Holocaust Memorial Day

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very valid point, and I agree with him. As people grow old and pass on, it is up to us, our children and our children’s children to ensure that their story is always told and never forgotten. When I was a little lad of 10 in my home town, I remember a Cheshire Regiment soldier who had been part of the liberation of Belsen telling me about the camp. I had had no comprehension of such things as a 10-year-old; I had always thought that we had been the plucky Brits who fought the war and beat the Germans. The idea of the holocaust had never occurred to me. I remember him telling me how he had been affected by coming upon Belsen as a 19-year-old British soldier, and how it had affected him for the rest of his life. Hon. Members might remember Jeremy Isaacs’ award-winning series “The World at War”, which came out in the early 1970s. Programmes such as those stay fresh in the mind because they used survivors from the camps and the genocide. It is important that they are still shown on television and on the internet. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East for making that very good point.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I should like to add to the tributes being paid to the Holocaust Educational Trust. Its “Lessons from Auschwitz” project was originally funded through a grant from the Treasury, which allowed the programme to be extended to Northern Ireland on one occasion, in which I took part. Is the hon. Gentleman aware, however, that a subsequent decision was made that the money should come from the Department for Education’s budget? That has resulted in the Holocaust Educational Trust having to busk around for money in order to continue to do work in the devolved territories, and the programme has not been available in Northern Ireland. If there is one place in the UK that could benefit in a particularly poignant way from learning the lessons from Auschwitz about prejudice, it is Northern Ireland. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should look again at this matter, and give a UK-wide envelope of funding to the Holocaust Educational Trust?

[Graham Evans]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He raises an important point relating to his constituency. My understanding is that money is available for students from across the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland, to attend Auschwitz. I believe that the Treasury has allocated funds for that exercise.

I have also been privileged to meet survivors and listen to first-hand accounts, but they are harder and harder to find as time takes its toll. As time goes on, it is essential that we work harder than ever to ensure that people remember the holocaust; we cannot allow it to become a remote and distant memory for future generations.

So why should this debate be taking place here in the Chamber today? Those who fail to learn the lessons of history risk repeating them. The holocaust was not the first genocide; nor, sadly, was it the last. That murder by the state on an industrial scale occurred in what was one of the most modern and, arguably, civilised nations in the world at the time. Anti-Semitism, homophobia and prejudice still exist all across the world. Wherever there is unrest, economic difficulty or social imbalance, it is human nature to search for a group to blame. As the global economy falters, those conditions exist across the world, in Europe and even in Great Britain today.