Anti-Semitism

Lord Roberts of Llandudno Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, perhaps I may say how much I appreciate this opportunity that the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, has given us to discuss this situation.

If we each look back at our history, there were massive turning points or milestones. I was a boy of nine at the end of the war in 1945 when I went to the local cinema that was showing a newsreel of Belsen, Mauthausen, Treblinka and Auschwitz. I saw the mounds of skeletons, and those who still existed were shuffling their way to a dream of freedom. I am sure that I was not the only lad who said that this must not happen again; this horror must not be allowed to repeat itself. That is one reason why it is so important that what happened then is not allowed to be forgotten by the current generation in our schools and colleges—the horror of 6 million Jews, as well as many of other ethnic origins, executed in Hitler’s Europe.

Fairly recently, I was in the Parliament in Warsaw looking at the plaques for those parliamentarians who had died in 1939 and 1940. You could see, one after the other, how they had died in those concentration camps and death camps. I was glad that those plaques were there to keep reminding us of the horror of what had happened. Those sorts of events make me what I am. They guide you in your political direction and your religious conviction—to build a world in which every person is honoured and respected, whatever they are and whatever their background. We have to work together, which is one reason why I am such a strong supporter of Europe. The more that nations are bound together and work together, the less likely we are to experience the hurt and destruction of past generations. That is the most valid reason, among others, for my support for the European project.

Karl Lueger was mayor of Vienna and chair of the Christian Social Union and Anti-Semitic Union of the Diet of Lower Austria. As has already been mentioned, he represented a Christian anti-Semitic element. He saw anti-Semitism as a way of channelling public discontent to his political advantage. Goebbels spoke of the,

“parasites of the Jewish race”.

On the other side, there was Judah Leib Pinsker, who in 1882 said he believed that anti-Semitism was hereditary and, as a disease transmitted for 2,000 years, was incurable and an,

“inherited aberration of the human mind”.

We need time to think that through for ourselves.

We should have learnt the lesson of the Holocaust. I am sorry that the Chief Rabbi is not with us today. He said in 2006 that a “tsunami of anti-Semitism” was spreading globally. The Boston Review in 2009 stated that 25 per cent of non-Jewish Americans blamed Jews for the financial crisis of 2008-09. According to a study in 2004, Germany, France, Britain and Russia have the highest rate of anti-Semitic incidents in Europe.

There were victims, of course, even before Hitler. I believe that the survivors of the camps and those who came out of the pogroms have a fear, a deep-rooted suspicion, “What might happen because I am Jewish? What might happen in the future?” Pogroms have taken place over more than one generation and the parents and grandparents who have survived bear the scars and tattoos of that persecution.

I am a Welshman and a Christian, I hope, and when I see the film footage of those little kids being loaded onto the transport wagons and taken away to the death camps, I think of my own seven grandchildren and I say to my family, “This could have been us”. I was looking at television coverage of it only a couple of days ago, where Jewish toddlers in the camps were lifting their sleeves to show their tattoo numbers.

This is an important debate but I must not go over my time. Ours is an awesome responsibility; we must act and legislate so that no future generation suffers in this way. Our own attitudes and conversation can undermine not only the Jewish people but other vulnerable people in our communities such as asylum seekers and refugees. I wish the newspapers would stop demonising people who come to this country. Their headlines create suspicion and hostility and I hope that, without legislation, we will see an end to this demonising.

So much more could be said. For instance, the curriculums in our schools could cover the history of what has happened so that children can learn. I am grateful to the Holocaust Educational Trust for giving youngsters and others the opportunity to go to Auschwitz and other places. Much has been and must be done. In doing it, I hope that we will create for Jewish and other people a generation the like of which they would never have known in past centuries.