Holocaust Memorial Day

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington). We can all join in thanking him for his work as a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust. I add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on introducing the debate. It is entirely appropriate that we consider this matter on a regular basis. When he summed up last year’s debate, which was led by my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans), he said that these debates show the House at its best. Today’s has been no exception, and we should all be proud of that. Last year, I explained that my interest in understanding more about the holocaust had arisen from visits I had made to Rwanda.

In 2012, I went to Auschwitz with students from Rugby high school. Last year, the editor of the local newspaper visited with another school party. In his account, he wrote of the massive impact on the young people who go there. They start off chatty, as teenagers often are, but as they see the horrors of Auschwitz the magnitude of what happened there dawns on them, and they become much more thoughtful and reflective. In addition to having seen what happened in Rwanda and Auschwitz, next month I will be joining a delegation visiting Cambodia, which it is impossible to visit without having regard to the killings that occurred there in the 1970s.

We have heard many emotional and moving speeches. Earlier today, I re-read last year’s debate in Hansard to remind myself of the comments Members made. I vividly remember the remarks of the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who spoke about his meetings with holocaust survivors—some of whom were members of his family—what they had seen and gone through, and the fact that it had never left them, not least because of the numbers tattooed on their arms. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) gave an account of what he had seen in Bosnia in 1992. He concluded by saying that we must prevent an event such as the holocaust from ever happening again, which is, of course, one of the reasons for holding this debate and for the programme of events run by the HET. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) reminded us, when we read about the horrors of Bosnia, Cambodia, Darfur and Rwanda, we sometimes wonder whether we have learned the lessons of the holocaust. When I visited memorials in Rwanda and spoke to people who wanted to talk about the genocide, one question I was regularly asked was, “Why did the international community stand by and let it happen?” We might ask ourselves whether we are doing enough to bring conflict and bloodshed to an end across the world today.

On Monday, as part of raising awareness for Holocaust memorial day, I will join students from across Rugby at a study day at the art gallery and museum, which has an exhibition exploring the life of Anne Frank. She hid for several years in her father’s business premises in Amsterdam before being found and taken to her death at Belsen. The exhibition consists of paintings by artist Anne Berger, who has visited the Anne Frank house and created a number of images of her life. Using those images, students from schools across the town will take part in workshop groups and explore themes of discrimination, refugees and the journeys they made. I am very much looking forward to joining those students to talk about the issues and understand their perspective of what happened during the holocaust and elsewhere in the world.

I am also looking forward to sharing my thoughts on what I have learned not only from my visits, but from the two debates in which I have taken part in the House. I have learned as much from the speeches of other Members as I have from seeing things. I look forward to celebrating the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust in ensuring that the world never forgets.