Holocaust Memorial Day

Jon Pearce Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister and the shadow Minister for their contributions. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (David Pinto-Duschinsky) for the moving story about his family.

Like many other Members who have spoken today, I too have visited Yad Vashem—in July 2023. Nothing quite prepares you to stand in the Hall of Names, surrounded by the images of those who perished in the Holocaust and the Pages of Testimony that detail their lives—lives so cruelly and brutally cut short by the greatest act of mass murder in human history. To describe them simply as victims robs them once again of their humanity, dignity and individuality. As Benjamin Fondane, the French-Romanian poet who was murdered at Auschwitz just three months before its liberation, wrote:

“Remember only that I was innocent and, just like you, mortal on that day. I, too, had had a face marked by rage, by pity and joy, quite simply, a human face!”

Two days after visiting Yad Vashem, I visited Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a quiet, unassuming kibbutz close to the border with Gaza, founded on socialist principles by Mizrahi refugees from Morocco and Egypt in 1951. None of us who visited that day knew that within weeks its peace and tranquillity would be shattered, the kibbutzniks would be raped and murdered, and hostages would be taken, including our own Emily Damari, whose release alongside the two other hostages at the weekend has provided a glimmer of light in the darkness. Now we must make sure that all the hostages come home to their families.

None of us knew that day that on 7 October 2023 the Jewish people would suffer the bloodiest day in their history since the terrible events of eight decades ago, which we mark today. That modern-day pogrom was committed by Hamas, an organisation that shares the same genocidal aspirations and sadistic fervour of those who perpetrated the Holocaust.

And none of us knew that day that within hours of those terrorist attacks, Britain would see the first wave of antisemitic incidents, which last year reached their highest-ever recorded total. It is beyond shameful that, in 21st-century Britain, Jewish places of worship are defaced and graffitied, and require protection by security guards; that Jewish pupils are unable to wear their uniforms on the way to school; and that Jewish students are intimidated on our campuses. All the while, antisemites take to our streets chanting for Jihad, glorifying Hamas’s crimes, and comparing the state of Israel to those who sought to annihilate European Jewry less than a century ago.

But Britain is not unique. In Amsterdam, Israeli football fans have been hunted, attacked and abused on the eve of the anniversary of Kristallnacht. In Melbourne, a synagogue was set alight while worshippers were sat inside. And in the UAE, a young rabbi was kidnapped and murdered. Each one of these crimes reminds us that hatred against Jews and hatred against the world’s Jewish state cannot be separated. Anti-Zionist antisemitism is simply the latest iteration of history’s oldest hatred.

As the Prime Minister rightly said last week while visiting Auschwitz:

‘But where is “Never again”, when we see the poison of antisemitism rising around the world in the aftermath of 7 October?’

I am proud that our Prime Minister and this Government are committed to tackling that evil. I commend the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Community Security Trust, the Holocaust Educational Trust, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and all those others who work day in, day out to fight antisemitism and to teach our children and young people of the utter horrors that can be unleashed if it goes unchallenged.

The battle against antisemitism and hatred must be fought on many fronts, and it is on all of us to join that fight. For a better future, we cannot be bystanders. I wish to close with the words of Elie Wiesel on the perils of indifference and the dangers of passivity:

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”