Holocaust Memorial Day

Alistair Burt Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Holocaust Memorial Day.

I am pleased and honoured to be asked to open the debate to commemorate Holocaust memorial day. This debate has been held in the House since 2008. As colleagues will know, it is timed to be close to Holocaust memorial day, 27 January—the day that is linked to the liberation of the most notorious of the Nazi death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

I welcome the support from my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr O’Brien), my hon. Friends the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd), the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), and my hon. Friends the Members for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) and for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), who represented me at the Backbench Business Committee in order to see this debate put on. I also thank colleagues in all parts of the House who signed the early-day motion associated with the debate and a commemoration of the memorial day.

I thank—on behalf of all of us, I am sure—the Holocaust Educational Trust for its briefings and support, and for its extraordinary work in ensuring that a memory of the holocaust is kept alive by providing resources for education, the opportunity to visit Auschwitz, and the chance to meet remaining survivors.

I am conscious that a number of schools will watch and read this debate and encourage their students to do so, and I think that one of my duties in leading it is to explain exactly what the holocaust was, what it all means to us personally and why it remains necessary to remember it. I am conscious of time and that a number of colleagues want to get in, so I will do my best to be as brief as is necessary.

What was the holocaust and why does it matter to me? I was born just 10 years after the end of the second world war and brought up in north Manchester, one of the main centres of the Jewish community outside London. Jewish boys and girls were a key part of our Bury grammar school community and I was aware of them from my earliest days at five years old. As friends, we played and grew up together, and I picked up quite naturally on their different holidays and why Saturdays, not Sundays, were religiously important to them. As I got older and learned more about the war that fate decreed I had avoided, I became aware that my carefree childhood and youth had been bought at a terrible price by an older generation who had fought for my freedom.

I also became aware of something else: although a number of the families of my friends had shared that war against tyranny, they had also experienced something so profoundly shocking and beyond comprehension that it could in those days hardly be spoken of. They had experienced it not because of anything they had done, but just because of who they were: Jewish. It was the holocaust.

A good definition of the holocaust is provided in the opening displays of the permanent exhibition at the Imperial War museum in London:

“Under the cover of the Second World War, for the sake of their ‘new order,’ the Nazis sought to destroy all the Jews of Europe. For the first time in history, industrial methods were used for the mass extermination of a whole people. Six million were murdered, including 1,500,000 children. This event is called the Holocaust.

The Nazis enslaved and murdered millions of others as well. Gypsies, people with physical and mental disabilities, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, trade unionists, political opponents, prisoners of conscience, homosexuals, and others were killed in vast numbers.”

It started, of course, with politics—the free and democratic election of Hitler and his Nazi party in 1933—and it then continued with the law. In April 1933, the law for the restoration of the professional civil service excluded Jews from professions. In September 1935, the Nuremberg laws banned intermarriage and sexual relations between Jews and Aryans and stripped Jews of their citizenship and all legal rights. Gradually, the civil rights of Jews across Germany were taken away—from being banned from being members of sports clubs in April 1933 to not being allowed to buy milk or eggs in July 1942.

And then the war. Shortly after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Nazis began to force Jews under their control to move into ghettos. This short-term measure soon developed into a long-term policy. The first ghetto in Poland was set up in October 1939. The Nazis established more than 1,000 ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union alone. Living conditions were abysmal. Often several families lived where before there had been one. Jews were not allowed to leave or have any contact with the outside world. Food rations were at starvation level and disease was rife through lack of clean water and sanitation. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the ghettos. In the wake of the Warsaw ghetto revolt in April 1943, the Nazis decided to liquidate the remaining large ghettos. Eventually, those who lived in the ghettos were deported in cattle trucks, without food, sanitation or water, to concentration camps.

