Holocaust Memorial Day

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

Well, my Lords, I have been looking forward greatly to today’s maiden speeches—without trepidation in the case of the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans of Sealand. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Katz, on his maiden speech, and I look forward to that of the noble Lord, Lord Evans; they will bring much to your Lordships’ House. But at this point, I have the heartfelt—I use the word deliberately—honour of thanking my noble kinswoman for her remarkable speech. I had to check with the clerks what the right appellation was. She demonstrated her eloquence, her wit, her determination and her critical faculty, of which I have some experience, all of which will make her a valued Member of your Lordships’ House. Her contributions on many subjects, I think—declaring my interests firmly—will be welcome, especially those founded upon her unusual and profound knowledge of and contribution to our criminal justice system. I should add that she brought me closer, much closer than I had ever been before, to my Jewish heritage, and I thank her for that.

I turn now directly to the subject of the debate. I say that the Shoah, the Holocaust, was the event of the most unnatural scale and horror in the history of humanity. It brought the end of six million lives, some my own close relatives: people who had no interest in politics, no interest in government, no interest in how their country, Poland, was ruled.

I was denied meeting one pair of grandparents because they were murdered. My half-sister’s mother died in Auschwitz, after spending three years there. On her death certificate it says typhoid, but we know that she became ill and was shot against a pole outside a shed in Auschwitz. Visiting there—I will never do it again, because I do not think I could take it—was an extraordinary experience for me.

In my view, what happened to those people has left an indelible mark on the living. I want to talk a little—nobody has yet—about what is generally referred to as survivor’s guilt. It is not a good description of what it is, but I cannot do better at a moment like this.

I do not know how many of your Lordships have seen the remarkable BBC series, “The Last Musician of Auschwitz”. It is required viewing. It tells the story of brilliant musicians, among the best in the world, who faced the moral dilemma of whether they should play music while others in the camps were marching to their deaths as slave labourers. What happened is that survival won the debate, and that is what survivor’s guilt is about: survival often wins the debate and they were right to do what they did, but it did not go away after they had done it.

I have seen it at close quarters. All my father’s family died of murder, except my beloved sister—my half-sister, in fact—who is now a lovely old lady living in a nursing home. She is spared, by dementia, from the memories of her experience as a hidden child. Before she became ill, she wrote a remarkable book, published by Bloomsbury Publishing, about what she remembered of her childhood between the ages of two and seven when she was hidden in Poland. She was hidden by an audacious young woman called Frederika, who was a distant cousin. She ensured that the child, my half-sister Renata, survived the war. After the war, that woman brought Renata to her father, who had been a solider in England—a medical officer. In a glorious flash, he and Frederika had a speedy romance. They married and I am their son.

Until I was 10 years old, I knew nothing about that background. My parents converted to Christianity while my father was a general practitioner in Burnley. My mother walked into Manchester Cathedral and demanded to see the bishop, and that is how that happened. I was not told until I was 10 years old that Renata, by then 20, was not my full sister. As it was put to me, she “had another mummy”. It bonded us for the rest of our lives and still does, but it was an extraordinary early example of what survivor’s guilt is all about.

Another example from my family is my cousin, Willy Verkauf. He left Poland when he was 17, just before the war. He went to Israel, came to Europe and became an art dealer in Basel. How did he express his survivor’s guilt? He discovered a painter called André Verlon, who you will see referred to in books about paintings of the Holocaust. André Verlon became a reputed Holocaust painter and artist. The survivor’s guilt is that André Verlon and my cousin Willy Verkauf were the same person: he invented an alter ego through which he could express his earlier experiences and the loss of his family in the Holocaust. I am proud to own two of André Verlon’s works, which I keep at home.

Then there is my cousin Ewa, who came for lunch with me in this place. She looked at me as though it were completely bizarre that we were having lunch here, that I had no business to be here and asked, “What on earth is going on?” We have all had these sorts of experiences; I can see the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, nodding.

Ewa told me that she was in a concentration camp with her mother and her baby. The baby died and she helped her mother to commit suicide. One day, she was sitting in a room with a number of women in the concentration camp and a Nazi guard came in. He took a 13 year-old girl by the hair and dragged her out of the room. A few minutes later, the girl returned, weeping, saying, “He raped me, he raped me”. A few minutes later still, the guard came back into the room, stood the girl up against the wall in front of all the other women in the room and shot her dead in the back of the head.

My cousin Ewa had real survivor’s guilt, so much so that she married an American and had two fine sons, and did not tell them until she had nearly died that they had had a brother or sister who died in a concentration camp. People have to live with these experiences.

The importance of memorialising the Holocaust is that we must make sure that the rest of society lives with these experiences. The wonderful work of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—I pay great tribute to him; I have watched him in Parliament for more decades than I would care to mention, because we are all getting older now—demonstrates that it is very important to educate so that people know that the Holocaust not only really happened but was the worst event in history.

