Holocaust Memorial Day

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

It is an honour to represent the SNP in today’s debate on Holocaust Memorial Day. Six million Jews were murdered. I was trying to think about what words to use to describe it. The word “tragedy” was one of the first I thought of, but a tragedy is something that is unavoidable—in my head, anyway, it is something that was going to happen. This was evil perpetrated by humans. The hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) talked about the brutality of which man is capable. That was the phrase that stuck with me from today’s debate. It is about the brutality that human beings are capable of inflicting on one another.

The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) talked about othering. The ability that human beings have to begin to “other” humans by grouping them together because of some perceived difference is horrific, and something that we should all be aware of and think of when we talk about the lessons of the Holocaust and learning from what happened in Nazi Germany.

The hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison) talked about what happened, and a number of other Members have also talked about what did not happen. Not every single person in Nazi Germany was a Nazi, responsible for taking Jewish people to the camps, but enough people in Nazi Germany were willing to turn a blind eye to that. I am not blaming individuals for their actions—maybe their family were being threatened, maybe they were terrified, maybe they had circumstances that we cannot contemplate today—but every one of us who has moments when we do not stand up against hatred and othering needs to think about why we are not doing so. Whether we are Members of Parliament, members of the public, community leaders or faith leaders, we need to think about whether we would be able to sleep at night if we knew people would be looking back through history at our actions and considering us to have been bystanders, rather than people who took action when it was needed—when that othering was happening.

Every human being has value. A person’s value is not based on their religion, their country of birth, the colour of their skin, which town they currently live in, how much money they make or what job they do. Every human being inherently has value, and we all have a responsibility as representatives to ensure that whatever differences exist between us, we recognise and stand up for the value of every one of our constituents and every one of the people across these islands. We have a responsibility to stand up to anyone, whether they are a Member of this place, a politician at a different level or a member of the public, and say to them, “No, somebody is not less because you have put them in a box—because you have suggested that they are somehow other. They have just as much value as you do; it does not matter what country they were born in, who they worship, or what religious text is sitting on their bedside table.” We all have value just because we are human beings, and we all have that responsibility.

I want every one of us, whether we are in this Chamber or outside of it, to be able to sleep at night because we know that we have done the right thing—that we have stood up against that drip, drip, drip of the beginnings of hatred that can culminate where we ended up with the Holocaust. I find it very difficult to comprehend how someone can go from being slightly negative about somebody, or about a group, to the mass industrial murder that we saw, because I am not in that situation. I find it very difficult to contemplate how that can happen, but we know that it has—it happened not just in Nazi Germany, but in Srebrenica and Darfur.

The hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) talked about the international rules-based order and the reason why it was set up. None of the international organisations that we have relied on and listened to was set up simply as a trading organisation. The genocide convention was put in place because every country needed to ensure that we had learned those lessons, and were collectively resolved to never do it again. Some comments are being made about international organisations, saying, “We can step away from that trading organisation,” but that is a bit misinformed, because it is not just about that. We must ensure that we are working together to prevent genocide, not by policing one another, but by assisting one another to ensure that every country sees the value of every human and that we never “other” people like that again.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady on her speech. One way to start to address the issue is in schools, at an educational level. Some of the history teachers back home tell me that they struggle to include the Holocaust in the history curriculum. Politics students can come to Parliament and learn all about it and then take it back to their school. I think of my son and his friends from Glastry college back home. They went to Auschwitz as children, and their attitude and life changed dramatically. Does the hon. Lady agree that helping educationally by funding trips to Auschwitz would be a way of addressing these issues?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I absolutely agree, and I know that a number of schools in Scotland take part in trips to Auschwitz. It is important that that continues, particularly given the theme of “Bridging Generations”. Fewer and fewer individuals can talk about their experiences, and it is incredibly important that we remember that history and that this was a real thing that happened. There is too much Holocaust denial of all sorts. We need to be showing people, so that they can tackle that disinformation and misinformation with the evidence of their own eyes.