International Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, around the world there are over 300—some say thousands—of Holocaust memorials, and in the UK at least six. All the while, anti-Semitism is growing rapidly and fearfully, not least amongst the young—for example, the National Union of Students. Yet these students have had compulsory Holocaust education at school. It seems to have taught them nothing, except that one can attack Jews most hurtfully by using Nazi symbols. This is why: it is taught as an event of the past—over there, all done with, nothing to do with us. The dotted line is not drawn between remembering the Holocaust—which we have done in many recordings by survivors and in museums—and the anti-Semitism of today. As the late Lord Sacks said, first it was our religion they hated, then our race, and today our nation state, Israel. Israel is the focus of today’s anti-Semitism. One cannot separate Holocaust remembrance from anti-Semitism, because that is to deny the centrality of the Jewish experience and the unique nature of the Jew-hatred that drove it. Also, it is because in part there might have been many fewer deaths if the allies had not been so reluctant to take refugees and had not kept Palestine closed to them.

Holocaust remembrance has to mean three things. First, the fate of the Jews has to be set in context, as Lord Sacks explained. Jewish history, culture and traditions have to be taught, the Jewish contribution to the world before the Holocaust, the hatred inculcated by teaching and preaching over the centuries, and the revival afterwards, including Israel and the attachment of the Jews to their land from biblical times onwards. The noble Lord, Lord Mann, set this out in his report on anti-Semitism. He said that schools must teach contemporary anti-Semitism coming from the left, the right and from Islamists.

Secondly, anti-Semitism is not over and done with. Generalities about hatred and intolerance miss the point. Too many politicians strike a pose by a memorial and declare themselves to be without a racist bone in their bodies. As the American Dara Horn said, they love dead Jews—not so much the living. Building memorials is superfluous: they portray Jews only as dead and victims, and that is not the image we want at the centre of our political life. When designed by financiers and politicians rather than scholars, as is the case with the new plan for Westminster, they are used for political ends, mistakenly presenting British values as the antidote to Jew-hatred and genocide. To claim that the vision of the Palace of Westminster as one emerges from a Holocaust memorial is some sort of epiphany and redemption only engenders complacency. A memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens would be environmentally damaging and would break the promise of 100 years to keep it open. The design is second-hand and meaningless, and the contents have been described by Sir Richard Evans as a national embarrassment. It will be ineffective and essentially not about the Holocaust, not a memorial, and not fitting for my relatives who died. The Jewish community needs to be fully consulted over any plans to build new memorials, and debate should not be closed down as it has been; objectors should not insultingly be labelled as anti-Semitic. The recommendations of the 2015 Prime Minister’s commission on anti-Semitism need to be revived, with its emphasis on a campus and a professorship.

Thirdly, the lesson to be learned from the Holocaust is that Jews could not survive without a state of their own as a refuge. Now that we have that safe haven, it has to be kept safe. Politicians need to combat anti-Semitism here and now, and, however uncomfortable it is, they must stand up for the 7 million Jews in Israel under existential threat from their neighbours. It is only Jewish self-defence and self-determination that will ensure “never again”.