Holocaust Memorial Day

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

Absolutely—I could not agree more. Too many people throughout this coronavirus period have casually linked the necessary measures to Nazi Germany. My constituents are largely very sensible people—they have sent me here four times, which proves how sensible they are; and they have done so, I might add, in ever increasing numbers and with a higher percentage of the vote, but I digress—but I am afraid to say that even a small number of my constituents have sent me some of this material. One of them even sent me a photograph of the Nazi health pass, likening it to the vaccine mandate, even though the Nazis and Hitler himself were against vaccine mandates.

That is absolutely why this debate is necessary. We have this debate every year, and each time we can all trot out a whole range of different experiences and examples from the preceding year, as Members have done today—I will not repeat them—which prove the sad necessity for this debate and for the ongoing work we have to do on antisemitism.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew Percy]

I will, but I am conscience of your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Bob Blackman]

I will be very brief. My hon. Friend is taking an impassioned view of antisemitism. Is he aware that just yesterday Jewish shopkeepers in Stamford Hill were attacked? There is a video of the incident and a police investigation is taking place, but it is clear that antisemitism is rife in our society today.

[Andrew Percy]

I was not aware of that particular incident, but I am sorry to say that this is happening time and again. Anyone who visits social media or other online platforms, including sales sites such as Amazon, will be able to find books that minimise and question the holocaust. The APPG has raised this many times, in repeated meetings, with the social media platforms and through direct approaches to Amazon and others, but anyone who looks today will be able to find holocaust denial and revisionist material for sale on Amazon.

In the few minutes I have left, I want to talk, in a more positive sense, about some of those heroes who did so much to help save people in the holocaust. This year I came across a book called “The Bravest Voices”, written by Ida Cook. She was one of two sisters, Ida and Louise Cook, who have been described as plain and dowdy English spinsters in the 1930s. They were huge fans of opera, and they took it upon themselves to rescue Jews and non-Jews from Nazi Germany. They did that by flying out on a Friday evening from Croydon airport, and returning overnight on Sunday via train and boat from the Netherlands, so as to be back at work at their desk jobs in the civil service in London on Monday morning. As I said, they fell into that through their love of opera, and they met people who were trying to get out of Germany. They would go through the border on the way into Germany dressed very plainly, and they would come out dressed in the furs—they often sewed new labels into those—jewels and valuables of the people they were rescuing, which would then be sold in the UK to raise the funds required at the time for the sponsorship of Jews who wanted to get out.

They did that in a very matter of fact way, and the book written by Ida Cook is wonderful in its modesty. They do not talk about “rescuing”; they talk simply about “getting people out”, “pulling people out”, or “dragging people out”—it is well worth a read. They used their English spinster act. Neither of them ever married. The pen name of Ida Cook was Mary Burchell, who was a famous Mills and Boon author. They enlisted church groups, and others, to facilitate their work, and they assisted countless numbers of people, rescuing them from Nazi Germany. We learn some of the names, and others we know simply by their first name, including a lady referred to simply as “Alice”, who refused to sell a hat to von Ribbentrop’s wife, and who they managed to rescue successfully.

The case that most struck me was that of a young Polish Jewish boy who they rescued at the very last minute in 1939. He was expelled from Germany in October 1938 for being a Polish Jew, and was one of those caught up at the Polish border because of the refusal to allow people into Poland at that time—that is not a criticism of Poland, as borders were closing to Jews all across the world at that time. The boy spent the winter in the Zbaszyn improvised prison camp on the Polish border. By some means, which the Cook sisters did not know when they wrote their biography in the 1950s and never learned, he contacted them, and they received a letter asking if they could raise a guarantee to get him out. The tribulations over the next few months as they tried to rescue him are an interesting and emotional read. They had trouble getting money to him and getting the necessary permits. He had a permit number that would have put him 500 above the permits that were allowed in at that time, but a friendly civil servant here in London did the necessary work. At last, two weeks before the outbreak of war, the Cook sisters were out in Germany meeting the next group of people who they wanted to rescue, when they got word that, by assisting one of the last children’s transports out of Poland, this young boy was able to get to a boat. As they described, he was literally:

“The last man to board the last boat that left Gydnia”.

just a couple of days before the outbreak of war.

That is a very moving story, as is my last point, which is that the Cook sisters downplayed their own role in all this, and constantly throughout the biography play up the role of others. That includes the consul general at Frankfurt during Kristallnacht, who opened up the British consulate to Jews, day and night, and provided food, since Jews had been banned from purchasing food in the days running up to Kristallnacht. He even went out on the streets giving food to Jews. Ida Cook describes that at the end:

“It was a piece of Britain”.

