Holocaust Memorial Day

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this deeply emotional debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) on her speech—on a personal level, but also in understanding the Jewish people and what they actually went through.

Antisemitism is not new. It has been prevalent in society for centuries, and it is still prevalent with us today. But what makes the holocaust different is that it shows us the ultimate destination of antisemitism, with a systematic attempt to wipe out the Jewish race and anyone of Jewish religion—not just people who were openly Jewish, but anyone with Jewish genealogy somewhere in their DNA. The way in which people’s backgrounds were traced to see whether any relative or any person of their blood was Jewish was systematic, deliberate and intentional.

I was at school with many Jewish children, and no one ever spoke about the holocaust. It was ignored—perhaps to be airbrushed from history forever because it was such a tragedy. The relatives—the fathers and mothers—of many of my friends had actually come from eastern Europe or Germany as refugees, but they never spoke about the holocaust. Whenever one went for dinner on Friday nights, it was never mentioned—I often wondered why. When we were at school, we never got the opportunity to learn about the horrors of the holocaust and what people went through.

I remember my first visit to Yad Vashem. It was not the Yad Vashem that we see now—I have been there many times since—but the first formation of it. This was back in 1992, I think, on my first visit to Jerusalem. It was a much more intimate museum at that time. It commemorated things that had gone on. It had the first recordings of survivors—people who had sadly passed away, but recorded their testimony—and early photographs and other details of what had gone on in Germany and in eastern Europe, in particular, during the holocaust. That made Yad Vashem more intimate, in many ways, than it is now. When I heard the names of the children being recited, it brought home to me how people could systematically murder children—wipe them off the face of the planet—and what a terrible experience it was. I do not mind admitting that I cried. I cried for humanity, and I cried for the people who had lost their lives and their relatives.

When I was elected to this place, the first all-party parliamentary group that I joined was the one on combating antisemitism, because it is right that we in this House stand up against it. I also do not mind admitting that when Holocaust Memorial Day was first mooted—it was when I was the leader of my party’s group on the London Borough of Brent Council—I was concerned that we were going to get into virtue-signalling. I am glad to say that I was wrong. It is right that we educate people, that we commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz and that we bring to bear greater understanding of the horrors that went on.

I, too, have visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) alluded to the concern that students see Auschwitz for one day, and it would be better if they could stay for longer. The problem with that is funding and the fact that lengthening the amount of time spent away might reduce the numbers who could go on such visits. The problem that I see with the programme of Auschwitz-Birkenau visits is that students learn about what went on there and think that that was it. We need to remember that there was a network of death camps—forced labour camps—across eastern Europe and Germany, where Jews and others were forced into slave labour and then systematically exterminated.

I have often wondered how a civilised nation such as Germany could get into a position in which it would commit such inhumane acts. How could that possibly happen? When we talk about 6 million Jews being killed, it is a number, and it is hard to personalise that down to individual circumstances. It is difficult to visualise the horror of this attempt to wipe out the Jewish race. We have to remember that this did not just take place in one or two years. This was a deliberate attempt by the Nazis to eliminate the Jewish race.

The roots of this are at the end of the great war, when Germany was subjected to severe reparations. That led to incredible poverty in Germany, which then gave rise to the Nazis, who could say, “It’s the Jews’ fault that you haven’t got any money. Let’s take it out on the Jews. If we take Jews out of their position, we can spread the wealth.” That was a deliberate policy, and it should never be allowed to be repeated. There needs to be a greater understanding and appreciation that, from the early 1930s onwards, this systematic approach led to the Shoah. We all have to remember that.

We must also remember that antisemitism was rife in this country at that time. We should not think that it was only going on elsewhere. The thought process and the demeaning of Jewish people was going on in this country, and that is one reason why few people were allowed to escape from Germany to here. Had they been allowed to do so, many people who unfortunately lost their lives in camps would have survived.

I pay tribute to Karen Pollock and her brilliant team at the Holocaust Educational Trust, who do such wonderful work to educate people—young and old—about the horrors of the holocaust. Not everyone can go to Auschwitz-Birkenau and witness evidence of the terrible crimes that were committed. We talk about the shoes, the spectacles and the clothing at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The memory that I have above all else is walking across the park with the lakes, where there is an eerie stillness. No birds tweet, and there is no sign of wildlife. There is nothing there because those ponds were where the Nazis put the ashes after emptying them from the gas chambers and incinerators. The wildlife know what happened, and so should we.

One aspect of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s work that has become more important is the outreach programme. Last year, more than 600 schools partnered with the trust to enhance educational provision. That is important, because it allows holocaust survivors to give their first-hand testimony and lead workshops so that more and more young people can understand what happened and learn the lessons from it. It is important that we remember the survivors.

