Holocaust Memorial Day

Lord Khan of Burnley Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Khan of Burnley]

That this House takes note of Holocaust Memorial Day.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Khan of Burnley) (Lab)]

My Lords, it is with respect and solemn reflection that I move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Many of us have attended Holocaust Memorial Day events across the country, including the national ceremony in London. His Majesty the King attended the commemoration at Auschwitz-Birkenau alongside Chief Rabbi Mirvis, Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich and leaders of 50 countries.

Last week, I had the honour of listening to Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg. What struck me was that, although Manfred is now 94, he related what happened to him as a young boy as though it were yesterday. He told us about the heartbreaking moment when, aged 13, he and his mother were sent off to work while imprisoned at the Preču concentration camp. On their return, his little brother Herman was missing. They never saw him again. For over 70 years, Manfred held a small hope that, somehow, Herman had survived and one day they might be reunited. Sadly, that was not to be. Manfred’s story about his little brother brought home to me that, while we rightly remember that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, we often miss that 1.5 million were Jewish children.

Manfred’s story touched me deeply, as he spoke of his mother and the loss of her youngest son. I am the youngest son in my family and I recently lost my dear mother. I take this opportunity to give my heartfelt thanks to noble Lords for all their kindness shown to me in the last few weeks. It does not really matter how old you are; the loss of a mother affects you deeply. My mother was an inspiration: one important thing she taught me, which is so relevant to today’s debate, is that we must never forget the lessons of history. The history of the Holocaust provides lessons for the whole world. It shows us what can happen when hatred takes over a society, when barriers are created and fellow humans are treated as something different—something to be despised.

Nazi ideology can be hard to comprehend. It was ruthless and fearsome. Children like Manfred’s younger brother Herman were especially vulnerable to Nazi persecution. Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered not only 1.5 million Jewish children but tens of thousands of Romani Gypsy children, 5,000 to 7,000 German children with physical and mental disabilities living in institutions, as well as many Polish children and children residing in the German-occupied Soviet Union.

Along with elderly people, children had the lowest rate of survival in concentration camps and killing centres. People over 50 years of age, pregnant women and young children were immediately sent to gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other killing centres. Until mid-1943, all children born in Auschwitz, regardless of origins, were murdered, usually by phenol injection or drowning. Later, non-Jewish newborns were allowed to live. They were entered in the camp records as new arrivals and tattooed with a prisoner number.

Due to woeful conditions in the camp, few lived long. Children born to Jewish mothers were routinely murdered. Thousands of Jewish children survived this brutal carnage, many because they were hidden. With identities disguised, and often physically concealed from the outside world, these youngsters faced constant fear, dilemmas and danger. Theirs was a life in shadows, where a careless remark, a denunciation or the murmurings of inquisitive neighbours could lead to discovery and death.

Of course, none of these stories could be preserved without the men and women with the courage to tell them—women such as the remarkable Lily Ebert MBE, who died at home in London in October last year, aged 100. Her life after Auschwitz showed that, even in the face of unspeakable evil, the human spirit can triumph.

Ann Kirk BEM died earlier this year, at the age of 96. She arrived alone in London aged 10 on the Kindertransport. She dedicated her life to raising awareness about the horrors of Nazism. Anne was married to Bob Kirk BEM, who also came to the UK on the Kindertransport and died late last year, aged 99. They were a wonderful couple who dedicated their lives to sharing their story—a story of how they left their home and parents as children and made new lives in the United Kingdom.

Anne met Bob at a social hub for Jewish refugees called Achdut, which means togetherness. The couple married in 1950 and had two children. It was not until 1992 that they told their sons about their background, after being invited to speak at an event commemorating Kristallnacht at Northwood synagogue. It was during the couple’s speech that their children discovered the truth of their upbringing. I often think how hard it must be for survivors to give their testimony, to return to those moments, to remember those darkest of days and to recount how loved ones—husbands, wives, sons, daughters—were taken away.

I want also to take a moment to debunk the idea that we did not know what was happening. From 1942 onwards, reports of the mass murder of Jews in continental Europe began to reach Britain. As the tide of the war turned against Germany and its allies, the British Jewish community started to plan for post-war relief work. Jewish aid workers began, after the liberation, to report that some children had survived the Nazi concentration camps.

In May 1945, Leonard Montefiore, a well-known philanthropist, travelled to Paris to meet with the heads of Jewish organisations. Before returning home, he wrote to Anthony de Rothschild, chairman of the Central British Fund—now World Jewish Relief—outlining a scheme to bring

“a few hundred children from Bergen-Belsen or Buchenwald”

to Britain. On his return to London, Montefiore drew up detailed arrangements planning not only how he was going to get the children to Britain but how he was going to give them the best possible care.

The British Government approved his proposal and granted permission for 1,000 child survivors to be brought to the UK. At this point, it was believed that no more than 5,000 Jewish children in central and eastern Europe had survived the Holocaust, and those would be cared for in allied and neutral countries such as Sweden and Switzerland, so the Home Office’s offer of 1,000 visas was a fitting response.