I think that is something we should all reflect on today when we think about other refugee crises, including that we have seen in Afghanistan. It was a piece of Britain, Madam Deputy Speaker, and today when we face other crises we should ask ourselves this: what is the piece of Britain that we want to project around the world?

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), who remembered another genocide that took place in the world.

It is fair to say that antisemitism is nothing new. We only have to look back to Shakespeare to see that antisemitism was rife during that period in our history. It has been prevalent in societies across the world for centuries and it is still prevalent today. I recalled earlier the attack on shopkeepers in Stamford Hill only yesterday. What makes the holocaust different is that it shows the ultimate destination of antisemitism: a systematic attempt to wipe out the Jewish race and anyone of Jewish religion—not just people who were openly Jewish, but anyone who had Judaism in their genealogy. I speak as someone in that position. I would not be here today if I had been alive in Germany in those times. That demonstrates the way in which people’s backgrounds were traced to see whether any relative or any person of Jewish blood was present. It was systematic, deliberate and intentional.

I was at school with many Jewish children. No one spoke about the holocaust. Half of my class were Jewish, but no one ever spoke about the holocaust during those days. It was ignored, perhaps to be airbrushed from history forever, because it was such a tragedy. The relatives—fathers and mothers—of many of my friends had come from eastern Europe as refugees, but they never spoke about the holocaust either. When we were at school, we never got the opportunity to learn about its horrors and what people went through at that time.

I remember my first visit to Yad Vashem. It was not the Yad Vashem we see today; it was a much smaller, more intimate formation in its early days, going back to 1992. It was a pivotal moment for me on my first visit to Israel, seeing Jerusalem, seeing Yad Vashem and seeing first-hand what had gone on during the holocaust. It had the first ever recordings of survivors—people who had sadly passed away, but who had recorded their testimony in advance—plus early photographs and other details of what had gone on in Germany and eastern Europe in particular during the holocaust.

That made Yad Vashem more intimate, in many ways, than it is now. It is a much bigger operation now, with much more testimony and evidence of what happened, but when I heard the names of the children who had been murdered by the Nazis being recited, one name after another, it brought home to me how people could commit such systematic murder of children—wipe them off the face of the planet—and what a terrible experience it was.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I have had the privilege of visiting Yad Vashem four or five times now, and I remember on one particular occasion going into the cave the hon. Gentleman describes, where the recordings of children’s names and ages just continue. By coincidence, there was a run of names, two boys and a girl, the same age that my two boys and my daughter were at that time. I broke down in tears, because that is where it really hits home: “This could be you. There but for the grace of God go we all. If politics turns nasty and turns against you, this is the end result.” That is why Yad Vashem and all holocaust memorials are so important.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I freely admit—I am not ashamed to say it—that I cried. I cried for humanity, I cried for the people who had been lost and I cried for our whole being and how we could ever have allowed such a thing to happen.

I declare my interest as co-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on holocaust memorial. I look forward to the holocaust memorial and learning centre’s being built, so we can have our own facility where we can commemorate the lives of those who were lost, and commemorate those who survived. When I was first elected to the House in 2010, the first all-party group I joined was the APPG on combating antisemitism. It is right that, across the House and on both sides of the political divide, we stand against antisemitism.

I have visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, and I believe I share the view of most students who have seen Auschwitz for only one day that it would be better if people could stay a little longer, just to appreciate even further the terrible crimes that were committed. The problem with that, of course, is funding, and the fact that lengthening the amount of time spent away might reduce the numbers who could go on such visits.

The problem I see with the programme of Auschwitz-Birkenau visits is that students learn about what went on there and think that that was it. We must remember that it was not just Auschwitz-Birkenau: there was a network of death camps and forced labour camps right across eastern Europe and Germany, where Jews and others were forced into slave labour and then systematically exterminated.

I have often wondered how a civilised nation such as Germany could get into a position to commit such inhumane acts. When we talk about 6 million Jews being killed, it is a number; it is hard to personalise that down to individual circumstances. It is hard to visualise the horror of the attempt to wipe out the Jewish race. We should remember that it did not take place over one or two years. It was a deliberate, long-term attempt by the Nazis to eliminate the Jewish race.

We should also remember that the roots of the holocaust go back to the end of the great war. Germany was subjected to severe reparations. That led to incredible poverty in Germany, which then gave rise to the Nazis, who could say, “It’s the Jews’ fault you haven’t got any money. Let’s take it out on the Jews. If we take Jews out of their position, we can spread the wealth.” It was a deliberate policy of the Nazi party to spread this hatred and it should never, ever be allowed to be repeated. There needs to be a greater understanding and appreciation that, from the early 1930s onwards, this systematic approach led to the Shoah. We have to remember that.