I echo the need for a holocaust education centre to be set up alongside this building. People visit this place as the cradle of democracy, and it is right that we have a holocaust education centre alongside our Parliamentary Education Centre so that people visiting London can see a proper record of what happened without having to travel to Jerusalem or other parts of the world. I co-chaired the all-party parliamentary group on holocaust memorial in the last Parliament. I pay tribute to my co-chair, Ian Austin, who called out antisemitism and did so much to ensure that people understood the evils of antisemitism and the need for an education centre.

The testimony of survivors is most important. I want to place on record the details of those who sadly lost their lives last year and this year. Eve Glicksman and Henri Obstfeld both died last year, and Hermann Hirschberger MBE passed away on 1 January. One of the most famous holocaust survivors was Gena Turgel, who lived in Stanmore in my constituency. In many ways, she was a pioneer of holocaust education, as she was going into schools and colleges way before many of the current structures were set up. She was born in Krakow in Poland and had eight brothers and sisters. She was only 16 when her home city was bombed on 1 September 1939.

Here is the part of Gena Turgel’s story that I think is most pertinent. Her family had relatives in Chicago, and they planned to leave for the United States, but they made their decision too late, as the Nazis had already invaded and closed all the entry and exit points, so her family had to move to just outside Krakow. In autumn 1941 she was moved to the ghetto in Krakow, and then moved after some of her family were shot by the SS in the ghetto. She was then forced into a labour camp, and in 1945 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was sent with her mother on the death march from Auschwitz, leaving behind her sister, who they never saw again. They then arrived in a further labour camp, were forced on to trucks, and travelled under terrible conditions to Bergen-Belsen, where they arrived in February 1945. On 15 April 1945, the British Army liberated Bergen-Belsen and among the liberators was Norman Turgel, who became Gena’s husband just six months later. Gena passed away in 2018, but her record is in a book called “I Light a Candle”, so her legacy will live on.

Hermann Hirschberger was born in 1926 in Germany. He lived with his mother, father and older brother. He attended a local non-Jewish school; in fact, there were only two Jewish students in his class and school. In 1936, Nazi laws ruled that Jewish children could no longer attend non-Jewish schools—that was part of the programme to eliminate and delegitimise Jewish people.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Those who have not ought to look at Adolf Eichmann’s story. He was appointed in 1932, and in 1933 he started dealing with what was thought of as “the Jewish problem”. The idea was to persecute, isolate, emigrate and then literally exterminate the Jews—it went all that time back.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It was clear that this was going on for a long time before the second world war broke out.

Hermann and his brother had to walk to and from school, because German culture at that time prevented Jewish people from travelling on trams. Jewish people were not allowed to mix with other people on trams—this was the dehumanisation of Jewish people. Of course, on their way to and from school, Hermann and his brother were often verbally and physically attacked by students from the non-Jewish school. The people they called friends suddenly turned on them because they were Jewish.

Then, at 9 pm on 9 November 1938, across Germany the synagogues were burnt, and businesses and homes and shops were smashed. Windows were smashed and homes and buildings were burnt to the ground. This is known as Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.

Hermann and his brother had not seen these crimes at first hand, but when they went to school the following morning, many of their teachers had been arrested and they were sent home. Hermann’s mother went to the bank where his father worked to warn him. However, two members of the Gestapo forced their way in and arrested his father at work. His father was then held for two days before being allowed home.

After Kristallnacht, Hermann’s parents realised, as did many others in Germany, that they could no longer stay there safely. They tried to arrange for the family to leave but could not obtain visas for the whole family. However, they managed to arrange for Hermann and his brother to be sent to England on the Kindertransport, meaning that they were making a huge sacrifice—they knew they would probably never see their sons ever again.

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[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I congratulate the new Members, whose speeches were really impressive, and I especially thank two Labour Members who spoke incredibly effectively, the hon. Members for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) and for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols). All of us will be grateful for the contribution that has been made by each Member, but those in particular were very special.

A year ago, I was at the new cemetery at Bushey for the interment of the remains of six people whose body parts or bones had been found in the Imperial War Museum—they were given as part of a gift. I represented my constituency and my own family. I am not Jewish, but my grandfather’s grandmother was. A year ago, I thought that 45 of his extended family had died at Auschwitz; we now believe that the figure is 62. More than 40 died at Sobibor. There were eight other camps around Europe where others of the 122 that we know of so far perished. Two of them perished at Bergen-Belsen, which is where Anne Frank died.

