Holocaust Memorial Day 2012

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I am very sorry that I was not here at the start of the debate; I was on other parliamentary business. I am extremely grateful to be called and given the opportunity to speak. I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) on securing this incredibly important debate.

I, too, had what I was going to say was the pleasure—but, of course, it was not a pleasure—to visit Auschwitz with the Holocaust Educational Trust. If anything, the day made it harder for me to understand what had actually happened. As the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said, it is not only the scale—how could so many people have been murdered? It was so hard to understand the stories. How could human beings be so inhumane to other human beings? It is not just the murder of people, but the torture that some people faced when they transgressed the rules, the living conditions that they were in, and the whole experience that human beings made other human beings go through.

Like other hon. Members, a number of particular things got to me. The hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) and I were on the same trip. I also saw the photographs that showed healthy young men and women—and people of all ages—and then the dates of their death just a few weeks after they had got there. They were worked, starved and frozen to death.

The latrines was another area that got to me. The notion that people would be trooped in, told when to sit on the latrine, then told when to get off the latrine and be marched out again, to be followed by hundreds of other people, really affected me, as did the attempts by the guards to completely remove the dignity of the people who were being held in those camps. There was also the reality that, of course, some prisoners did lose their humanity and treat people in inhumane ways. One of the things I find very difficult to imagine is the absolutely unbelievable number of people who were cramped into the huts. The weakest were at the bottom and would be covered with faeces, vomit and blood from people above them, because of the situation that people were in. My final realisation was that some people did retain their humanity. There were people who did support other prisoners in there and manage to live as human beings in the most inhumane conditions it is possible to imagine.

I pay huge tribute to the Holocaust Educational Trust for enabling us and so many young people to experience that day and see what happened in the camp. However, the most important element of the trust’s work is not the act of remembrance, although, of course, that is vital; it is the work of challenging attitudes now. As other hon. Members have reminded us, the holocaust did not start in world war two; it was not the first and nor has it been the last. We have been reminded of Bosnia and Cambodia and, of course, there have been many other genocides during the past century. Even today, as we speak, murder continues. The only way that we can ever tackle that is to deal with the fear and the hatred. For me, that starts with discrimination in the playground. Irrespective of whether that is due to race, appearance, disability or any of the other things children bully other children about, it is still about division and saying, “Other people are lesser than me and I have a right to treat them in that way.”

Such things continue to happen on our streets. We have recently been reminded of the dreadful murder of Stephen Lawrence, and there are racist murders every week. Discrimination continues in attitudes in every-day life, and in divided societies where hatred is allowed to flourish. People will blame immigrants for the fact that they do not have a job or a house, or for the trouble on their streets, and will say that asylum seekers are to blame, not acknowledging that they are actually refugees. The young people I met on the trip to Auschwitz were not only looking back, but looking to the future. They were inspired to tackle prejudice and discrimination, to educate other young people about what happened and to ensure that it does not continue to happen. That is what they are doing after their trip.

The hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) finished his amazing remarks by expressing his fear that we will not stop future genocide. We may not, but if we do not take action—if we as politicians do not lead to challenge attitudes, and to be opinion formers, not just opinion followers—clearly we never will. We have to do all we can to tackle prejudice and discrimination. We have to make it clear that we will not tolerate them, and that our society, in which we are leaders, will not tolerate them. Like those young people who visited Auschwitz, we must be inspired to do all we can to educate and to tackle divided societies. I hope that the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust will long continue. Its work is truly valued, but we too must play our part as politicians in the House of Commons.