Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords I rise to support this Bill as it stands and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, on bringing it through. A cursory glance at my interests in the register will reveal that I have many interests in the Jewish community. I am president, chairman or vice-president of a number of Jewish community organisations, including a synagogue, a think tank and a leadership group. Not listed is my involvement in and support of a number of other Jewish-related charities, such as the Holocaust Education Trust. I was at the dinner where my noble friend Lord Cameron made his eloquent speech with this idea. However, I cannot possibly claim, and would not wish to, that I represent any of them or that any of them agree on anything, particularly this issue. They all have different views of different strength.

I have to be honest that, initially, I struggled to come to terms with any objection. As Sir Mick Davis said in his commission’s report,

“The Holocaust was also a catastrophe for human civilisation. The very scientific and industrial innovation which had propelled society forward was used on an extreme scale to take humanity into the deepest abyss of moral depravity”.


It was so depraved and evil that it has taken some many decades to be able to address it and consider how to mark it.

As my noble friend Lord Cameron and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, those of us who have been to a camp, read about the Holocaust or seen documentaries can never forget the images and the stories, often told first-hand, but not for much longer. Those who do not have a personal connection will from time to time be reminded by popular culture. Who will ever forget the sight of Dr Jacob Bronowski in “The Ascent of Man” standing in a pond where the ashes of 4 million people reside or how popular culture reminds us of the bravery of Oskar Schindler and Nicholas Winton or The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, the story of Rudolf Vrba told by Jonathan Freedland, or even our own noble friend Lord Finkelstein’s telling of his family’s ordeals at the hands of Hitler? However, these will pass. The world will move on and perhaps fail to believe that a country that was at the very peak of the civilised world, the most sophisticated, mannered, wealthy, cultured country in existence at the time—Austria, as Stefan Zweig described it—could have produced Adolf Hitler? Your Lordships do not need me to tell you all this. We are all of a mind to ensure that the creation of an evil capable of perpetrating the humiliation, depravation and, ultimately, attempted extermination of the Jewish people and others needs to be prevented from ever happening again.

I want to address some of the concerns raised. In all honesty, I find it very painful to have to have a public argument on this debate. I am more than happy to have a ding-dong and set-to with noble Lords about Brexit, the economy or taxation, but this is difficult. It upsets me to know that some Peers are against this proposal, particularly those whom I rate so very highly and respect more than I can say in public without embarrassing them and me, none more so than the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, whose description of her interest in her petition is so moving, starting with the words:

“I am a direct descendent of Holocaust victims”.


Who am I to disagree with someone with that pedigree?

I want to say that I understand the noble Baroness’s concerns. I agree with her that this must not be just a memorial to British values. It must retain its focus on the 6 million exterminated and the attempt to eradicate one single group of people. We need to ensure that this memorial and learning centre explains that this really was an attempt at a genocide in the true sense of the word, not as currently bandied around in some parts of the Middle East at the moment—to do so is gut-wrenching.

Her concerns that the learning centre is too small when compared to the commission’s recommendations are well made, but there can be other learning centres for greater study. This venue will make people, in particular children who come to visit us in Parliament, stop and stare, not just now, not just for decades, but in hundreds of years, and say “Wow! Why did they build that here? Why is it so prominent with its 22 fins?”. That reaction will come only from a structure and venue as currently proposed and with an opportunity for visitors to learn enough about what happened to understand its importance.

We in the Jewish community, and others, have spent too long arguing over this proposal and, as we have done so, survivors such as Zigi Shipper, Sir Ben Helfgott and many others, so keen to see it built, sadly are no longer with us. We can ensure that the memorial and learning centre achieves the spirit of the objectives of the commission, we can address many of the concerns raised by the petitioners against it, but we should not allow the many nimby and other objectors to overturn a project whose time has come.