Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Elliot Colburn Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con) [V]]

It is humbling to join colleagues on both sides of the House and my constituents to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. For Jews around the world, including here in the UK, the holocaust is not just a terrible memory; it is something they live with on a permanent basis—the photographs of family members they never got to meet, and the knowledge that the thriving Jewish communities across Europe were all but annihilated. Today, 76 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the world’s Jewish population still has not returned to what it was prior to the second world war.

One memory was brought into sharp focus this year, in a time of pandemic: the numbers tattooed on the arms of parent and grandparents. I am sure we have all seen the powerful images of holocaust survivors receiving the coronavirus vaccine with those tattoos still on their arms today. This year’s theme is “Be the light in the darkness”, encouraging us all to reflect on the depths that humanity can sink to and the ways that we can resist darkness and be the light for others. We are fortunate still to have holocaust survivors with us today, and I urge everybody to interact with the Holocaust Educational Trust and Holocaust Memorial Day Trust to hear from these inspiring individuals.

We have heard a lot about the words “Never again”, which first appeared on handmade signs hung up by prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp following their liberation in 1945. Those words have become a symbol of the world’s resolve to prevent such crimes against humanity from ever reoccurring. Tragically, however, genocides and mass killings were not relegated to history in 1945 but have claimed the lives of an estimated 80 million people since, in places such as Bosnia, Cambodia, Darfur and Rwanda, to name but a few, and today we hear of the persecution of Christians, Yazidis, Rohingyas and Uyghurs. That is why we must continue to be a voice for the persecuted around the world today and to learn from the horrors of the past so that we can be the light.

I would like to finish with these words of Elie Wiesel, the holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate:

“Let us remember those who suffered and perished then, those who fell with weapons in their hands and those who died with prayers on their lips, all those who have no tombs: our heart remains their cemetery.”