Holocaust Memorial Day

Lisa Cameron Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee and the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) for enabling this extremely important debate to happen in the House and across the country. I declare an interest in that I am a member of the all-party parliamentary group against anti-Semitism.

Holocaust Memorial Day is vital. We must learn from the past and educate for the future. There can be no excuses for anti-Semitism or any other form of racism or prejudice. I congratulate the Holocaust Educational Trust and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance for their invaluable work supporting holocaust education, remembrance and research, which is recognised both nationally and internationally. The Home Affairs Committee recently produced a comprehensive report on anti-Semitism in the UK, and I urge the Minister and all parties to take appropriate cognisance of it.

Genocide does not happen out of the blue. There is a gradual process of victimisation, discrimination, hatred, words, actions, maligning, inferences and looking the other way. That leads to psychological distancing, and then to dehumanisation. That is the path to genocide.

I will never forget reading the diary of Anne Frank when I was at school and later visiting the site of her home in Amsterdam, where she and her family hid for two years before being discovered and arrested in 1944. I recall reading of her childhood pain that she could not go outside, of the lack of food and of her abject fear for herself and for her family, and then visiting and seeing those cramped conditions and wondering how my own family could have coped if placed in such danger and despair. Children could not make a sound and could not go to the bathroom until evening, and they lost their formal education and friends. It was impossible to go outside for fear of being shot. Such a burden on their young brains.

Education and remembrance are so important because, out of tragedy and suffering, Anne Frank, a 14-year-old girl, wrote some of the most inspiring words that I have ever read. The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “How can life go on?” Anne Frank wrote that she kept to her ideals

“because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

She wrote:

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

And:

“Whoever is happy will make others happy too.”

Holocaust Memorial Day commemorates, and it is important to pay tribute to all survivors and to never forget those who were lost and those who experienced such traumatic circumstances. Anne Frank wrote:

“What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again.”