anti-Semitism manifests itself in the 21st century. It is really important that we recognise the definition—the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) mentioned this—because we cannot deny that there has been an increase in anti-Semitism across the country and across Europe.

I used to serve on the all-party group against anti-Semitism. I visited a Jewish school in Brussels, and I was shocked by the fact that outside the school Belgian armed forces were guarding the young people who were inside. I asked those young people, “Would you wear your kippah out and about in Brussels?” They laughed; they would not. In a modern, western European capital that is the home of the European Union and a liberal, open-minded place, Jewish children are not prepared to walk about outside with a kippah on because of the risk of attack and abuse. Of course, sadly, that has happened on campuses here. Swastikas have appeared and meetings organised by Jewish societies have been violently disrupted. That is not acceptable and we cannot be silent about it.

The right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) was right to say that we must all acknowledge Holocaust Memorial Day, regardless of our views on the middle east—whether pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli. Unfortunately, there has been an increased Israelification of anti-Semitism, using Israel and Zionism as a proxy for Jews. I have seen that and been on the receiving end of it, particularly on Twitter. There are pictures of the Star of David represented as the Nazi flag—that is unacceptable and a form of anti-Semitism.

At an event in Parliament, it was wonderful to see Laurence Rees, who produced the documentary, “The Nazis: A Warning from History”, so beautifully destroy the arguments of those who argue that Hitler was a Zionist and so on. There has been too much of that. It is ignorant and sinister and we should call it out for what it is: anti-Semitism. That also applies to attending a rally in support or holding a flag of Hamas or Hezbollah.

We should be proud of what we have done in this country to tackle anti-Semitism and our work on the UK holocaust memorial. I want to give the hon. Member for Hove time to sum up, so I will end with a quote from Zigi Shipper, whom I mentioned earlier. It epitomises Holocaust Memorial Day’s theme of how life can go on. Zigi Shipper returned to Poland about a decade ago and said:

“I went to Auschwitz after being nagged by my children.”

He recalled standing under the “Arbeit macht frei” sign at the camp entrance:

“It meant nothing to me. I stood under that sign and said: ‘After all that Hitler tried to do, he didn't succeed, for I am still here!’”

Life can go on, but only if we all take responsibility for reconciliation, rebuilding lives and communities and preventing such events from ever happening again by calling out intolerance wherever it may be.