Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP) [V]]

It is a privilege to speak in this debate and I have been very struck by the contributions from across the House. This is one of the most important dates in the parliamentary calendar because of the importance of understanding exactly what happened during the holocaust and what continues to happen in genocides around the world and, as the theme for this year’s debate would have it, to “be the light in the darkness”. Light is much needed during these difficult times. We need to be mindful that, along with the many obvious challenges and worse that living through a pandemic brings, there is also the fact that it makes everything more fragile. Democracy and the normal strands of life that hold us all together are all the more fragile because of the strains of the pandemic. That means that we have to be ever more watchful, mindful and vocal. As the wonderful girls of the Giffnock Guides, who I visited on a Zoom screen recently, emphasised to me, we must look out for each other, and be kind. 

It is my great privilege to represent the majority of the Jewish population in Scotland, as the MP for East Renfrewshire. The diversity of my small community makes us so much the better and is so valued by those of who live here, and the light that some of my fellow East Renfrewshire citizens have shone on the holocaust has been so important. I know the House will join me in expressing my sorrow on hearing of the death last week of Judith Rosenberg of Giffnock. Judith survived the horrors of Auschwitz, where she was taken when she was snatched away at only 22 from her perfectly ordinary family life. She endured indescribable horror and inhumanity, but somehow had the strength of character to share her experience with others so as to help to prevent this from happening again. She said:

“When I was a child, my father taught me that all people are equal, that it doesn’t matter who or what race they are, they are just people.”

Judith worked so hard to make that a reality, and I know that her tireless work made a huge difference to so many people. She will be much missed. 

Henry Wuga and his late wife Ingrid also hold a very dear place in the hearts of so many people in my local area and far beyond. Ingrid, who was a lovely woman, was also a remarkable influence on so many people. She sadly died last year, and I know we would all wish to share our condolences with Henry, a fellow Kindertransport child, with whom she spent 75 years of happy marriage and a remarkable joint commitment to sharing their testimony with thousands of schoolchildren. I have had the privilege to see some of that work at first hand, and I know the impact that Henry and Ingrid have had, sharing with kindness, clarity and decency the terrible horrors of the Holocaust and the need to challenge prejudice and hate. I know that the House will also share my great admiration of Henry as he continues with this work.

We all need to understand the horror of this murder of millions and millions of innocent people. There were more Jews murdered than the entire population of Scotland. The lessons in that for us all bear repeating again and again. That is why the work of organisations such as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust matters so much. I am very grateful to Karen Pollock, who is tireless in pursuing ways to engage our young people. I met my local education director last week and discussed the wide range of important work going on in East Renfrewshire schools to make sure that, at every stage in education, young people confront, understand and learn the lessons of what happened. This is not, and must not be, a one-day-a-year endeavour.

It is sadly true that this is probably more important now than ever, in this fractious, anxious time, when covid and the shadow of Trump and others loom large, fostering the othering, the hate, the misinformation and creating fertile ground for those with ill intent. None of us should kid ourselves that this cannot happen now. We need to raise our eyes across the world, as well as looking at ourselves. My constituent, Kirsty Robson, along with Jaya Pathak and Joe Collins, young people who have set up the excellent organisation Yet Again, know this and have been working hard to shine a light and to tackle the terrible realities of communities experiencing genocide today, such as the Uyghur Muslim population in China. I am really grateful for their recent focus on the surely inarguable fact that we should not engage in trade deals with nations engaged in genocide.

The young people in East Renfrewshire are very focused on these issues. Holly Edgar, influenced by the Gathering the Voices project, wrote a hugely thought-provoking piece about her visit to Auschwitz, which I published on my website this week, reflecting on the Lessons from Auschwitz project. That focus on all these voices, the individual people and what happened to them is so important—the terrible, all-consuming hatred whipped up against communities, persecuted and murdered because they were Jewish, Roma, gay, disabled, different. That must be a warning from history to us all, and we must have no truck with deniers and minimisers.

I visited Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, a few years ago. The focus there is on all those individual people, families, photos of lovely children, ordinary-looking mums and dads, killed because they were different or other, and what I saw there will never leave me. There were so many little everyday things, including combs, shoes, glasses—that was all that was left. I saw the sheer ordinariness of the things, the people, and then how the creeping hatred and antisemitism spilled over, and the unimaginable horror that followed.

So we need to commit, and we must always focus on being the light. I will conclude by reflecting on the words of Jane Haining, who is a personal hero of mine. Jane was a Scottish teacher, working in Budapest at the time of the holocaust. She stood with her Jewish students in the darkest of times. Jane died in Auschwitz because she refused to leave her students to face their fate alone. She said:

“If these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness”.

That is the light that we need to think about. That is the spirit that we need to reflect on. It is an issue for all of us, and we need to step up.