Holocaust Memorial Day

James Clappison Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

It is a privilege to have this opportunity to mark Holocaust memorial day. As colleagues will know, Holocaust memorial day falls exactly one week from today, on 27 January. I thank colleagues who supported the application for this debate, many of whom are here today: my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford North (Mr Scott), for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), for Watford (Richard Harrington), for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) and for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans). I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and the hon. Members for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), for Dudley North (Ian Austin), for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) and for Bassetlaw (John Mann). I am grateful to them for their support.

I pay tribute to the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust—I declare an interest as a member of the council of the trust—and I pay tribute to all that it does to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust to ensure that its lessons are never forgotten, and that we also keep in mind other holocausts that have taken place since 1945. It does very important work in giving young people the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau. It does other good work as well, but that is very good work indeed. I know that many Members will have participated in those visits, as I have done. It is something that one needs to see for oneself.

This year is an important anniversary, because it is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet forces. When they arrived there 70 years ago, they found the remnants of the unique horror that had taken place there and in other death camps throughout occupied Europe. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, they found 348,820 men’s suits; 836,500 women’s dresses, all neatly folded together; pyramids of dentures and eyeglasses; and seven tonnes of women’s hair. As colleagues will know, some of the physical evidence can still be seen at Auschwitz-Birkenau and at some of the other camps.

I want to draw particular attention to the living evidence of the Holocaust in the form of testimony of survivors of the camps, many of whom were young children at the time, but who now spend their time telling groups of young people of their experiences. I pay a special heartfelt tribute to them for the work that they do.

This 70th anniversary is in some ways a special milestone in keeping such events in living memory, because the survivors are all getting older. I am always struck by their vigour, but they are getting older. It is important to keep their testimony alive for future generations to listen to and to understand what took place. I have listened to the survivors both in my constituency and elsewhere. It is a remarkable experience and a privilege to hear them. I pay special tribute to the survivors of the Holocaust in my constituency who visit schools, meet young people and tell them of their experience.

Take Alec Ward from Borehamwood. After a happy childhood in Poland, he found himself put in the ghetto at a very young age and was selected for work. His younger brother did not pass the selection and was taken away to be shot. Alec was then put to very hard work on the most meagre of rations. When studying and reading his accounts, one wonders how he survived. He received one slice of black bread, some black coffee and half a litre of watery cabbage soup, and had very little protection from the minus 30° cold of the winter in central Europe. He was put to work on building roads and doing other slave labour. He summarises his experience of the Holocaust and remembers:

“The hangings of prisoners, the selections, the dead bodies lying at the barbed wire fences early in the morning of Jewish prisoners who tried desperately to escape...and were shot. The painful hunger and malnutrition. The beatings. The man who cried every time he saw me as I reminded him of his young son who perished at the hands of the Nazis.”

It was remarkable that Mr Ward survived, but he was eventually liberated from Mauthausen camp by the allies in May 1945.

Another remarkable man is Mr Josef Perl, who lives in Bushey, but was born in Czechoslovakia. In the spring of 1940, at the age of 10, he was crammed on to a railway wagon to be taken to Poland. On arrival there he witnessed his mother and four of his sisters being shot and falling into a pit only a short distance ahead of him. He also saw other members of his family suffer the same fate. It seems he survived only because of an air raid when it was his turn to be dealt with. He somehow survived amidst all this and he was put to work and passed from camp to camp, including Auschwitz-Birkenau. He describes his arrival at Auschwitz in memorable terms:

“There was screaming and shouting, guards were lashing out and beating anyone who could not get out of the way. Dogs on the end of short leads were barking and jumping up at new arrivals, viciously biting many of them. I saw old people, ill people, people so weak they were almost dead, come tumbling out of the wagons when the doors were opened.”

He saw a baby being thrown away by a guard “like so much rubbish”.

Mr Perl was eventually put to work as well. Remarkably, he survived and was liberated from Buchenwald camp on 11 April 1945.

Listening to such remarkable men and women, it is hard for us to comprehend the scale of human loss in respect of those who perished and the severity of suffering of those who survived the unique horror of the Holocaust. It is important that we continue to hear their views. We know that there have been subsequent genocides since 1945 in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. Holocaust memorial day reflects such tragic events, which stand as a rebuke to the post-1945 world and remind us that genocide can still occur.

Recently, we have seen evidence of hatred and extremism closer at hand in Europe—as well as anti-Semitism—and extremism has entered the body politic in several places. It is not on the same scale as genocide, but we know from history that hatred and extremism were the precursors to what took place in 1939 to 1945. We have seen a very extreme party—the Jobbik party—capture votes in Hungary, and, in the European elections last year, Golden Dawn captured nearly 10% of the vote in Greece. There are disturbing echoes when the deputy leader of a party such as Jobbik can stand up and call for the state to draw up a list of Jews who constitute a national security risk.

I welcome the robust statement by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minster that he has a policy of zero tolerance in respect of anti-Semitism. As he says, although the situation in this country is better than in many other countries, it is unacceptable that we have seen evidence of anti-Semitism here, including boycotts and attacks on Jewish charity shops and the disturbing survey of attitudes published by the Campaign Against Antisemitism recently.

I also welcome the work that is being done by the Holocaust Commission, which was launched by the Prime Minister last year and is due to report later this month. I look forward to the fruits of its work being brought forward, and I hope that the living testimony of survivors of the Holocaust will be preserved for future generations. We need to ensure that this country has a permanent and fitting memorial to the Holocaust and educational resources for future generations to learn about it.

Seventy years ago this year, the gates of the death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau opened and the world saw the full extent of the horrors perpetrated under the auspices of an extreme ideology. I hope—I am sure—that colleagues agree that we should never allow those experiences to be forgotten.