International Holocaust Memorial Day

Lord Kestenbaum Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kestenbaum (Lab)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for securing this historic debate and for all his other formidable work. This memorial day is one which binds us all, irrespective of background, but I hope noble Lords will offer their forbearance because, for me, it is a deeply personal matter. As my family name, Kestenbaum, indicates, home for us until the crimes began in the mid-20th century was Germany. Because the enormity of what followed often defies comprehension, I request that this Chamber bears witness today to one elderly victim and hears her story.

I speak of Dina Eisenman, my great-great-grandmother, who was killed in Bergen-Belsen on 19 February 1944 at the age of 80. Dina and most of my maternal family were living in Frankfurt at the time of Kristallnacht. She fled for her life to Holland and settled in The Hague, where we had family, but the German invasion in May 1940 changed everything again. Anti-Semitic laws were soon followed by the round-up and deportation of Holland’s Jews.

Dina was deported to Westerbork in early 1943—the transit station from which trains left for the death camps. The cattle-trucks deporting Jews to their slaughter left every Tuesday morning. This made Mondays equally traumatic, for every Monday evening a list was read out in the Westerbork barracks of those to be deported the next day. On the evening of Monday 15 February 1944, the name of my great-great-grandmother Dina Eisenman was read out. At the time, she was an 80 year-old, sick, weak woman who could be moved only on a stretcher, yet she was mercilessly deported in a cattle-truck to Bergen-Belsen.

Dina Eisenman, an 80 year-old grandmother, was dead within a week of arriving at Bergen-Belsen. Her death at the hands of the Nazis was not the end of our family tragedy. Two of her children and two of her children-in-law were murdered. Ten of her grandchildren were murdered too, the youngest of whom—Lottie, who was 16, and Herbert, who was nine—were gassed to death in Auschwitz. In total, 26 members of my extended family were among the millions of victims of humanity’s greatest ever state-sponsored crime. Today we bear witness to that crime.

In the spirit of remembrance, I will share a poignant postscript. Last October, the March of the Living organised a ceremony on the site of the camp to mark the 75th anniversary of Bergen-Belsen’s liberation by British forces. At the ceremony, the British Army was represented by Colonel Dickie Winchester, of the Royal Artillery, and Lieutenant-Colonel Simon Ledger, of the very same armoured regiment which was among the camp’s liberators, who laid a wreath. A candle was also lit in memory of the victims of Bergen-Belsen by Dina Eisenman’s great-great-great-grandson, Yoav Kestenbaum, my son.

At the ceremony that afternoon were several Holocaust survivors. In talking to them, it was clear to me that their deepest concern today is that the passage of time may leave the field of memory open to the deniers and distorters of the Holocaust, as the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, referred to. Recent research has revealed that several online platforms continue to host a significant number of posts denying the Holocaust or distorting its crimes, so today is a timely moment respectfully to ask the Minister what further legislative measures are being taken to hold online platforms accountable for the Holocaust denial content that they host, particularly if we cannot rely on their voluntary self-policing.

It was the late Lord Sacks who said:

“To be a Jew is to carry the burden of memory without letting it rob us of hope”.


I am sure he would have agreed that this imperative now falls on us all, irrespective of background. Indeed, His Majesty the King himself has inspired us with his personal commitment to Holocaust remembrance. In light of the passing of the survivors and the dangers of Holocaust denial, it falls to this Chamber, many like it, and indeed the entire country to carry that burden of memory and, in doing so, to light a candle of hope.