Holocaust Memorial Day

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I totally, wholeheartedly agree with him. We cannot thank the Holocaust Educational Trust enough for the work it does on behalf of the whole country.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

It must not happen again, but we are not guaranteed that it cannot happen again. If I am called to speak, I will demonstrate that it has happened again—and it will continue to happen—and we have got to try to stop it.

[Graham Evans]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention. Later in my speech I will come to how we all have to remain vigilant.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I commanded a British battalion that lived beside Belsen. In fact, just to correct the record, it was my battalion, or parts of it, that liberated Belsen in 1945. When I was living beside Belsen in 1991-92, I was shocked when I visited the camp, because there are just rectangular mounds, about 100 metres square, and there is just a little sign in the heather that says, “Here lie 4,000 bodies”. Four thousand individuals.

I never thought for a moment that I would see something that would be akin to the holocaust, but a few months later I was ordered to take the first British battalion into Bosnia. At the end of October 1992, I watched with my soldiers 10,000 people trying to escape from the genocide that was occurring at a place called Jajce. They went past my camp. I told the soldiers to start counting, and I told them to stop counting at 10,000. I did not see death then. It was not long in coming.

It was particularly awful when the Bosnian Croats, the Bosnian Muslims and the Bosnian Serbs went against one another. It was described by the United Nations as genocide, and I think one could actually call it a holocaust. On 22 April 1992, I was in the hills trying to stop a battle between the Croats and the Muslims. I had been directed to go there by the ambassador of the United Nations. A Bosnian Muslim commander said to me, “I’m not stopping fighting because people down in that valley are killing women and children.” I said, “I do not believe for a moment that women and children are being killed.” He said, “They are”, and I had a sneaking feeling he was right.

I went there, right the way through the village. It was a linear village about a mile long, and at the far end I deployed my soldiers on either side of the road in an extended line. I said, “Go through the village. Find out if anyone has been killed.” Every house was destroyed. I cannot remember now whether there were crosses on the doors or not, but there was a differentiation between houses. Some were Croat and some were Muslim. The Croat houses survived.

We found bodies—what was left of them. I found one whole family in the cellar: a mother, another woman, three or four babies burned to death, a father, and on the stairs outside, probably a teenage boy. We found what remained of them because they had hopefully been shot—I say hopefully because otherwise they had been burned before they died. It was horrendous. We buried 104 people in a mass grave: women and children, men. About 400 people were murdered in that appalling massacre.

It went on and a few days later I went to a place called Putis, which smelled really bad. There were some bloated pigs, and I then found the remains of what must have been men, although all I found were some boots with stumps of legs sticking out of them. Those men had not only been shot against the wall, they had been burned as well. It got worse. Back in Ahmici, which is where the massacre occurred, I picked up what I thought to be a black ball in the ruins and dropped it. To my horror, it was the head of a child. I have never forgiven myself for that.

A girl was brought to my house. Her name was Melissa Mekis and she told me what genocide is, and how fearful she was. We talk here about 6 million Jews being killed: 3 million men, 2 million women, 1 million babies or children. What we fail to get over is the sheer terror that must have gone through every single person that has faced the holocaust or such situations—the sheer terror of a mother with her baby beside her, going into the gas chamber; the sheer terror of Melissa Mekis.

This is what happened. Melissa Mekis was woken up at about 5 o’clock in the morning by her mother and father and told to dress quickly. She went downstairs and was told to go outside with her mother and father. Then she was made to lie on the ground with her brother, mother and father. In her words—my soldiers were bathing her and we were listening to the story—there was then a great deal of noise, and her mother, father and brother did not get up. She was put into a concentration camp, or a camp, and my present wife, Claire, who was then a delegate to the International Committee of the Red Cross, found her. Claire Podbielski brought her to my house and said, “You have room in this house; you can look after a child.” I said, “You must be joking; I am meant to be the commander of the United Nations forces.” She said, “Can I remind you of what you are meant to be doing? You are meant to be saving lives.” I agreed and so my soldiers looked after Melissa Mekis. They put a little cot between their two beds. Two days later, she did not want to leave them.

In my intervention earlier, I said that genocide continues—that the holocaust continues. It does. I also said we will never guarantee it will not happen again. It has happened again. We have instances of it happening again in recent times. By talking about the holocaust and illustrating those instances, we will hopefully reduce the chance of them happening again. God help mankind. It must not happen again.