Holocaust Memorial Day

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler). I wish her well in her recovery from cold and flu.

I thank the Government for putting on this debate and for making sure that we continue to honour the victims of the Holocaust, and I thank the Minister for both the tone and content of his opening speech. I declare my interest as co-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Holocaust memorial since its formation in 2018, and I am also proud to chair the all-party parliamentary group on UK-Israel.

This Holocaust Memorial Day is particularly prominent and poignant, as it marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest concentration camp during the war. Time is going quickly, and many of the courageous and inspirational survivors are sadly passing away, so it is important that we preserve their memories and stories, and teach the next generations, so that we do not make the same mistakes again. I think I have spoken in every Holocaust memorial debate since I was elected in 2010, and today I will focus on the origins of the Holocaust, and on how the United Kingdom could and should have done more to prevent it.

The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events the world has ever seen. The brutal, systematic murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazis in Germany and their collaborators during the second world war must always serve as a stark reminder of the evils that can be perpetrated by humankind. The Jewish genocide did not officially start until January 1939, but Jews have been irrationally targeted throughout the centuries, dating back to as early as 270 BC. I do not intend to go through the history of that.

Let us fast forward to the end of the great war, when the escalation of antisemitism was about to begin. The allied forces sanctioned Germany extremely harshly at the end of the great war. Germany had to accept full blame for the war and pay £6.6 billion—in today’s money, that is a huge amount—because of the damage it caused during the war. Alsace-Lorraine, which had been taken from France by Germany in the 1871 war, was returned to the French, and the Anschluss was banned. Germany was allowed to have only 100,000 soldiers, with no tanks and no air force, and its navy could have a maximum of six battleships. The Rhineland, an area of Germany on the border with France, was demilitarised, and Woodrow Wilson’s idea for a League of Nations was agreed to. The reparations caused immense problems for the German people, who universally believed that they were too harsh, not least because of the damage and instability that they caused to the German economy. Many held a lot of anger and were ready to shift their blame, which fell on the Jews.

Shortly after that was the great depression, sparked by the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929. Economies across the globe were affected, leading to a crisis in world trade, prices and employment. Almost overnight, the regular loans from the United States through the Dawes plan, on which the German economy depended, ceased. Hitler, a rising star in the German political scene at the time, promised that the humiliation of Versailles would be avenged and that Germany would be made great again. Many Germans believed that they had been betrayed by the high command of the army in the great war, and they were tired of endless ineffective coalition Governments following the war.

Hitler had no connections to the elite, and he offered a new beginning. Most of all, he promised jobs and bread at a time when unemployment and poverty were at extremely high levels. It is important to ask the question: if we had acted differently after the great war, would Hitler ever have come to power? Of course, we know that he did and that his Nazis embarked on a systematic and deliberate attempt at extinguishing the Jewish race across Europe.

Next Monday marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which was the largest concentration and extermination camp used by the Nazis. The site consisted of Auschwitz I, which was the main camp; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers and incinerators; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of other sub-camps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis’ horrific final solution to the Jewish question.

Between 1942 and late 1944, freight trains delivered Jews from all over Nazi-occupied Europe, and collaborators from across those different countries joined in. A shocking 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz, where 1.1 million were sadly murdered. Some 960,000 were Jews, 865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival, having been singled out for immediate extinction. About 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Romani, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and 15,000 others were also killed. Those who were sent to the camp but escaped being gassed were murdered through starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions or beatings. Others were killed during torturous medical experiments—we should remember what that must have been like.

The first mass transport to arrive at Auschwitz, on 14 June 1940, contained 728 Polish male political prisoners, including Catholic priests and Jews. By 1942, transport was arriving regularly, containing thousands of Jews who were all earmarked for execution. If inmates were lucky enough not to be sent straight to the gas chamber on arrival, they were sent to the prisoner reception centre, where they were tattooed, shaved, disinfected and given a striped prison uniform. The horrors escalated dramatically from there. Youth and fitness for work gained prisoners a temporary reprieve from the gas chambers.

From the time they entered Auschwitz-Birkenau, everything was done to debase and dehumanise the Jews. Their immediate gassing was delayed in order to rob them of their individuality. Each was identified solely by the number that he or she was designated.

The day would start at 4.30 am with a roll call. Prisoners would walk to their place of work, wearing striped uniforms and ill-fitting wooden shoes without socks. Kapos, the prisoner supervisors, were responsible for the prisoners’ behaviour and conformity while they worked, as was an SS escort. The working day lasted 12 hours and was marked by torture and fatigue. Much of the work took place at construction sites, quarries and lumber yards. Visits to the latrines were permitted only at designated times, not when nature called. Work was carried out in the shadow and smoke of the crematoria chimneys that burned incessantly day and night, burning the bodies of murdered Jews and others, invariably including the family members of those forced to work. The belching smoke was a constant reminder of their potential fate.