Let me quote from a remarkable memoir entitled, “Out of the Depths”, for which I am indebted to Israeli Ambassador Daniel Taub, who gave it to me at Christmas. It is the memoir of a small boy who survived deportation from Piotrków in Poland to the concentration camp of Buchenwald and who grew up to become Israel’s Chief Rabbi: Israel Meir Lau. His father, also a rabbi, is attacked during the process of deportation, and Rabbi Lau writes not only of the incident, but of how it was so important to him—and the Jewish people—in surviving the years to come. He says:

“Today, looking back on the six years of that war, I realize that the worst thing I endured in the Holocaust was not the hunger, the cold, or the beatings; it was the humiliation. It is almost impossible to bear the helplessness of unjustified humiliation. Helplessness becomes linked with that dishonor…

When a young boy sees his father beaten by a Gestapo captain with a maikeh”—

a rubber club—

“kicked with nailed boots, threatened by dogs, falter from the force of the blow, and suffer public shaming, he carries that terrible scene with him for the rest of his life. Yet I also carry the image of Father, with astonishing spiritual strength, bracing himself from falling, refusing to beg for his life, and standing tall once again before the Gestapo captain. For me, that image of his inner spiritual strength completely nullifies the helplessness that accompanied the humiliation.”

The Nazis established hundreds of concentration camps across Europe and six extermination camps located in Poland. The largest of the camps was Auschwitz-Birkenau, established by the Nazis in 1940 at a Polish army barracks in the suburbs of a small Polish city. Auschwitz-Birkenau was actually three separate camps with three different purposes, but Birkenau—also known as Auschwitz II—was the main death camp, built in 1941 on the site of the village of Brzezinka, 3 km from Auschwitz. The overall number of victims at Auschwitz-Birkenau in the years 1940 to 1945 is estimated to be just over 1 million—between 1.1 million and 1.5 million—people, the majority of whom were Jews and died in the gas chambers.

Those are the facts about the holocaust. I did not know all that when I was young, and I did not at once understand it all. My holocaust education and experience has continued throughout my life and my political career. As a student, I paid my first visit to Israel, and the first of a number of visits to Yad Vashem, which many other hon. Members have visited. That great centre tells the story of the holocaust through painful documentary, but, most poignantly of all, though family pictures and artefacts of the lost—the lost people and their lost homes, villages and towns.

We will all have our own memories of Yad Vashem, and know the points in the building at which we are stopped in our tracks. For many, it is the pile of children’s shoes, but for me it has always been the children’s memorial, where, surrounded by everlasting light, the names of the children of the holocaust are read out, with their age and location. It represents the most painful loss of all—the loss of innocence and of promise.

Yad Vashem, and other excellent memorials, such as that designed by Daniel Libeskind in Berlin and the Washington holocaust centre, I have found profoundly moving. Auschwitz, where many colleagues in the Chamber have been, should be part of people’s life journey to understand their world. I particularly commend the Holocaust Educational Trust’s work in providing such a chance to so many young people. Strangely, it is one visit I have not yet made. I do not know why. Perhaps, with all I now know, I am afraid to confront the emotion of being there, but I know that the time is coming when it will be right for me to go.

One place I have been is Warsaw. I have long been inspired by the extraordinary story of the rising of the Warsaw ghetto—the just over one mile square area that housed some 400,000 men, women and children. After some 250,000 had been deported by 1943, to die at Treblinka, the ghetto rose. The fiercest fighting was between mid-April and 16 May 1943, after which both life and the ghetto were extinguished. Some of the world’s most harrowing images of war and suffering come from the ghetto.

There is little left of the ghetto—the Soviet empire had no wish to commemorate or preserve the area, and built upon it—but I spent a morning tracing a couple of buildings, a handful of cobbles, the tramlines and the renowned wall on Sienna street, just to connect in some physical way with what had happened. Remarkably, there is a synagogue, which was saved because it was used as a stables by the Wehrmacht. There is a memorial at the Umschlagplatz, the station used for people to begin their journey to Treblinka.

The stories of survivors such as Chief Rabbi Lau, so painstakingly preserved, remain vital to the memory of what happened. Reading them is graphic. Meeting survivors is both humbling and inspiring, and I have been fortunate to meet several over the years. I commend the UK’s ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, and his team for their inspiration in co-ordinating funding from the UK to create a remarkable series of centres called Café Britannia.

Nearly one in every three senior citizens in Israel survived the camps or lived under Nazi occupation. According to a survey that was released earlier this year by the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, 37 Israeli holocaust survivors pass away each day. Of those who remain, many live alone and in poverty, psychologically and physically scarred by the trauma of their experiences. Those survivors often carry a deep need to share their stories, both to ease their personal pain and to educate others. In some cases, they crave the company of their fellow survivors—the only ones who can genuinely relate to their feelings and memories. As time goes by, the window of opportunity for reaching out to those ageing, vulnerable citizens grows smaller.