My father’s cousin George Woodwark was one of the 100 medical students who went out to Belsen in May 1945. Once they arrived at the camp, after liberation, the number of deaths dropped from 500 a day to 100. Within weeks, people were able to say that not a single person had died in one of the huts. That kind of attention to detail is going to be needed for those about whom my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) has spoken. By the way, I agree with that we should always try to remember to say that it was German camps in Poland, not Polish camps. I understand that sensitivity.

At the Imperial War Museum, where 900,000 people a year go to the holocaust galleries—the same number as go to Yad Vashem—they have the records of many of those medical students, as well as of the photographers and journalists who went in in April 1945. The details are there. Someone said that black-and-white photographs cannot convey the smell. In March 1945, some 20,000 people died at Belsen. They were not directly killed; they just died. There were 40,000 people left at liberation, of whom 18,000 died. The conditions in which those people were held are just completely unbelievable.

The camp commander, Josef Kramer, started looking after concentration camps in 1934. It was not in 1939 and not in 1941, when the extermination order came, but in 1934.

I referred earlier to Adolf Eichmann, who got the job of looking after the Jews in 1932 or 1933. The Israelis found him in South America—they nearly got Mengele at the same time. To those who want to study this subject, I recommend looking at Eichmann’s story and what he had done.

There are 37 surnames in my extended family who had deaths. When people start to try to deny the holocaust—whether the holocaust of the Jews, similar genocides that have been spoken about, including Srebrenica, Rwanda or Cambodia during our lifetime, or the other hells that people have been put through, including being sent out to camps by the Soviet Union—we have to keep our eyes open and go on being active. We have to try to do all we can, with others, to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

About 15 years ago, Governments’ duty to protect was being established by the United Nations. Since then, we have gone backwards. There are too many leaders or rulers of countries who have lost the understanding that having a reasonably flexible liberal democracy—and, for that matter, a liberal economy—helps to improve people’s conditions and allows leaders to retire or to be defeated without having to hang on to office. Leaders fear being assassinated and fear having the wealth that they have stolen from their country stolen back from them. They ought to learn—this applies to our friends the Chinese, our friends the Russians, some in eastern Europe and people in South America—that if they are going to be a leader of a country, it is better to be in a democracy so that they can retire and take their pension in their own country, rather than trying to hang on for dear life, because they may lose their life and they will certainly lose their wealth, if they lose their power.

As I said to the Minister earlier, this debate should be about the holocaust and the horrors. It should actually be about how this country did not deal with the question of which year would have been the right one to face up to Mr Hitler in a military sense. Would it have been 1932 or 1933, or any of the years up to 1939? Or, if not 1939, would it have been 1940, 1941 or 1942?

Hitler thought that he could do a deal with the British and isolate us from continental Europe. He was quite surprised when Mr Chamberlain would not go along with that.

We have to say that there is never a right time to go to war. Perhaps we got it wrong over Iraq. In my view, we certainly got it wrong over Syria—we just have to count the millions in Syria who have either died or been sent into exile to see that. There was a miscalculation: Labour thought that the Tories—the coalition—had enough votes to get it through, and we thought that Labour would support us. The House of Commons made a surprising decision—I think that it was the wrong one—and people have suffered because of it. We should accept that we were at fault.

We can go back more than 800 years, to the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, or to other times. The way in which Jewish people have been treated over the years—not just by Government, but in society—has been wrong. We should accept that and apologise for it.

The main point of this debate is about holocaust memorial and how we can make sure that we and others can learn more. I have referred to the Government’s proposals for a holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, which is subject to a call-in, rather surprisingly, before Westminster Council has made a decision.

On another occasion, hopefully in Government time, we should have a debate about how we have got to where we are at the moment. We have an unsatisfactory design for an unsatisfactory proposal that completely fails to meet the specifications of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation that were set out in writing in September 2015. I hope that we find some way of mediating this situation because many of the Jews whom I know think that it is wrong and that they are not being listened to by the foundation or the Government.

I hope that the Government will say—not necessarily in today’s debate, but on another occasion—that they are open to discussions in which they will explain how they put out a document in September 2015 specifying that the centre had to be somewhere in central London between Regent’s Park, Spitalfields and the Imperial War Museum, but they are now saying that the only place that it can be is in an inadequate park close to the House of Lords. However, that is for a different day.

For today, I want to thank the Minister for the way that he introduced the debate and congratulate those who have contributed. By next year, I hope that we will find that progress has been made on getting rid of antisemitism, on keeping a sense of proportion over Israel, and on remembering some of our collective responsibility for allowing the Hitler holocaust to get so far in such a drastic, dramatic, hateful and evil way.