Holocaust Memorial Day

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd), and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) for securing this debate, in which we have heard thought-provoking and thoughtful speeches from a number of hon. Members from across the Chamber.

When I was growing up, we had no education about the holocaust in school. I was fortunate, because I grew up alongside Jewish children, so I could hear at first hand some of the stories about the horrors that their families had gone through before the war, during the war and after the war when they were refugees. That is one of the things that is life-changing for most of us, because when we contemplate that systematic murder of 6 million people just because they were of the Jewish faith, we find that it is almost beyond our consciousness; we cannot imagine how any human being could contemplate doing that. We cannot imagine why a nation would not stop it, but they did not. The fact is that those 6 million people—they were all individuals—lost their lives for no other reason than because the most hateful political regime ever in history sought to exterminate them.

There are some life-changing moments that we all go through. I first visited Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum in Jerusalem, some 20 years ago, before the current museum, which is much larger, was in operation. I went as a tourist and I spent a full day there. The museum had already started capturing the testimonies of survivors of the holocaust on film; as we have said in this debate, so many of these people are, sadly, no longer with us and it is important to capture the testimonies so that we remember what happened. The museum had started to put the exhibitions together, and people could see the full horror of what happened to the Jews in Germany, not just during the second world war, but from the rise of Nazism in Germany. We could see how it all came about. We need to learn those lessons, because in many ways the rise of the Nazis started at the end of the first world war with the treaty of Versailles, which imposed such terrible conditions on Germany that it set the economic climate that allowed the Nazis to come to power and exert that power in the way that they did.

I represent a part of the country that, according to the most recent census, has the most concentrated Jewish population. As a result, I have had the opportunity to meet survivors, people who came by the Kindertransport and people whose families have related personal experience of what happened in the death camps and concentration camps. Sadly, they often do not even know where their relatives are.

I have now had the opportunity to go to Yad Vashem five times, and every time I learn more about the horrors of the Holocaust. I would recommend anyone going to see it first hand in Jerusalem, because there is no greater education. I have also had the opportunity of going with the Holocaust Educational Trust to Auschwitz-Birkenau and seeing, together with young people, the horrors of that place. Three things stood out for me. First, visitors walk across what is essentially a parkland. It is very peaceful and almost deathly quiet. The birds are not singing and there are the ponds where the Nazis put the ashes of the people they systematically gassed and then burnt. It is a terrible place.

The second thing is the maps, which show the systematic approach of transporting people from all over Europe to put them in a death camp and murder them. It is then that it comes across that it was not just a few evil people who did those things; there was a systematic approach and thousands of people were involved. Thousands of people were guilty of involvement and millions of people turned their backs and ignored the reality of what was going on.

The third thing that brings home the reality is the collection of belongings behind glass in cabinets: boots, shoes, spectacles and other things that were stolen from the people who came to Auschwitz and never left. It is very important to commemorate the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. They both bring to life the cold, hard reality of what happened.

Next week, there will be two great events in my constituency. The Chief Rabbi is coming to Park high school on one of his last public engagements before he retires and one of the students who came to Auschwitz-Birkenau is giving a lecture to other students at Bentley Wood school on Tuesday. Those things are vital. I hope the Minister will comment on the fact that it is vital to continue holocaust education in our schools and ensure that it is part of the curriculum for ever more.

Other Members mentioned the international aspects of rising anti-Semitism. Hungary, Greece and Egypt have been mentioned, but we should remember that every year marches take place in Latvia and Lithuania to commemorate the Waffen-SS, the exterminators who killed 750,000 Jews not in concentration camps but by wiping them out wherever they went. Today, those marches still commemorate those evil people and celebrate what they did. Such activity is on the rise yet again. On the Piers Morgan show on CNN, the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denied the holocaust and said that it never took place. Here is the president of a country who denies the holocaust; we must always be fearful of people who deny the holocaust.

Closer to home, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) mentioned the rise in the number of anti-Semitic attacks. One thing she did not mention was that anti-Semitic attacks in London are up by 48% according to the figures from the Community Security Trust. We must be on our guard at all times.

The work of the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is vital in ensuring that everyone understands the lessons, so that we never allow such a thing to happen again. Words are sometimes worth repeating, and I would repeat that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Unless we remain eternally vigilant, the Nazis and other people could come back and do it all again.