That said, the offer of help from the British Government was not without conditions. The children had to be aged 16 years or under and would be granted permission to stay in the UK for only two years. They were not to cost the taxpayer a penny and the Central British Fund was to be financially responsible for the entire cost of looking after them. The money to do this was to be raised privately. It was later stipulated that only children who had been in concentration camps would be admitted to the UK, although the age limit was raised to 18 in 1946.

In the end, just over 700 children came to Britain. They were known as the boys, even though there were girls too, and they arrived in five groups. The first group arrived in August 1945, is known as the Windermere boys and was made up of 300 children. The second group arrived in October 1945, is known as the Southampton boys and was made up of 152 children. The third group arrived in March 1946, is known as the Belgicka boys and was made up of 149 children. The fourth group arrived in June 1946, is known as the Paris boys and was made up of 101 children. The fifth group arrived in April 1948, is known as the Schonfeld boys and was made up of 21 children.

Their story is less well known than that of the Kindertransport, through which 10,000 Jewish children were saved in the aftermath of Kristallnacht in 1938. The boys set up the ’45 Aid Society in 1963. They wanted to say thank you and to give back to the society that had welcomed them. Over time, the running of the ’45 Aid Society has passed to the children of the boys—often referred to as the second generation—the custodians of the testimonies and life stories of the boys. They keep their testimonies alive and make them relevant for future generations, through educational activities, community events and fundraising.

I want to thank these custodians, but I really want to say a special word to the survivors. Every day that you have lived, and every child and grandchild that your families have brought into this world, have served as the ultimate rebuke to evil and the ultimate expression of love and hope. We need only to look at today’s headlines to see that we have not yet extinguished man’s darkest impulses, but none of the tragedies that we see today may rise to the full horror of the Holocaust.

The individuals who are the victims of such unspeakable cruelty make a claim on our conscience. They demand our attention: that we do not turn away; that we choose empathy over indifference; and that our empathy leads to action. That includes confronting the rising tide of anti-Semitism around the world. We have seen attacks on Jews in our streets and in the streets of major western cities. We have seen public places disfigured by swastikas.

Some foreign Governments continue to rinse their history, and some are not willing to recognise that the Nazis could not have done this alone; they needed willing partners. It is up to each of us, every one of us, to forcefully condemn any denial of the Holocaust. It is up to us to combat not only anti-Semitism but racism, bigotry and intolerance in all their forms, here and around the world. We cannot eliminate evil from every heart or hatred from every mind. What we can and must do is make sure that our children and their children learn their history so that they might not repeat it. We can teach our children to speak out against a casual slur. We can teach them that there is no “them”, there is only “us”.

I have had the honour of attending many Holocaust Memorial Day events over the last couple of weeks, each one different and yet all the more meaningful. My department funds the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and this year granted an additional £80,000 to the existing annual grant of £900,000, to ensure that the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony was televised on the BBC. I have been told that 2 million people tuned in to the ceremony.

As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Stockholm declaration, it is important to take stock of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s achievements. IHRA is perhaps best known for its non-legally binding definition of anti-Semitism. There are many other tools relating to accessing archives and safeguarding sites, and a toolkit to fight Holocaust distortion. These are just a few of the tools developed by IHRA in partnership with the experts, and I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, in particular, in this area.

IHRA is important because it holds each and every one of us to account. We all have issues with our history. The problems we face today are more complex and more subtle. It has been a long process even for democratic countries to confront their own problematic history. Year on year, we see countries rinse their history and rehabilitate people. Well-known anti-Semites morph into nationalists or become heroes in the fight against communism. It was only in 1995 that the French Government accepted responsibility for the deportations and deaths of over 70,000 Jews and Austria finally dispelled the myth of being Hitler’s first victim and made amends to Austrian Nazi victims.

In the United Kingdom and the United States, we need to come to terms with the fact that we did not open our borders and accept Jews fleeing the Nazis. Earlier, I mentioned the Kindertransport. In the case of the UK, we accepted children but not their parents. Most of the children never saw their parents again.

The work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, the Association of Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust to ensure that we never forget is more important than ever, especially as the number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling. Each and every one of us who has had the privilege of hearing first-hand testimony has a duty to keep their memory alive.

That is why we remain determined to create the UK national Holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens—a place where we can learn about the Holocaust, a place which will ensure that we never forget where hatred can lead. Subject to the passage of the Bill, and to recovery of planning consent, we hope to begin construction before the end of this year.

These words of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel are very important:

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed, and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky”.


It has been 80 years since the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Americans liberated Buchenwald and the British liberated Bergen-Belsen. We owe it to those who were murdered, those who survived and those who liberated the camps to never forget and to ensure that every generation knows where hatred and indifference can lead.

Before I end, I would like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Anderson. We all know how dedicated she is to tackling anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred. She has never given in, despite appalling levels of abuse directed at her. She is someone I greatly admire.

As a man of faith and as the Faith Minister, I think it is only fitting that I end with the following words penned by the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks—may his memory be a blessing:

“We know that whilst we do not have the ability to change the past, we can change the future. We know that whilst we cannot bring the dead back to life, we can ensure their memories live on and that their deaths were not in vain”.


I look forward to everyone’s contributions, in particular, the maiden speeches of my noble friends Lord Katz, Lord Evans and Lady Levitt. I beg to move.