Holocaust Memorial Day

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). I thank the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing today’s debate and allowing us to talk about something that has always been important in this House—Holocaust Memorial Day has always been the day on which we remember and recommit ourselves to ensuring that the holocaust does not happen again—but this year, it is particularly important that we are aware of it.

Two things have happened to me personally since the last time I spoke in one of these debates. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland, I am of that generation for whom the holocaust was always history. We were told about it by our parents who had been children during the war and had heard about it. We had no personal experience of it, but information and knowledge about it was everywhere. It was in comics, in the films that we saw and the books that we read, everything from “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank to “Schindler’s List”. We were aware of it, but we did not actually believe that it would or could ever happen again, because we would not let it happen again—it would never have happened in this country anyway, because we would not let it happen. However, since 7 October, I have become increasingly worried that we in this country are just a fraction complacent about the danger that anything like the holocaust, Darfur or Cambodia could happen here.

Just over a year ago, I went to see “Good” with David Tennant in the west end. It is an absolutely wonderful play: it is about a good, liberally minded academic whose best friend is Jewish and who lives in pre-war Germany. He becomes complacent about the Nazis and what they are doing, he gradually becomes seduced and involved, and it has a cataclysmic ending. The other thing that happened was hearing the first reports of what was happening in Israel on 7 October. I was in a taxi on my way to the airport to fly out to a friend’s wedding in Spain, and I remember thinking, “Oh my God, what’s happening? This is horrific.” I had no idea of what was to follow.

A few weeks ago, I was speaking to a handful of students at the University of Glasgow, and we were talking about various issues on campus. They told me that they had been to a debate about an international chain of coffee shops that happened to have an outlet just off campus. It was all very civilised—a chat and a strong debate—and then one of the students, who was Jewish, told me that one of the other students had said, “But it’s only Jews that go there anyway.” I was utterly horrified that a comment like that could be made in a meeting of young people in this country.

That is not the only example. I visited the synagogue in Edinburgh recently, where I heard the concern of ordinary people about what they are experiencing every day. The Jewish students’ association at Edinburgh University is one of the largest and fastest growing in the country, but its members feel completely isolated. Jewish students have written to associations across the country—to every university—asking for support against the antisemitism that they see creeping into their daily lives, and only a handful replied.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the answer is for people to engage with the lived experience of Jewish people and to understand the profound effect that it has on their lives? My constituent Natalie Cumming has written about the experience of her family fleeing persecution, both in Russia and the horrifying experience of her sister, who survived Auschwitz and whose story she retells in her book. That book was one of the most difficult reads of my life and I think that people need to engage with those stories and understand, so that they do not repeat that kind of prejudice going forward.

[Christine Jardine]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is about listening to, hearing and engaging with the experiences of holocaust survivors. It is about hearing the direct relating of tales, as we did at Mr Speaker’s ceremony earlier this week, because surveys in America have discovered that 20% of young Americans do not believe that the holocaust actually happened, and something like another 30% believe that the holocaust is exaggerated —that it was a minor event. We are in a very dangerous position at the moment. Antisemitism is creeping in everywhere: we hear of it every day, from people who are finding that it is becoming part of their daily experience, and we are not aware of it. We are all good, liberally minded, intelligent people; how easy it would be for us to get drawn in and not realise what is happening around us—to let it happen. By the time we notice, it would be too late.

A few years ago, I visited Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial in Israel, and one of the things that struck me is that it is built on a hillside. It is dark, scary and depressing. We hear the tales, we see the remnants of people’s lives that were destroyed by the holocaust and it has an oppressive feel to it. However, as we move towards the end, we see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we come out to a breathtaking view of Israel. At the moment, I feel that we are truly in such a dark spot, and we have to make sure that we do not get trapped and pulled further into antisemitism becoming accepted in this country. We have to remember the light is at the end of the tunnel, and strive for that.