Holocaust Memorial Day 2012

Lord Walney Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

I feel a sense of privilege, and of inadequacy, to be following such a powerful speech by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), in which he recounted his own personal experience of the kind of horror that we are debating. If, however, a sense of inadequacy were to deter Members of Parliament from making speeches, our parliamentary days would be much shorter, so I will press on none the less. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) on securing such an important debate. It should become a regular fixture in the parliamentary calendar.

I am looking forward to going tomorrow to Sandside Lodge special school in my constituency to meet Blake Martin, who has just been on the latest round of trips to Auschwitz-Birkenau, organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust. I go with a slight sense of trepidation, because this time last year I visited that school to listen to an account of the trip made by James Simpson, whom I had had the opportunity and privilege to accompany. He gave a memorable account of an experience that was clearly as deeply seared on his memory as it will always be on mine.

When I last visited the school for that purpose, I remember the overwhelming experience of looking at faces in the assembly, and realising that those children and students with learning difficulties or disabilities would have been ruthlessly exterminated by the Nazis, along with so many others. Being at that school reinforced in my mind the importance of the work undertaken by the Holocaust Educational Trust and others. Indeed, I wish to congratulate and underline my respect for the Holocaust Educational Trust. The MBE that was graciously conferred on its chief executive by Her Majesty was well deserved.

The holocaust is close to being unimaginable and involves a level of horror and dislocation that people simply cannot fully understand unless they are subjected to it. It is important that we as parliamentarians continue to help every new generation, and allow and enable them to get as close as they can to that horror. For me, and for everyone who has been there, visiting the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau was the most intense experience that I have ever had, and the few hours spent there absorbing the sense of sheer horror, hopelessness and desperation that pervades that place were transformational. We know that simply being on that site all those years later cannot get close to what the victims of the holocaust must have endured, yet the sheer power of being there conveys the importance of the work that we need to do.

The Nazis, even more than the first world war, definitively broke what had unfortunately turned out to be a naïve faith in modernity, and a belief that the constant path of progress would ensure societies that were ever better for their citizens and ever more humane. In fact, the technological progress that accelerated in the previous century made possible the sheer industrial scale of the evil and destruction of the holocaust. Of the many lessons that we take from visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, the lesson that things will improve only if we have the determination to make them better is fundamental. We will succeed in making the holocaust unique only if we understand that we must always be vigilant and do more against the evil and horror of genocide, such as that recounted so vividly by the hon. Member for Beckenham.

Unless we have the resolve to stop it, evil will spread as it did only 70 years ago. As the hon. Member for Croydon Central powerfully said, at the highest level we must never lose our determination as a nation or—this is fundamental—our capacity to act and use force to protect common humanity, as and when it becomes necessary. There are things that we must do every day beyond that, and we must resolve to have zero tolerance for anti-Semitism and prejudice whenever and wherever it occurs, as—unfortunately and sadly—it too often does in the UK and elsewhere.

Parliament must provide support to the Holocaust Educational Trust, and others, to ensure that understanding of the holocaust remains alive once it slips out of living memory, as it is unfortunately soon set to do.