The UK has been involved in co-ordinating finance from the Jewish community and others in this country to fund a series of centres where survivors can meet socially. More than 1,000 survivors are now enjoying company and activities through the Café Britannia network, which represents 20% of all the social clubs for survivors in Israel. In January 2011, while I was Minister for the middle east, I visited one such centre to find people from Manchester and hear about their extraordinary backgrounds. Thus, history and the contemporary meet.

That leads me to my last point, which is why we still need to remember. The holocaust is unique. There is no parallel—it was a cataclysmic event of such size and quantity that there can be none. Although its facts are unique, the evil heart that created the horror still beats. As Solzhenitsyn said in “The Gulag Archipelago”:

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”

It is because of that universal appeal that I am pleased that Holocaust memorial day embraces the genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur. I do not believe that the unique nature of the holocaust is devalued by recognising the horrors that have occurred since. The generosity of the Jewish community in being inclusive reminds all of us of our common humanity. However, we should still choose our words and descriptions with care so as never to minimise the scale of what the holocaust represents. If that heart of evil has produced what it has since, it can do so again. The greatest enemy of those who wish to cause us harm is memory—the human conviction never to forget, so as to warn others.

The evidence that we need to do so is all around us. Anti-Semitism remains on some university campuses in the United Kingdom and appears to fuel the rise of proto-fascist parties in continental Europe. Other Members might raise Jobbik in Hungary and the potential visit of an individual to the United Kingdom. Jobbik holds 12% of the parliamentary seats in Hungary. It has been reported that in 2012, the party’s foreign affairs spokesman called for a list to be compiled of all Hungarian citizens of Jewish origin as they were a “national threat”.

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman has referred to a Hungarian neo-Nazi who intends to come to my constituency this Sunday to organise an anti-Semitic rally. That is the constituency that contains the Jewish museum, where the national launch of the Holocaust memorial day commemoration will take place on Monday. Does he share my view, which I have expressed to the Home Secretary, that she should use the powers that she has to keep this stinking, rotten, neo-Nazi alien out of this country?

[Alistair Burt]

I share the concern of the right hon. Gentleman and the views of the Jewish community, which have been expressed in exactly the same way. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary takes due note of what has been said by so many.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has mentioned all the people who were killed in Auschwitz. As somebody of Polish origin, I know that this issue is very important for all of us. Will he pay tribute to the many people in Poland and throughout Europe who hid Jewish families, at great risk to themselves and their families, because many people were spared the concentration camps by people who realised that what the Nazis were doing was so deplorable?

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point. Colleagues will appreciate that when opening a debate it is not possible to cover everything, but the role of the righteous gentile, appropriately recorded at Yad Vashem and other places, is an honourable one. Year after year we hear more stories of people who did extraordinary work, putting themselves at risk, and those in Poland who did that are to be as well thought of as any, bearing in mind the horror of Nazi occupation.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend—I see him as a Friend in this—on securing this debate. Does he agree with me about the Jobbik leader and the problems originating from that? I am going shortly to see the Hungarian ambassador about that matter. Does my right hon. Friend agree that inter-parliamentary co-operation in dealing with racism and anti-Semitism is essential in stopping the spread of that kind of vehemently racist party?

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend’s record on this issue is one of great courage and hard work over many years, and he again makes a good point. Parliamentarians need to work with each other to prevent abuse of parliamentarians and loss of their rights in certain places—the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) does an invaluable job in the Inter-Parliamentary Union on that—and I and other colleagues would be interested to hear more about how co-operation between parliamentarians, particularly in Europe, can counter that scourge.

I am conscious of time, so let me move to a conclusion. Anti-Semitism also pains the people of France, who saw three Jewish children murdered in Toulouse in May 2012, and where we currently see public demonstrations of support outside synagogues for an entertainer of clear anti-Semitic views, who has allowed a holocaust denier to share his stage. This man is associated with a salute—the quenelle—made notorious in this country through its use by the footballer Nicolas Anelka. It is for Mr Anelka to answer the charges laid against him and I do not intend to make him the subject of our debate, but I would contrast his behaviour with that of the English football team who, with the support of the Holocaust Educational Trust, made a journey to Auschwitz during the European Championships of 2012. Captain Steven Gerrard spoke of the impact of that visit on the players, their awareness of their privileged life and their position as role models, and their understanding of that. I think those are the footballers whose views we should note today, and we should watch the film of their time there made by the Football Association and the Holocaust Educational Trust. That is what schools should look at as representing role models in this country.

