Holocaust Memorial Day

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to listen to the powerful testimony from my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (David Pinto-Duschinsky).

Racism and antisemitism is on the rise—that is without a doubt. It is on the rise behind closed doors. It is on the rise on the dark web. It is also hiding in plain sight. We have seen an acceleration since 7 October. When my constituent Noam’s mum Ada was kidnapped and held hostage, we worked tirelessly day and night for her release, and luckily we saw that day. Noam is always saying that we must strive for peace and that only light when we enter a dark room will make us see clearly.

It is really important that we mark the Holocaust every year in this debate. Although I am not so well—I apologise for my voice today—I wanted to come in to mark this day, because hate cannot win, and we have to show time and again that there are more of us than there are of them. This debate stands as a warning of the depths of cruelty and hatred that can be released when prejudice is allowed to grow unchecked and unchallenged. We cannot allow that, especially in this place.

In my constituency, Brent council marks Holocaust Memorial Day every single year, and this year we will mark it in the iconic Wembley stadium. Local events bring people together from all backgrounds to share in remembrance, united in the mantra of “never again”, fostering greater understanding and stronger bonds within our community.

As the Holocaust Memorial Day website states:

“following the 7 October attacks in Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza. Extremists are exploiting the situation to stir up anti-Muslim hatred in the UK. Many UK communities are feeling vulnerable, with hostility and suspicion of others rising. We hope that HMD 2025 can be an opportunity for people to come together, learn both from and about the past, and take actions to make a better future for all.

There are many things we can all do to create a better future. We can speak up against Holocaust and genocide denial and distortion; we can challenge prejudice; we can encourage others to learn about the Holocaust and more recent genocides.”

I am proud to be working with local rabbis in Brent East, such as Rabbi Mason, and others to bring everyone together, including African-Caribbean and Jewish people, to fight against the rise of prejudice and discrimination. Together we can strengthen our ability to challenge hatred in all its forms.

As we have heard, the chosen theme for Holocaust Memorial Day is “For a better future”, which calls on all of us to actively work towards creating a society that stands up against hatred and prejudice. We know that antisemitism has risen alarmingly in recent years, and we each have a responsibility to confront toxic beliefs wherever they appear, regardless of who is acting on them. We cannot afford to be gaslit and to allow hateful ideologies to resurface in the mainstream. We have a collective responsibility to call out such actions and ensure that they do not gain traction.

As we come together on this important day, we have to ensure that our remembrance is accompanied by action. Genocide and crimes against humanity are not inevitable, and we can prevent them. We must raise the alarm when we witness dangerous rhetoric and divisive actions and symbols, and we must hold perpetrators accountable. However, the reality is that people are often scared because someone else with more power says otherwise. They are scared of being incorrectly labelled, scared of the unintended consequences.

We must not forget that genocide does not come about overnight; rather, it is a gradual process. Even though it can sometimes seem scary, especially for those who are not in the in-crowd, hatred cannot and must not be normalised if we are truly to look towards a better future. If you are the last person standing and calling at the top of your voice for peace and love, that must be the ultimate goal for a better future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

On Monday it will be 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I find this debate quite difficult, so please bear with me. I went with my own family, my father and my two sons, to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the summer of 2023. I know that many Members here have been to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and although it is a difficult place to visit, those who have not definitely should. I thank the Prime Minister for his recent visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

When you are there, you can imagine the industrial scale of murder that happened there. You see many skulls, shoes and clothes. You see the cabins where people had to live. You go through the killing stations where the Nazis murdered millions of people: Jews, the LGBT community, the Gypsy Roma community, trade unionists and others they decided had to be removed in their genocide—in our Holocaust. That really commits you to wanting to see the future education of generations on this subject.

I have also been to the POLIN museum in Warsaw, which documents the history of Jews in Poland. It has a significant section on antisemitism in that country, which I will come to later in my speech. When you visit such places, you can better understand the rise of antisemitism and how things could get to that point.

This year the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day is “For a better future”, which is uplifting. My own grandparents returned to Poland and Lithuania after the Holocaust. Following the Yalta agreement, they were very different countries from what they were before the war. My grandparents hoped to rebuild their lives, as did the few members of my family who survived the camps and ghettos, but it was still very difficult after the war.

When I visited Warsaw with my father, he took me to the tower blocks where he grew up and told me stories of how, as a child, he received antisemitic abuse and bullying from Polish children after the war—this was after everybody knew about the Holocaust and the camps. Unfortunately, that was the reality for Jewish people. The state authorities had antisemitic attitudes too, which in the end resulted in the mass emigration of 13,000 Jews—almost the entire remaining Jewish population of Poland—in 1968. That was just 23 years after the war, which was very much in recent memory for those people. All of this made attempts to rebuild lives in eastern Europe very difficult, not just in Poland but in other countries. My own parents emigrated from eastern Europe in the ’50s and ’60s, and in the end arrived in Leeds in the 1970s. Similarly, thousands of Jews came out of communist and post-communist countries, found homes and contributed economically, socially and culturally to their new countries.

I want to tell a story about two of my former constituents—they are no longer with us—who were very close family friends. When I was growing up, I spent a lot of my time in their house, and they certainly contributed a lot to my own Holocaust education. Yanina Bauman was a Holocaust survivor, having escaped the Warsaw ghetto with her sister and mother. Like other Jews, they were hidden by amazing Polish families in the countryside. Yanina and her husband, Professor Zygmunt Bauman, came to Leeds in the 1970s, and he worked as a professor of sociology. He was one of the most decorated sociology professors in the world, and his books are world class and outstanding. His literature discussed the theoretical effect of the “Holocaust mentality”, and he came up with the theory of “liquid life” as part of post-modernity. I do not want to get into a sociology lecture, because the Chamber is not the place for that, but people who are interested in those subjects should certainly look up his work.

Yanina, who survived the ghetto, wrote two books about her own life and history; one was about her life in Poland before the war, and one was about her experience during and immediately after the war. Those books are recognised as part of a very important canon of literature on the Holocaust. I am really proud that Yanina and Zygmunt both lived.

[Dawn Butler]

I thank my hon. Friend for his powerful speech, which shows just how important it is that living memory is passed on and why we should continue to have this debate in Parliament.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Take your time, Mr Sobel.