Holocaust Memorial Day

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

It is indeed a privilege to speak in this debate, because I believe it shows the best of this House when we come together in a common cause. I thank the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for securing the debate and for his powerful speech, and hon. Members on both sides of the House for their powerful contributions. I am sorry that I do not have the time to pay tribute to all those who have spoken, but I must mention my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), who did indeed demonstrate the power of words, however difficult it must have been for him to share that story. I am so pleased that, with all-party support, this debate is a fixture in the calendar. It is not, however, just a fixture or something we do by rote; it is there to remind us of the horrors of the past and for us to look forward to the future. Sadly, this year, it is needed more than ever.

The power of words in this place is well recognised—sometimes, too many words—so it is an appropriate theme for Holocaust Memorial Day. I thank the Holocaust Educational Trust for all its work and for deciding on this as its theme. I have visited Dachau and I have visited the Washington Holocaust museum, and it is ironic that words could not describe the experience we had going round them. I have never been to a place where there was complete silence as people viewed and experienced everything there. That was particularly the case in Washington, where visitors are given a card with a name on, and when they come out at the end they are told whether they have survived—and, sadly, nearly everyone does not survive the experience. It took a good 10 minutes for us even to speak after that experience.

We are grateful to the survivors because they speak about their experiences and, however hard it is for them to do so, they tell us what it was like for them and their families. They are not just nameless and faceless victims, and they are not just 6 million; they are people with families—they were brothers, sisters, mums, dads. In a time with fewer survivors, we have to ensure that their words and their experiences live on and are communicated to future generations. As Anne Frank wrote, the words in her diary were a way of living on; she did not know that they would be her only way of living on.

We have to remember that words can be a force for good as well as a force for evil. Sadly, on this Holocaust Memorial Day, we are reminded that anti-Semitism and hate speech are no longer just in the past. As a child, I was told, as I am sure many people were told, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” but words do hurt: they are the start of hurting people. They are the start of stereotyping, name calling and vilification, which dehumanises people. Sadly, this is still happening today, possibly facilitated by social media, which allows people to say things anonymously that they would never say to somebody’s face.

I am very sorry that colleagues and others on both sides of the House have suffered some of this vilification. They should report it, and it the duty of all of us to support them if they are suffering from this vilification. It is our duty to call out, and to support others in calling out, anti-Semitism and hate speech wherever it is found. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) said, we cannot stand idly by. To stand idly by is to give tacit support to those who hate. Holocaust Memorial Day is not just to look back on a period of history; it is to reflect on how this happened. It is to reflect on how ordinary people were divided against each other and could commit dreadful atrocities on another human being, because words had told them that those others were not human beings, that they were a different race and culture and that that was bad. Such things are not bad: differences should be celebrated, not vilified. It is our duty to show that we can reflect and look forward and to demonstrate by our actions and our words that we will not stand idly and silently by.