In the evening, after block inspection, there was a second mandatory roll call. If a prisoner was missing, the others had to remain in place until he or she was found, or the reason for his or her absence discovered. After roll call, individual and collective punishments were meted out before the prisoners were permitted to return to their barracks for the night and receive their bread rations and water. Prisoners received a hot drink in the morning, but no breakfast, and a watery, meatless turnip soup at noon. In the evening, they received a small ration of bread. At no time did their daily intake exceed 700 calories.

Sanitary conditions were poor, with inadequate latrines and a lack of water. The camp was infested with vermin, such as disease-carrying lice. Inmates suffered and died during epidemics of typhus and other contagious diseases.

While we commemorate 80 years since Auschwitz was liberated, it is important to note that there were 23 main camps across Europe, each with a series of internal camps, totalling over 1,000 camps in all—all dedicated to the torture and extermination of the Jewish community.

To implement the final solution during the latter years of the war, the Nazis built extermination camps on Polish soil. We must remember Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and, of course, Auschwitz-Birkenau. I commend the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust for their brilliant work to educate us about the horrors that people endured. I urge the Minister to confirm funding for the Holocaust Educational Trust’s wonderful “Lessons from Auschwitz” programme so that young people can learn what happened.

It is clear that the Nazis deliberately set out to kill the 6 million Jews, but there are many actions that we in the UK and the United States could have taken. Auschwitz was accessed by a vast network of rail routes, bringing trains full of Jews from across Europe. At no point did the allied forces choose to bomb those rail networks to prevent access to the camp.

In 1944, the US Department of War refused multiple requests from Jewish leaders to bomb the railway lines leading to the camps, despite 452 bombers of the 15th Air Force flying along and across the deportation railway lines on their way to bomb the Blechhammer oil refineries just weeks later.

Time and again, military commanders said that a precision strike on the camp had no chance of success. However, no study was ever made. Proposals to drop weapons into the camp to enable a rebellion were considered but abandoned. From 1942 to 1943, British intelligence was regularly able to intercept and decode radio messages sent by the German order police, which included daily prisoner returns and death tolls for the 10 concentration camps, including Auschwitz, yet no action was taken. Another common argument is that the allies did not know the numbers and the horrors of the camps until after the war, despite the fact that hundreds of prisoners escaped and described their ordeals.

The US Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency that had been established in 1941-42 to co-ordinate intelligence and espionage activities in enemy territory, had received reports about Auschwitz in 1942, but no action was taken to target the camp. On 7 April 1944, two young Jewish inmates who had escaped from the camp, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, published detailed information about the camp’s geography, the gas chambers and the numbers being killed. Roswell McClelland, the US War Refugee Board representative in Switzerland, is known to have received a copy by mid-June and sent it to the board’s executive director, but no action was taken.

We are 80 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz. Antisemitism has increased significantly in the UK and globally following the 7 October attacks by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza. Many UK communities feel vulnerable, with hostility and suspicion of others rising. We hope that Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 can be an opportunity for people to come together, learn from and about the past, and take action to make a better future for all.

I finish on two points. First, it is extremely concerning to see the stark rise in open antisemitism on our streets following the 7 October attacks on Israel by the terrorist organisation Hamas. Jewish people are afraid to go about their lives, and have to hide their identity for fear of being attacked in their own country. We have reiterated, time and again, that the Holocaust must serve as a reminder that we must never allow such persecution of any race or religion, so we must make a conscious effort to stand up against such violations on our own streets.

Secondly, the Minister kindly mentioned the Holocaust Memorial Bill, which is going through Parliament. Sadly, as time moves forward, survivors are passing, and there are fewer and fewer to share their stories. It is crucial that we enable the Holocaust memorial to be built alongside this place, together with the education centre, so that future generations can learn the true horror of what happened during the war and pass it on to their children, so that we never allow history to repeat itself. I have had the privilege of visiting the original Yad Vashem and the modern-day Yad Vashem. Those who visit will know the horrors that the Jewish people encountered, and it is hard to express those horrors. We must make the Bill’s passage a matter of urgency, so that the few Holocaust survivors still with us can see the centre for themselves and be proud of the amazing work they have done in sharing their stories.

I leave the House with the poignant words of Sir Ben Helfgott MBE, a Holocaust survivor and successful Olympic weightlifter. His words should resonate with us all when assessing the urgency of this project:

“I look forward to one day taking my family to the new national memorial and learning centre, telling the story of Britain and the Holocaust. And one day, I hope that my children and grandchildren will take their children and grandchildren, and that they will remember all those who came before them, including my mother, Sara, my sister, Luisa, and my father, Moishe.”

Sadly, Sir Ben died last year. I have no doubt that, through the memorial and learning centre, his memory and story will live on for his children, grandchildren and generations to come, so that we can all learn the lessons of the Holocaust and vow never to repeat them.