Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Fleur Anderson and Catherine West(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
Holocaust Memorial Day
Debate between Fleur Anderson and Catherine West(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) and all the other speakers in this powerful and moving debate. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity, I am very pleased that we are having this debate, with so much time set aside for it.
I thank Mr Speaker for organising the event in Parliament later this afternoon. It is so important that we as parliamentarians come together to remember, to mourn, to say, “Never again,” and to ask what we can do. I also thank and congratulate the sponsors of the debate—the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols)—on securing the debate and on their speeches.
I am very conscious of the fact that we are in the Chamber speaking for so many others. I am thinking of some of them as we sit and stand here today. I am thinking about my constituent who lives in Roehampton, having fled the genocide in Rwanda. Since then, she has been unable to see the rest of her family or to go back to Rwanda. That is a pain that she takes with her every day. She has rebuilt her life and she now has children, who have never been to Rwanda. She will probably never go there again or see the rest of her family, who are scattered around the world. It is that shockwave of pain that is behind all the stories and all the numbers we are talking about today.
I am thinking about the young woman I met who came from Srebrenica. When I was working near there, she told me that she had lost her brothers and her father one day in July 1995. They left the town and they were never seen again. She was not able to bury them. She was not able to go and mourn them. She felt like they could still be alive—that speck of hope was there and it was absolutely heartbreaking.
I am also thinking of Dr Martin Stern, who yesterday spoke to the all-party parliamentary group on prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity. He told us the powerful story of how, when he was five, he was taken out of school and sent to camps, and then escaped from them. To his great cost and credit, he tells that story again and again. I pay tribute to all the holocaust survivors who tell their story and have kept the light alive; and to those in later generations, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), who continue to tell survivors’ stories.
Catherine West
I cannot allow this moment to pass without mentioning Lord Dubs. We cannot have this debate without mentioning his amazing contribution, first to this House, and then to the other place.
Fleur Anderson
I absolutely echo those thanks to Lord Dubs. I was going to say the same thing. As for all those holocaust survivors listening to the debate who have not been able to tell their story, I am sure other Members will join me in saying: “We understand that. You survived. Not everyone has been able to tell their story.” I thank Lord Dubs—a Member of the other place, and a former Member of Parliament for Battersea, which is near my constituency. He has been inspirational when we have worked together to support refugees.
I would like to underscore why this debate is so important, and highlight ways in which we parliamentarians could do better. We cannot say in this debate that mourning and remembering is doing enough. We say “never again”; there are things that we can do, and we on the all-party parliamentary group have been learning that. First, we must remember and mourn the 8 million Jews who died in camps. Every single one of them is a story that echoes through the generations.
“Never again” has become “time and again”. Dr Martin Stern, the holocaust survivor, said in our meeting yesterday that he wants to remember, but he also wants to make sure that we look at genocides that are happening now, and at potential genocides, and take action on them. Genocide remains an ever-present reality in Rakhine state, in Xinjiang, in Tigray—I could go on. The Early Warning Project reports that today, in 15 countries, there are ongoing mass killings, and Yemen, Pakistan and India are at high risk of having new mass killing incidents break out. In Bosnia, we see a slide into increasing nationalism, anti-secession rhetoric and holocaust denial—denial that Srebrenica took place. These are all harbingers of what can come next. Now is the time when we can stop that.
Another reason why the debate is important is that holocaust denial is shockingly prevalent in the UK, as Members have rightly mentioned. A November 2021 survey led by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany found that 9% of respondents believed that the holocaust was myth, or that the number of Jews killed in the holocaust had been greatly exaggerated. A third of respondents reported seeing fake news—holocaust denial or distortion—online. Popular social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were most frequently cited as the locations where that material had been seen.