Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) (Amendment) Bill

Kevin Foster Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 8th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), especially as he represents my birthplace and my home town. Sadly, as he will know, the Freedom Fields Hospital is no longer there; it is now a housing estate. There is something else that we share, which is support for this Bill, and it makes eminent sense to take it forward.

The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who has sat through one or two of my speeches on a Friday—they were slightly longer than this one will be—will be relieved to know that I have no intention of looking to beat one of my Friday records today. [Interruption.] I hear the disappointment from the Front Bench, but I certainly do not want to put this Bill in jeopardy by attempting to do that. It is absolutely right that, with this Bill, we look to remove the 10-year time limit and the sunset clause from the 2009 Act. I can understand why, perhaps a decade ago, Parliament thought that these matters may be resolved or that we should allow a period for review. It clearly makes sense to allow claims to be made; we should not just have a legal cut-off date that was picked a decade ago. There are not just practical reasons for that, but symbolic ones as well.

We must remember that the goal of the Nazis was not just to murder their victims, but to annihilate all trace of them and to annihilate all trace of the Jewish people. They did not just murder those who were living; they demolished cemeteries, burned down synagogues and sought to erase the entire culture from Europe. That is why it is so important that where these artefacts are preserved and retained, they are returned so that they can be exhibited and shown by families again as a reminder of what once existed.

Let us be clear: the Nazis had exactly the same plans for the United Kingdom had they managed to cross the channel and invade us in 1940. The SS had already drawn up a list of several thousand people to be executed almost immediately—they were literally going to work through it A to Z. The list comprised not just political or military opponents, but anyone involved in the cultural life of this nation, because they wanted to annihilate them and subjugate the culture to their own perverted ideology in which they replaced the Bible with “Mein Kampf” and any other god in which people believed with a belief in Adolf Hitler. Thankfully, many of our forebears, including those whom we commemorate in this Chamber, stood firm against that regime, paying a terrible price for doing so, and actually brought to an end its dominance and its reign in Europe.

It is now right that we continue to commemorate and remember those who suffered and who were murdered. As was touched on by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, it was not just the Jewish community who suffered and were annihilated, but homosexuals and anyone who defied the Nazis. None the less, they put great emphasis on the Jewish people. Even today, there is one European city that is paved in cobbles. When those cobbles are turned upside down, one can see that they are Jewish headstones that have been used to pave the streets. Again, that was all part of the Nazis’ mission to demolish the whole community and to remove any trace of it. For me, one of the greatest victories against National Socialism is the fact that the victims are remembered. While the Nazis are condemned in history for their actions, their brutality and their murderous crimes, their victims are remembered as the people they were, as the culture they represented, as the hopes, the dreams and the aspirations that they all had that were snuffed out in a bizarre, murderous craze that gripped the extremists of the National Socialist movement.

I am conscious that others wish to speak and that we are pressed for time. This Bill is very worth while. I welcome it and look forward to it achieving its Second Reading today.