Holocaust Memorial Day

Llinos Medi Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Llinos Medi (Ynys Môn) (PC)]

Diolch, Dirprwy Lefarydd. It is a privilege to be here, hearing words of kindness and joining with others against hate on the day when we remember one of our worst times in history. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia. As we look back and reflect on those horrors, we remember the stories of those who fell victim to unspeakable crimes, and take lessons from history. The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “For a better future”; as we consider what it means to build a better future, we must all look at what can be done to create a future that is no longer blighted by prejudice.

Recent figures show that there is much work to be done to fulfil that promise. Eighty years on from the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, religious hate crimes in England and Wales are at a record high. Home Office statistics show a 25% increase in religious hate crimes in the year to March 2024. In October, the monitoring group Tell MAMA UK said it had recorded 4,971 incidents of anti-Muslim hate between October ’23 and September ’24—the highest annual total in the past 14 years—while the Community Security Trust recorded 1,978 reports of anti-Jewish hate incidents from January to June 2024, up from 964 in the first half of 2023. The rise in these appalling hate crimes is a cause of deep concern, and all those who have been the victim of these crimes deserve our friendship and solidarity.

Among those murdered in the Holocaust was Helene Melanie Lebel. Born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother in Vienna and known affectionately as Helly, she loved to swim and go to the opera. After finishing her secondary education, she entered law school. At 19, she began showing signs of a mental health condition and was forced to give up her law studies and work, and was later diagnosed as schizophrenic. A year later, she became one of the thousands of mentally and physically disabled people murdered in the Brandenburg killing centre.

After the second world war, many ordinary Germans and Europeans claimed that they were not involved in the events of the Holocaust—that they were bystanders. Their indifference teaches us that passively remembering the Holocaust is not enough. We must continue to learn from and listen to the stories of the victims and the survivors—the Jewish, the disabled, and the gay men and women whose lives were ended because the Nazis decided that they did not deserve to exist.

As we look to the future, it is incumbent on all of us parliamentarians to speak out against genocide denial and distortion. We must forcefully speak out against prejudice and hate wherever it is found, whether here in Parliament or in our communities. Holocaust Memorial Day is a reminder to all of us that the fight against prejudice and intolerance must never cease. Only by continuing this fight, in memory of Helly and the millions who died as she did, can we secure a better future.