Holocaust Memorial Day

Theresa Villiers Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

I feel humbled and privileged to take part in this solemn debate. This year, as in past years, it is an opportunity to show the House of Commons at its best. It is an honour to follow the powerful interventions by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and others.

Every year in preparing for Holocaust Memorial Day, I struggle all over again to comprehend how a well-educated, highly cultured and seemingly civilised society in Germany could turn on its Jewish citizens with such cold-hearted barbarism. Those Jewish communities had been part of central and eastern Europe for centuries, and were so dehumanised by hate-filled Nazi propaganda that most people just stood by when their Jewish neighbours were herded in ghettos and then on to trucks and trains bound for the death camps.

Holocaust Memorial Day is an opportunity to remember a series of genocidal crimes, including the holodomor perpetrated on the Ukrainian people, about which I have spoken in past debates. But it is hard to think of anything that can match the sheer scale of the evil perpetrated by the Nazis in carrying out murder on an industrial scale, brutally cutting short the lives of six million Jewish men, women and children, and millions of others just because they were gay, Roma, Sinti, disabled or because they were brave enough to resist the Nazis. We need to remember the heroes who stepped up and saved people, sometimes putting their own lives at risk. There were heroes here who organised the Kindertransport and saved many lives.

We also need to reflect on this country’s approach to its mandate in Palestine and its decision to seek to reduce Jewish migration there in the 1930s, just when so many were trying to flee attacks in Europe. It is possible that many more could have escaped the Nazis if the British mandate authorities had taken a different approach. Even after the savagery of the holocaust was fully revealed, British resistance to Jewish migration to the Holy Land continued. Those Jewish people trying to make a new life for themselves in the Jewish state that had been promised were turned away and left in displaced persons camps. Some were even sent back to Germany, from where they had come.

As everyone has said, it is crucial that we remember the victims of the holocaust at a time when antisemitism is rising again in a way that is utterly unacceptable in any civilised society. The coming days are an opportunity once again to warn younger generations of the appalling consequences of antisemitism and where it can lead. I would recommend that anyone wishing to understand what happened visit Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. It is the only museum that has reduced me to tears. One of the most powerful exhibits is the display of shoes taken from holocaust victims at the concentration camps. These personal possessions—suitcases, glasses and shoes —provide one of the defining images of holocaust remembrance.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards), I felt a palpable sense of shock a few weeks ago when I saw another collection of shoes and belongings forever lost to the Jewish people who owned them. I saw that in an exhibition in Tel Aviv on the Hamas terror attack on the Nova music festival. The items had been retrieved from the Nova site and provided a truly chilling and harrowing reminder of the Yad Vashem display. I saw the Nova exhibition as a part of a trip to Israel declared in my Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

During that visit, I, too, saw the chilling 47-minute film of footage from the 7 October attacks. I did not want to see the film, but I felt I ought to. The horror of that footage stays with me in my nightmares, and I mean that literally—it haunts my sleeping hours. Once you see it, you cannot ever unsee it. I do not want to dwell on the horrors that the film contained, but I was struck by the brief clip shown of young people hiding in portaloos or seemingly in a rubbish skip at the festival. Those scenes are painfully reminiscent of the holocaust and of scenes portrayed in films such as “Schindler’s List” of children desperately trying to find any hiding place to escape the liquidation of the ghetto and deportation. It was a horror to see those scenes replayed just over 100 days ago. We should be in no doubt in this House of the genocidal intentions of Hamas towards Israel and all Jewish people—intentions in their founding charter, and which they have reiterated many times since the 7 October atrocity.

I want to conclude with a reflection on the recent brave article by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, responding to those who accuse Israel of genocide. We should heed his words that misappropriation of the word “genocide” is an affront to the victims of the unspeakable crimes that we remember today. As he said, its use in this context is the ultimate demonisation of the Jewish state. It is a moral inversion that undermines the memory of the worst crimes in human history. As we say, “Never again”, on Holocaust Memorial Day, and we renew our commitment to combating antisemitism and racism, let us remember the November march in London, where hundreds of thousands turned out to support Israel and the Jewish community, many with placards telling us, “Never again is now”. Our vigilance against anti-Jewish hatred must never cease, wherever and however it manifests itself.