Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak in this important debate as a proudly Jewish parliamentarian.

This year, Holocaust Memorial Day and today’s debate coincide with the Jewish festival of Tu Bishvat. It is one of four “new years” within the Jewish calendar, marking the birthday of trees for the purposes of the mitzvot relating to farming practices and the permissibility of the fruits of those trees for eating or bringing to Jerusalem as a tithe. In contemporary Judaism, and in the context of increased awareness around ecological issues and the climate emergency, the festival is having something of a renaissance, with millions of trees planted every year and lively debates within our community about what we can learn from our traditions of sustainable farming practices and respect for the divinity of the natural world. In the context of Holocaust Memorial Day, there are some deeper lessons we can take from Tu Bishvat into our reflection, as we honour the lives of those murdered in the holocaust and subsequent genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia and Darfur, and into action as we resolve to make “never again” about more than just platitudes.

I spoke in my speech last year of the incredible story of the Sarajevo Haggadah and Dervis Korkut, a Muslim man who is recognised by the Yad Vashem world holocaust memorial centre as a righteous gentile to whom the Jewish people owe a huge debt. We are not short of these stories of heroism and resistance, and in this place we are enormously privileged in our position of being able bring about the kinds of large scale changes that these heroes could only dream of. We need not risk our lives smuggling Swedish passports into Nazi-occupied Hungary, like Raoul Wallenberg, or smuggling Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, like Irena Sendler, or hiding Jews in the Albanian mountains, like Vesel and Fatima Veseli, because we can bring about a fair and just immigration system that protects the lives of refugees, we can work to halt the proliferation of fascist propaganda online, and we can use our international standing, our influence and our trade policy to hold other nations accountable. We need not look the other way as people are persecuted around the world when we have both the moral obligation and the means as a nation to “be the light”. It brings me great sadness to say that, as a House, we are failing in this duty. Solidarity is our most powerful weapon against genocide, and our communities must not allow us to be divided nor to see others scapegoated or disasters exploited by the far right.

One of the stories often told from the Talmud at this time of year is of Honi the circle maker. One day, Honi the circle maker was walking on the road and saw a man planting a carob tree. Honi asked the man, “How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?” The man replied, “Seventy years.” Honi then asked the man, “And do you think you will live another 70 years to eat the fruit of this tree?” The man answered, “Perhaps not. In the same way as my fathers planted for me, I will also plant for my children.”

We know about the long-reaching shadow of inherited pasts and post-memory—the relationship that the generation after bears to the personal, collective and cultural trauma of those that came before—but Tu B’Shevat marks the time when the sap starts flowing in the trees again, the welcome reminder of nature’s rhythm and light returning after the darkness, with trees growing, blooming and fruiting. As we preserve the memory of those who can no longer share their own stories, all of us have a duty to sow the seeds of solidarity and friendship for our children, even if we may never live to see the fruits ourselves.