Holocaust Memorial Day 2012

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), whose dogged persistence has ensured that the debate has taken place. He has done a great service to the House and to democracy and decency. I also pay tribute to all hon. Members, from my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) onwards, who have made some remarkable contributions to a remarkable debate.

I shall say something about my own experience. I was born the proud son of Irish parents who came to this country to better themselves in “County” Kilburn. When I was still at primary school, we moved to Dollis Hill where there was a significant Jewish community. The family next door were the Futtermans, and I always remember ma Futterman and my mother leaning over the fence. Over would come the matzos at Passover. I would go in every Friday night and turn on the lights. Four doors up were the Cohens, and I used to play football with them. I went to numerous bar mitzvahs, and it was at a bar mitzvah that I first discovered that Jewish people living in my street were from families—three of them—who had lost people in the holocaust, and I could not believe it.

I remember, as a young trade union activist, working with a very fine man called Paul Graham, a Polish Jew with a heavy accent. I was sitting down with him one night in his house and asked him, “Paul, why are you called Paul Graham?” He looked at the ground and could not speak for some time. It soon became clear to me that the demons of what he had experienced before he fled Poland had scarred him to that day. What he had done was to seek anonymity by changing his name, and he was not alone.

There is no question but that the holocaust was the greatest crime in human history—utter barbarism in the 20th century perpetrated by the country of Beethoven, Schiller and Goethe. Industrial slaughter, barbarism on a grand scale, was planned by people who were not mad, but profoundly evil. What the victims suffered is unimaginable. There have been so many powerful contributions; for example, from the hon. Members for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who were absolutely right. From Kristallnacht onwards, what must it have been like for proud people to be attacked in the streets where they had been born and brought up and in the ghettos that they were then forced to live in with no defence? There was no question of protection by the rule of law. What must it have been like? I remember thinking about that when my kids were very young. Imagine standing in a queue with our children, waiting to go into a gas chamber. What would we say to them?

Millions suffered that terrible fate, but it was not just the Jews—there were others as well. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) was right to point out the huge number of Gypsies and gay people who died. Today, the House unites to say, “Never ever again.” The message to the perpetrators must be, “No hiding place.” The message to collaborators must be, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” Yes, there were honourable exceptions—the Maquis in France and the Danish bishops—but too many turned a blind eye.

Sadly, the holocaust is not history. There have been a number of very powerful contributions, particularly from the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). He reminds us that, despite the universal declaration of human rights in 1948 and the formation of the United Nations, we had Rwanda, Bosnia—Bosnia, in our time and on our continent—and Cambodia. I visited Cambodia just after Christmas. The father and brother of the first person I met had died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. I went to the detention centre where tens of thousands had been taken and interrogated. First, they were photographed. Like the Nazis, the victims were impeccably catalogued with a photograph and a number across their chest before they were interrogated. With the exception of a handful of them, they were slaughtered either in the old school or taken out to the killing fields. One of the legends of the Khmer Rouge was:

“To spare you is no profit, to destroy you, no loss.”

The hon. Member for Beckenham is right—the world knew what was happening.

I think that progress has been made. We have the International Criminal Court calling to account the mighty, and rightly so, confronting them with the consequences of their actions. I hope that those yet to go before the court never sleep easy. International action was taken against Libya under UN resolution 1973 and rightly supported by all parties in the House. We have learnt painful lessons from history that we must never, ever again stand by and permit genocide or mass slaughter.

The theme of Holocaust memorial day is to speak up and speak out. I pay tribute to Karen Pollock and to the trust for the remarkable work it does. They are absolutely right—there is a sacred duty for each generation to learn the painful lessons of the holocaust. The hon. Members who have spoken—the hon. Members for Beckenham and for Croydon Central, in particular—are absolutely right, because to this day there is still an evil canker, to use the words that were used earlier, in our society. There is once again the shameful rise of anti-Semitism. There is, sadly, also Islamophobia. Racism still scars too many of our communities, seen at its most obscene in the killing of Stephen Lawrence. Gay people are to this day attacked and sometimes murdered. It is absolutely right that we speak out and accept that we all have a duty to give leadership, because the tone that we set is crucial to the harmony of our communities. Today, we also say that it is absolutely right to reject any notion of revisionism and any attempt to explain away or minimise the obscenity of what happened in the holocaust.

In conclusion, today we have seen the House at its best, speaking with a remarkable unity as, during the war, our country came together. The extraordinary Winston Churchill, whose poetic speeches inspired the nation, and—dare I say it?— people such as Ernie Bevin, who was the first general secretary of the old Transport and General Workers Union and Minister of Labour and then Foreign Secretary after the war, were united in utter determination to defeat barbarism. As one hon. Member said earlier, lest we forget: the message from both sides of the House is that we will never, ever forget.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Mr Offord has been here for three hours, but unfortunately his name was omitted from the list of speakers, so I call him now, although it is unorthodox, because this is an exceptional debate and we have time.