Holocaust Memorial Day

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Louise Ellman

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am privileged to be able to follow such genuine and effective contributions. I congratulate in particular the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on the very moving and sincere way in which he opened this extremely important debate.

The first Holocaust memorial day was held here in the United Kingdom in 2001, as a result of a cross-party decision by Parliament following a private Member’s Bill presented by Andrew Dismore. At that time, there were doubters who were not sure that it was appropriate to have a Holocaust memorial day focusing on the holocaust itself. Now that date is firmly in the national calendar, and I think that very few people would question the correctness of our decision.

It is absolutely essential for new generations to receive education about the brutality, the depravity and the racial hatred involved in the organisation of the calculated mass murder of 6 million people. That lesson needs to be learnt so that people not only know about the unique horror of the holocaust, but understand where hatred and bigotry can lead, because that affects all of our society and all the people in it. The Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz programme enables generations of young people and their teachers to visit Auschwitz, as part of a wider educational programme to provide a greater understanding of the holocaust and its impact for everyone.

This week I attended the trust’s annual Merlyn Rees memorial lecture, which was given by Thomas Harding. He spoke of the search for Rudolf Höss, the kommandant of Auschwitz. That served as a reminder of the need to bring war criminals to account, and also as a reminder of the nature of evil. Rudolf Höss led an apparently normal family life, with a loving wife and loving children, in the midst of the horrors and the butchery of Auschwitz. Perhaps we should reflect on the nature of evil, and on what people can do.

Also this week, the Football Association decided to charge Anelka following his celebration of having scored a goal by making an “inverted Nazi symbol” salute, the quenelle. What I found even more disturbing than what Anelka did was his defence, which was that he had acted in support of his friend Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, who is a French performer, a holocaust denier, an anti-Semite, and someone whose offences include inviting the holocaust denier Robert Faurisson on stage as part of his performances. The people who support this performer claim that they do so because they are anti-establishment, and that they are not anti-Semitic, but it does not take very much imagination to appreciate what that defence actually means. It gives us food for thought, because it is deeply and gravely disturbing.

Sadly, anti-Semitism has not gone away, even following the horrors of the holocaust. A very recent European survey made disturbing findings in that regard. There is also anti-Semitic discourse: not explicit anti-Semitism, but reference in writing, speech and films to images and words which invoke feelings of anti-Semitism. The Community Security Trust has listed incidents of anti-Semitic discourse in its recent report and they are extremely disturbing. They are disturbing because they are wide-ranging and cut right across the political spectrum. They range from the bizarre, such as the reference in Press TV, speaking for Iran, which claimed that the Olympics were a Zionist plot and blamed Jews in Hollywood and the so-called Jewish-controlled media as ultimately responsible for the United States school shootings and massacres of children, to those I find more disturbing, such as the Occupy Wall Street cartoon from Tampa in the USA which was displayed on Facebook and which showed a big-nosed bearded Jew using the UN logo as a steering wheel in a car with President Obama as the gearstick.

I am also concerned by statements such as that made by former diplomat Peter Jenkins in a debate at Warwick university, where he stated that Christian morality was somehow superior to Jewish morality. He said:

“The idea that a just war requires the use of force to be proportionate seems to be a Christian notion and not a Jewish notion.”

I find that kind of insinuation that morally Judaism is inferior to, in his case, Christianity not just plain wrong but deeply disturbing. That kind of insinuation, which I hear too often, should be recognised. Reference has already been made during this debate to the planned visit to London this weekend of Gábor Vona, leader of the anti-Semitic Hungarian Jobbik party, and his plan to be here on Holocaust memorial day.

Now that we have Holocaust memorial day firmly in the national calendar, I think we understand the need to educate people about the enormity of the evils of the holocaust. That is so that people understand what happened in those terrible years and that terrible time. It is also a lesson for today and about where evil, bigotry and prejudice can lead. It is something that all in our society need to learn.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I call Lee Scott.