Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

Of course I agree with my hon. Friend. I believe that the trust is doing a series of films, and organising events, where the children of holocaust survivors are taking up witness. One of the most effective things I have ever seen was a film where the daughter of a holocaust survivor took up her father’s testimony. When he was a child, his mother had said, as her final parting to him, “I have lived a long life. You’ve barely started. Do what you need to survive.” It occurred to me that not only was the voice of the father being heard; we were also hearing the voice of a grandmother whom the daughter had never met. That is the final victory over Hitler and over the obscenity of Nazism.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I agree with everything that the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) has just said about the Holocaust Educational Trust. Will the Secretary of State continue a close working relationship with the trust and with Karen Pollock in the future, because for many decades they have done exactly the sort of work mentioned in the question on the Order Paper?

[Mr Pickles]

I am happy to give that assurance. Karen Pollock has done a remarkable job in casting fresh light on not only the holocaust that took place in Europe, but on Cambodia and Rwanda. One of the key focuses of the Prime Minister’s holocaust commission will be to ensure that what happened in the holocaust is not forgotten when survivors are no longer able to give personal testimony.