Last January I attended the commemoration of Holocaust memorial day at the London Jewish Cultural Centre in north London, at the request of one of my longest standing and much loved friends from college, Mandy King. I took part in a moving morning of music and verse, with predominantly young people drawn from diverse communities. I was proud to follow at that ceremony a young girl from the Islamic Foundation. What a statement from both Jew and Muslim that they could stand together, because in my recent role I have been more acutely aware than ever of the pain in the Islamic world from so many sources, of the misery inflicted every day through sectarian violence, of that evil which flows through too many human hearts, and the pain of unresolved injustice, which perhaps this year might finally be addressed. All could be put aside in remembering the uniqueness of holocaust, while the generosity of the Jewish community in sharing the pain now has powerful resonance throughout the country.

With many thanks to those who work so hard around the country to remember this weekend and involve so many, let me conclude with Primo Levi’s haunting poem, “Shema”, which echoes the pain of his existence in Auschwitz:

“You who live secure

In your warm houses,

Who return at evening to find

Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man

Who labours in the mud

Who knows no peace

Who fights for a crust of bread

Who dies at a yes or a no.

Consider whether this is a woman,

Without hair or name

With no more strength to remember

Eyes empty and womb cold

As a frog in winter

Consider that this has been:

I commend these words to you

Engrave them on your hearts

When you are in your house, when you walk on your way.

When you go to bed, when you rise.

Repeat them to your children.

Or may your house crumble.

Disease render you powerless.

Your offspring avert their faces from you.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Burt]

I am sure all of us echo your remarks, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I will comment on the speech by the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) in a moment. I am probably more proud to be winding up the debate, having heard it, than I was when I started. I will make five brief points.

First, I commend this debate to any of those who watch our proceedings, whether those in schools thinking about Holocaust memorial day, or young people who want to watch something not just on this issue but on how Parliament works. The debate has been exceptional. We have had personal experiences, family experiences, difficult experiences of some horrors and a collective knowledge of the subject that has been brought about by those who work so hard for us outside, including the Holocaust Educational Trust. The debate has been a model of its kind. I am proud to have led it, but even prouder of the speeches we have heard this afternoon.

Secondly, I would say, “Do fix on the hope.” “Schindler’s List” does not conclude with the death of the little girl in the red dress; it concludes with the generations who were saved by Oscar Schindler and the generations still to come. The personal experiences and journeys referred to by colleagues are a reflection of hope. As the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) said, the survivors won, not the Nazis. In all our reading on the holocaust, we should fix upon the hope.

Thirdly, we must not believe that it cannot happen again. Above all, we should keep in our minds that it could happen again. It is the evil in human hearts, which is reflected the moment one begins, unjustifiably, to separate someone as the “other”, that provides the opportunity: so long as somebody can be “Untermensch”, so long as someone is not like you, so long as someone is not human, they can be disposed of. As colleagues have said, the world is full of examples, even today, of where that is true, so do not believe that it cannot happen again.

Fourthly, reflect on this: we know about the holocaust for a number of reasons, but two are primary. First, people survived. That is how we know about it: people have their stories. Memorial day and everything we have spoken about today depends on the fact that people survive and can tell their stories. The second, and more difficult thing that people have to remember, is that we know about it because it was stopped. The holocaust did not come to a natural end. People did not suddenly wake up and say, “This is wrong and we must stop doing it.” It was physically stopped. It would be wonderful if we lived in a world where there was no physical need to intervene and stop people doing wrong. I do not believe that we do. That is why an international security system exists to protect people. This is something to debate: at what stage do people say, “Enough is enough” and do something about it?

Fifthly, I say. “Do go.” So many of the speeches we have heard today have been influenced and coloured by the fact that we have been to places: the Anne Frank house, Yad Vashem, museums around the world and, above all, Auschwitz. Go and get the sense of what this was about from the physical presence in various places.

It would be the greatest honour for me if I could make my first journey to Auschwitz with the hon. Member for West Ham. Perhaps we could support each other as we go. I would love to take that journey with her.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I thank the House for giving us time for this important debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Holocaust Memorial Day.