Holocaust Memorial Day 2012

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

In March 1939, a 10-year-old Jewish boy from a small industrial town called Ostrava in what was then Czechoslovakia was put on a train by his mum and teenage sisters. He was the only member of his family able to leave Czechoslovakia, because of his age, and it was the last time that he saw his mum and sisters, who were eventually rounded up and imprisoned, first in a ghetto, then in Theresienstadt, before finally being murdered in Treblinka. When he arrived in the UK, he could only speak three words of English—“hot”, “cross” and “bun”—but he grew up to become the youngest grammar school head master in the country. He was honoured with an MBE for his services to education and his charitable work. He adopted four children, of whom I am the second, and this explains why, for me, this is such an important issue.

As hon. Members can imagine, I was brought up hearing about the holocaust from my parents and hearing stories about the suffering and the appalling cruelty, about which we have heard this afternoon, and the scale of the slaughter. That left me with a lifelong conviction that prejudice leads to intolerance, then to victimisation and eventually to persecution, and that everyone of us has a duty not to stand by, but to make a difference—to fight discrimination, intolerance and bigotry wherever we find it. I have seen similar convictions awoken in students from Dudley who have visited Auschwitz with the Holocaust Educational Trust and have come home and campaigned against racism on the streets of our town.

The Holocaust Educational Trust’s “Lessons from Auschwitz” project is now in its 14th year and has taken up to 16,000 students and teachers from all over the UK to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Based on the premise that hearing is not like seeing, young people can see for themselves what happens when prejudice and racism become acceptable. As a result of funding initiated by the previous Government and continued, I am delighted to say, by the current one, students from every school will see with their own eyes the appalling cost of racism and anti-Semitism and will be able to explain that to their peers in their own words. I echo the tributes paid to the trust, and to its dedicated team, for the phenomenal work that it does not just reminding people of the horrors of the holocaust, but ensuring that these lessons are learned by every generation afresh.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) on securing this debate and I thank him for doing so. I also congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on agreeing to it, because this debate shows that our country’s politicians want to unite in determination to ensure that these horrendous crimes are never forgotten. It shows that we want to join in a promise that we will—all of us—in whatever way we can, work to ensure that they are never repeated.

My dad’s story teaches us that, when other countries were rounding up their Jews and herding them on to trains to the gas chamber, Britain provided a safe haven for tens of thousands of refugee children. Think of Britain in the thirties. The rest of Europe was succumbing to fascism—Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain—but, here in Britain, Mosley was rejected. Imagine 1941: France invaded, Europe overrun, America not yet in the war and just one country standing for liberty and democracy, a beacon to the rest of the world, fighting not just for our freedom, but for the world’s liberty.

Britain did not just win the war. Britain won the right of people around the world to live in freedom. Look at Britain’s response to the holocaust. It is true that our country did not do enough, of course, and that it could have done more, and sooner, but no one can deny that when other countries were rounding up their Jews Britain provided a safe haven. It was British troops, as we have heard, who liberated the concentration camps, rescuing tens of thousands of inmates from almost certain death and enabling many of those to go on and prosper under the democratic values of the UK.

When people ask me, “What does it mean to be British? Does it matter if the countries that comprise Britain go their separate ways? What’s special and unique about our country?” I say that it is because of who we are as a people and what we are as a country that British people came together and stood up to the Nazis and were prepared to lay down their lives for freedom. For me, what makes people British is not what they look like, the colour of their skin, not where their parents were born or the religion they practise. It is not a matter of their race or religion; it is how they behave, what they believe and the contribution that they are prepared to make to our society. What makes people British is their belief in the timeless British values that British people have been prepared to fight and die for: democracy, equality, freedom, fairness and tolerance. It is this that makes us the greatest country on earth.

It has been a privilege for me to meet Zigi Shipper, Ben Helfgott, Mala Tribich and Joanna Millan, who survived the concentration camps and went on to rebuild their lives and make a huge contribution to Britain, bringing up families and setting up businesses. Now, working with HET, they spend their time travelling around the country speaking to schools and teaching future generations, ensuring that these crimes are never forgotten.

We organise an event each year through my office in Dudley. It is now the borough’s Holocaust memorial day event. A survivor has spoken at these events in the past few years. I am delighted that Joanna Millan will be at Dudley college a week on Friday, so people in Dudley, including students and young people, will hear this story anew. The courage and dignity of these people, and their humbling sense of duty and commitment, means that even today they want to use their experience to make our country better and to ensure that these terrible events are never forgotten. It is a humbling experience.

I pay tribute to another British hero, a great man, who lived in Stourbridge near Dudley. Known as the British Schindler, Frank Foley was an MI6 agent at the British embassy in Berlin in the 1930s, where he worked as a passport control officer. He provided papers to let Jewish people escape, forged passports and even provided a haven for Jews in his own home at risk of being rounded up. As the BBC says,

“At great personal risk, Frank Foley’s bravery and compassion saved thousands of lives and some even believe the figure could run into tens of thousands.”

But the thing that has always struck me is that after the war he retired to Stourbridge, where he lived out his years in anonymity until he died in 1958. At Eveson road, where he lived, you will see that this great man—this hero—lived in the most typical British house in the most typical British street that you could ever imagine. He teaches us, even today, that seemingly ordinary people can find within themselves the courage to do extraordinary things and do the right thing when the easier, safer course would be just to walk away and turn their back. Frank Foley risked his life to save so many others.

For me, it is important—this debate is important—to remember the holocaust so that we remember the greatest crime ever inflicted by man against his fellow man in the bleakest chapter in the history of the 20th century; so that we pay our respects to all who suffered at the hands of the Nazis in the holocaust and in other more recent genocides, too; and so that we remind ourselves that what makes us the people we are, and Britain the country it is, is the unique response of our country to the holocaust and to the Nazis.

The one thing that should come out of today’s debate, signing the book of commitment or attending the events in our constituencies over the next few days, is the opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the great British values that make our country what it is and to pledge again to fight prejudice and hatred wherever it is found. That would be the best tribute possible to the memory of the people who were killed 60-odd years ago.