International Holocaust Memorial Day

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this is the first time I have spoken on this subject at an event of this kind, and I am terrified that my words will go towards trivialising the important subject that we are discussing. I begin by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for her courageous stance on the question of the memorial that is intended to be locally placed, whose line I fully support for the reasons that she has given.

In the 1990s, I lived in Golders Green and was chair of the Hendon and Golders Green branch of the Council of Christians and Jews. We had some wonderful and profound times together, but the most searing memory of those years was when my wife and I attended an early showing of “Schindler’s List” in the local cinema. In the darkened interior of the cinema, we were a small minority of non-Jews. The sighing and the sobbing were searing: I have never forgotten that, and it has posed the question of how I as a non-Jew respond to this in its most radical way.

First, it made me aware of the depth of the suffering, and the continuation of that suffering. But it also asked a question of me about what happens to the memory of such an important event when it is handled in a way that is basically entertainment. Groups of children were going to Auschwitz as part of their education; once again, Auschwitz turned into a visitor centre. My own capacity to say smooth words, which I am a professional at, raises the possibility of using my very gifts to go towards trivialising what is such an inexpressible event. With all that in mind, and with due apologies to people who find this a little difficult, at the time that I lived in Golders Green, I had just finished reading—just one of a whole number of things—a book called Shadows of Auschwitz: a Christian Response to the Holocaust. That led me to include a poem in a publication of devotional material that I launched at that time.

There are two things that have challenged my Christian faith more than anything else. One is the Holocaust; the other—again, something with which I have had close connections and involvement with over many years—is slavery. The poem is like this, and I hope that noble Lords will bear with me if I read it:

“I look at the photographs


in silence,

deep, deep silence.

One question rises

imperiously:

Where is God?

Bodies are carted into

the inextinguishable blaze

of gaping ovens;

human bones piled in little hills

waiting to be turned into fertilizer,

macabre transubstantiation;

Where is God?

Three corpses hang limply from a gibbet,

swollen tongues loll heavily,

a soldier, an ordinary man, poses for a snapshot

beneath this grim Calvary

proud, it seems, of his part

in blasphemy;

Where is God?

Cadavers strewn at random

in a common grave

big as a football field;

featureless bodies who

once were ordinary men and women

boys and girls

made for life and love;

Where is God?

Human hair made into rugs

flesh turned into soap

skin into lampstands

gold fillings extracted

melted down.

Nothing wasted;

nothing lost;

Where is God?

In a world like this

Where is God?

In the world you made

Where are you God?”

Zakar—remember.