Holocaust Memorial Day

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir, and to follow the right hon. Member for Stirling (Dame Anne McGuire). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on securing the debate. These debates are almost becoming a ritual, and I say that as someone who comes from a faith where ritual counts.

As usual, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) put the emotional finger on it. When we woke up this morning—in England, in 2015—we heard accounts on the radio of children at a Jewish school lying on the floor practising for a possible terrorist attack, so there is no question but that we should be doing what we are doing today.

I want to say one or two personal things. First, when I was elected in 2010, a previous holder of the seat and honourable Member of this House, Stanley Henig, was just about keeping Holocaust memorial day going there. In 2011, it was held in a small room in the chaplaincy in Lancaster university—the actual constituency has a minute Jewish population, so this was perhaps more of an issue in terms of the campus. Then, however, the National Coalition Building Institute, to which I pay tribute, and particularly a lady called Liz Neat, got hold of things. With the support, to be fair, of Lancaster city council, we then began to hold a much bigger event on 27 January around the war memorial next to Lancaster town hall, and we have done so ever since. My job is to read the dedication to the righteous gentiles, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) talked about. Next week, I am proud to say, we will be in the centre of the town, outside Lancaster castle, which has now opened for the first time—it was a prison, but that closed.

Hon. Members have paid tribute to survivors who can deal with the emotion. I pay tribute to Stephen Breuer, who turns up every time to read the dedication. This year, we are quite proud, because we are going to host one of the 70 candles mentioned by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside, which were designed by the artist Sir Anish Kapoor for the 70th anniversary.

It is perhaps more important that those things are happening, and recognised, in the small town of Lancaster—officially, it is a city—with its minute Jewish population, than it would be in other areas. Hon. Members have talked about the post-war period, and I grew up in the 1950s, after the second world war, but I do not remember any mention of the Holocaust. If we read the history—I taught history—there was some mention of the Nuremberg trials when they were going on, but there was little mention of the Holocaust when I was growing up in that part of Lancashire, certainly not in school. That remained the case until—this was another anniversary—Adolf Eichmann was put on trial, having been taken from Argentina, when these issues were suddenly mentioned again.

Quite rightly, survivors who had escaped the Holocaust and come to Britain—I think of people I met when I was a councillor in Hackney, representing Stamford Hill, which has a significant, visible Jewish population; I have talked about that before—wanted to get on with their lives, and many were able to do that. I am extremely proud about that, and I know they are proud about it too.

As I say, these things perhaps only got talked about after Eichmann. Of course, we were also involved in the cold war, so that raised other big issues. When I was a teacher in the 1980s—I have mentioned this before, but it still needs to be underlined—the Government brought in the national curriculum, and the Holocaust was to be taught at key stage 3 of the history curriculum. As I have mentioned in previous debates, we should not underestimate the arguments that went on in the teaching profession about whether the subject, which is taught particularly in year 9, was suitable and whether children of that age would be able to deal with it.

Having been a teacher for 38 years, I can tell the House that children can deal with almost anything, and they were able to deal with being taught about the Holocaust. It was quite eye-opening. I have mentioned before that when I was teaching the subject, children—sixth- formers or 14-year-olds, so hardly children, really—said that they knew nothing about it until they got to the classroom. That is another reason for continuing the ritual, if we call it that, of Holocaust memorial day. The day must be recognised.

I pay tribute, as other hon. Members have done, to the Holocaust Educational Trust, and Karen Pollock particularly—she is sitting just behind me. I am thinking particularly of the trips to Auschwitz, and the school ambassadors. At Holocaust memorial events, it is incredible the way those children can describe their visits and articulate their experience, as hon. Members have done this morning.

When I was a teacher, I avoided going to Auschwitz-Birkenau; I had mixed feelings about whether it would be just a museum, and how I would deal with it, having taught it over and over. In fact, it was because of Karen nagging me that I finally went a few years ago. The emotional experience is difficult for me to articulate, as it is for everyone else. It is powerful in many ways that we might not consider. The thing that still stands out for me is the sheer scale and size of Birkenau.

Having seen school visits by Holocaust survivors—I remember one such visit to Cardinal Allen school in Fleetwood a couple of years ago—I do not think that there is anything that the children, pupils or young adults, or whatever we want to call them, cannot take in this context. Hearing someone’s experience produces an impact, and leads to questions, and I pay tribute to that work and to the survivors. I do not know how they relive those experiences again and again; I suppose it is through their determination that those things should not be forgotten. They are right about that.

We hold town commemorations, but it occurred to me that a new Holocaust Educational Trust project might be to consider individual school commemorations. When I was teaching, it was a struggle for us, given that schools are now multi-faith, to create assemblies that covered everything, but there may well be a way to take that further, particularly as everyone is concerned about what will happen when there are no survivors to provide their testimony. Perhaps we can think about doing something as part of the curriculum within schools; the Holocaust is rightly still part of the history curriculum.

As I have said, waking up in the morning and hearing what now has to happen in Jewish schools in England gives us clarity about why we feel we must continue with Holocaust memorial day. We must take pride in the country that gave a home to so many. There is worry among my Jewish friends, but I hope that small things such as today’s debate will reassure the Jewish population of this country—those who came across to make a home here before the war and those who survived the war years and came here afterwards—and that they will still feel part of this country. Today is significant as the 750th anniversary of the first Parliament. Its duty was and still is to protect the people who live in this country.