My real point is that Holocaust Memorial Day is not merely a day in which we remember, but it is very much part of the present. We who carry the sort of history that I have appreciate the huge public support that comes through Holocaust Memorial Day. The day stands as a memorial and a reckoning for all of us who celebrate the innocence of our grandparents and other close relatives and commemorate their death. It is also for those of us who suffer the benefit of survival, as my parents and my cousins did and as I do to a lesser extent in coming to terms with the past, of which I knew nothing until I was 10 years old.

I could say much more, but for now it is enough that, in a debate such as this, I say about the past that we have the opportunity to learn important lessons for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gold (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, this afternoon. I, too, would like to add my congratulations to the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans of Sealand, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, on their excellent contributions and maiden speeches. I have no doubt that each of them will make a wonderful contribution to this House. I would like to tell the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, that from my position I was able to see that her husband was smiling right through her presentation, with such pride. I have also come away thinking there is no such thing as a quiet breakfast in their household.

The noble Lord, Lord Khan, in opening this debate in such a powerful way, mentioned seeing Manfred Goldberg last week. I, too, had the privilege of listening to this wonderful, articulate 94 year-old, who vividly described his life in Germany pre-war and how, miraculously, he managed to survive the brutality and suffering imposed on him by the Nazi regime. Unfortunately, though, Manfred is now in the minority; very few Holocaust survivors remain alive to tell us of their experiences and give us first-hand testimony to the wickedness imposed upon them and millions of others.

Unless we continue to remember the Holocaust, and the wickedness shown to the Jewish minority and other minorities across Europe, there is no guarantee this will not happen again. The photograph of released hostage Eli Sharabi captured by Hamas on 7 October 2023, looking so gaunt and emaciated, reminded so many of us of the liberation of Belsen in 1945 and the horror discovered there. We say “Never again”, but the rise in anti-Semitism here—3,528 cases reported by CST in 2024—across Europe and in Australia, Canada and the USA, makes the risk of repetition a real possibility. Particularly worrying is the rise of anti-Semitism in our universities. Although much can be done to inform and educate those born after the war, especially our children—the Holocaust became part of the English national curriculum in 1991—hearing from survivors who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust is the best way of achieving this.

If this cannot be done face to face, giving our children the opportunity of hearing from survivors remotely is the next best thing. Therefore, it is commendable that at a recent Holocaust Educational Trust dinner, our present Prime Minister announced a national ambition that every schoolchild should hear the recorded testimony of a Holocaust survivor. Other initiatives include investing a further £2 million for Holocaust education, announced by the Chancellor in her Budget, and for the teaching of the Holocaust to continue to be compulsory in state schools and expanded to include academies. These initiatives were announced by the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, following a curriculum review.

All this is excellent, but to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to inform and educate today’s and tomorrow’s generations, the creation of Holocaust centres and memorials all around the world is so important. That is why I strongly support the building of a memorial and learning centre. While the Holocaust galleries at the Imperial War Museum are impressive, building a lasting memorial here, right in the centre of Westminster, next to our Parliament—which has always stood for liberty and freedom all around the world—is making a massive statement that we in the UK remember now and will not forget in the future the events of the 1930s and 1940s which resulted in 6 million Jews and other minorities being slaughtered.

Let the world know that in this wonderful United Kingdom, our home, we will always stand against tyranny and prejudice, wherever they raise their ugly heads. The 2015 Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission report recommended the building of a “striking and prominent” new national memorial, to be located in central London. There can be no more striking and prominent location than right here in Victoria Tower Gardens. Objections have been raised to this location. It is argued that there are security and traffic issues, that the atmosphere of Victoria Tower Gardens will be changed, that access may be restricted, that too many people might visit the memorial—3 million visitors a year are expected, and I hope that we increase on that number—and that there are alternative sites. Frankly, I do not believe that these objections stack up. Security and traffic issues will arise wherever the memorial is located, and we will sort them, as we always do. As for the atmosphere in the park, I know how sensitive those responsible for the memorial are to this issue and how they truly believe, as do I, that the park can be improved.

By going ahead with the building of the memorial and learning centre here, we are raising awareness of the Holocaust and acknowledging its importance, just as was achieved last month by the visit of His Majesty King Charles to Auschwitz on Holocaust Memorial Day, commemorating 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. No other memorial in any location in the world will be as prominent as this one—

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

The earlier part of the noble Lord’s speech was very moving and compelling, but a number of us have avoided burying this debate in a difficult discussion about the Victoria Tower Gardens proposal. Will he do the same and move on to another subject?

[Lord Gold (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that intervention. It so happens that I am through on this. I just wanted to add one last word, which is that we should be very proud of going ahead with this. I accept the noble Lord’s intervention and have nothing else to say except to pay tribute to everyone who has spoken here today. Every single speech has been most moving.