Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Tom Randall Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con) [V]]

The Holocaust is not the only example of man’s inhumanity to man. It is not the only genocide, and while it touched every corner of Europe, the United Kingdom was, relatively speaking at least, barely affected. So why remember? It is surely because, as we have already heard so vividly today, it still has the power to shock. The scale is difficult to comprehend. This was not a rampage or a single, impulsive act. Winston Churchill warned in 1940 of

“a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science”.

In the “final solution”, that was made real by educated men, calm deliberation and technical precision. The holocaust was made possible by attitudes that were prevalent in early 20th-century society.

The reason we should continue to remember is encapsulated in the post-war experiences of Toivi Blatt, a Polish Jew who escaped from the Sobibor extermination camp and later found a new life in Israel and then in the United States. Laurence Rees’s book, “Auschwitz: the Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’”, tells how in the early 1990s Toivi returned to visit his home village of Izbica in eastern Poland. He visited his old family home, from before they were taken to the camps, and asked the new owner if he could look around the house where he grew up. The new owner was reluctant, but the offer of US$3 convinced him. In the living room, Toivi noticed a chair that had belonged to his father. The homeowner said that that was impossible, but Toivi turned over the chair to reveal the family name written on the base. “Mr Blatt, why the comedy with the chair?” the homeowner asked.  “I know why you’re here. You have come for the hidden money. We could divide it 50/50.” Toivi was furious, and left immediately. There is some poetic justice in the story. When Toivi next returned to Izbica, he found his old house in ruins. A neighbour told him: “When you left, we were unable to sleep because day and night he was looking for the treasure you were supposed to have hidden. He took the floor apart, the walls apart, everything. And later he found himself in the situation that he couldn’t fix it—it would cost too much money. And so now it’s a ruin.” Poetic justice, perhaps, but a reminder that while the attitudes that triggered the Holocaust are less prevalent today, they have not been extinguished. We must remember.