International Holocaust Memorial Day

Lord Sandhurst Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, it is with some humility that I venture forth today, having listened to the speeches of those who have so much more to say. It is absolutely right that we mark the Holocaust with a day of remembrance and with this debate, and all the more so at a time of increased denial and distortion. Anti-Semitism is on the rise and must be put down. Holocaust denial is essentially, but not only, an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. It falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews and others, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, a fabrication, or an exaggeration. The danger of what happened lies now in the mundanity of so much. For example, I happened by chance upon platform 17 at Grunewald station in Berlin, from which so many left to their doom. One only has to spend an afternoon in the house on the Wannsee to see the astonishing murder organisation laid bare. The photographic history set out there also gave me an important insight into the long-standing anti-Semitism, I am afraid, in Germany, for 100 years or more before that. I left that afternoon with a headache; I am sure that others have left with worse.

In this context, we need to fight against so-called historical revisionists, or worse, who deceive and distort the truth. Friday 27 January is an important day for the focus it brings. We must argue against those who seek to introduce false equivalence with individual occasions in war of wrongdoing. Often, these are advanced under cover of apparent balance and objectivity. Perpetrators thereby lessen the truth of the genocide which was at the core of the Holocaust. We need eternal vigilance.

In this context, the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth is to be congratulated on its brand-new galleries dedicated to the Holocaust and the Second Word War. They are 20 minutes’ walk from here. They tell the tales of individual Jews murdered in this catastrophic event. They do so through photos, books, artwork and letters—ordinary lives, ordinary people; people like us. Those galleries occupy thousands of square feet. They won the 2022 Permanent Exhibition of the Year award.

Visible memorials remind and teach, but I hope that the Government will think again about putting such a very big memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens, as they previously proposed. I felt, and it is a personal view, that it was the wrong structure for that site. I will leave it there.

Holocaust denial is a poison. We must strive continuously to eradicate it. That is why this memorial day is so important. We must educate our young so that they and the generations who follow cannot ignore, let alone deny, the horrors of what happened. Only then can we prevent repetitions. We must remember them.