We must also remember that antisemitism was rife in this country at that time, and we should not think that it was not going on elsewhere either. That thought process and the demeaning of Jewish people was going on, and that is one reason why few people were allowed to escape from Germany and come here. Had they been allowed to do so, many people who lost their lives in the camps would have survived.

I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute once again to pay tribute to Karen Pollock and her brilliant team at the Holocaust Educational Trust, who do such wonderful work to educate people—young and old—about the horrors of the holocaust. Not everyone can go to Auschwitz-Birkenau and witness the crimes that took place. We talk, as other Members have, about the shoes, the spectacles and the clothing at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but the memory that I have above all else is walking across the park with the lakes. There is an eerie silence. There is no wildlife. No birds tweet, no animals cry and the reason why the wildlife know is that that is where the Nazis emptied the ashes from the crematorium. The wildlife know what happened there and so should we.

One aspect of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s work that has become more important is the outreach programme. Last year, more than 600 schools partnered with the trust to enhance educational provision. That is important because it allows holocaust survivors to give their first-hand testimony, lead workshops and ensure that young people understand what happened and learn lessons.

One of the most famous survivors was Gena Turgel, who lived in Stanmore in my constituency. In many ways, she was a pioneer of holocaust education, as she was going into schools and colleges way before any of the current structures were set up. She was born in Krakow and had eight brothers and sisters. She was only 16 when her home city was bombed on 1 September 1939.

Here is the part of Gena Turgel’s story that I think is most pertinent. Her family had relatives in Chicago and they planned to leave for the United States, but they made their decision too late, as the Nazis had already invaded and closed all the entry and exit points, so her family had to move to just outside Krakow. In autumn 1941, she moved into the ghetto, and then moved after some of her family were shot by the SS in the ghetto. She was then forced into a labour camp, and in 1945 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was sent with her mother on the death march from Auschwitz, leaving behind her sister, who they never saw again. They then arrived in a further labour camp, were forced on to trucks, and travelled under terrible conditions to Bergen-Belsen, where they arrived in February 1945. On 15 April 1945, the British Army liberated Bergen-Belsen and among the liberators was Norman Turgel, who became Gena’s husband. Gena passed away in 2018, but her record is in a book called, “I Light a Candle”, so her legacy lives on.

Hermann Hirschberger was born in 1926 in Germany. He lived with his mother, father and older brother. He attended a local non-Jewish school, but when the Nazis said that Jewish children could not go to school any more, he was forced not to go. He was beaten up going from home to school and back again by people who were his friends when he was in school, because the Nazis had said that Jews were not allowed to exist. At 9 pm on 9 November 1938, the synagogues were burnt and businesses, homes and shops were smashed. Windows were smashed and homes and buildings were burnt to the ground. This is known as Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.

After that, Hermann’s parents realised that they had to escape, but they could not—they were not allowed to. However, Hermann was one of the first to come on the Kindertransport to this country, where he built his family. He never saw his parents again. Hermann and his brother had a long journey to get to the UK. They were taken to a hostel in Margate, where Hermann had his bar mitzvah, and remained there for about a year. They regularly wrote to their parents. Two days after war broke out, their parents wrote to say that they had received their permits—they would be allowed to leave. However, once war broke out, they were not allowed to leave. They were sent to a camp in the Pyrenees and eventually murdered in Auschwitz- Birkenau.

In this country, Hermann and his brother were separated and then reunited. Hermann went on to marry and live in my constituency. He regularly spoke to schools about his life and what happened to Jewish people when they came to this country as refugees—by the way, it was not a happy experience for those people. We should own up to that and honour that memory.

Of course, we honour Hermann’s memory, because sadly he died on 1 January 2020. I had the privilege of meeting him on many occasions and hearing about his experiences both in this country and before he arrived. The reality is that, as time goes on, survivors are, sadly, no longer with us, so it is important that we capture their testimony and every other aspect on video, in audio and in writing.

I have had the unfortunate opportunity to witness at first hand the plight of the Rohingya and see what still happens in this world. We have a duty to ensure that people who have perpetrated murder are brought to justice and suffer for the war crimes that they have committed, and that we help and assist refugees.

The theme this year is “One Day” when we put aside all our differences to remember what happened not only in the holocaust and in persecution by the Nazis but in the genocides that have followed. We hope that one day there will no longer be any genocide. Today, we learn about the past and empathise with others, but we must take action for a better future.

I end with a quote by Iby Knill, a survivor of the holocaust, who said about the camps:

“You didn’t think about yesterday, and tomorrow may not happen, it was only today that you had to cope with and you got through it as best you could.”