Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, it is a somewhat daunting privilege to follow another passionate and erudite speech from the noble Lord, Lord Austin. I too congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry on an outstanding maiden speech—the huge impact that she will make in this House is clear. I thank the Minister for leading this debate so candidly and emotionally. I declare my interest as a member of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation. I did not get a chance last week in ping-pong on the Holocaust Memorial Bill to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Pickles for the huge amount of work that he is putting into the Holocaust memorial. He and his co-chair, Ed Balls, are extraordinary to watch at work together. We are incredibly grateful for the work that my noble friend does.

It is an honour to speak in this debate after such emotional, personal, erudite speeches. I always feel a fraud when I talk about the Holocaust because I am not Jewish. I did not come to Holocaust education and commemoration because of family and community links; my journey to this debate was far more prosaic. In 2015, the then Prime Minister, my noble friend Lord Cameron, asked me to serve on the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation to bring my digital experience to the project’s objective not only of being a physical memorial and learning centre but of bringing the content and the experience to everyone in the country.

On the premise that when your Prime Minister asks you to serve you should say yes, I did, without really understanding what I was committing to, and so my personal Holocaust education journey began. I did not learn about the Holocaust at school. I went to a Catholic convent where the religious education consisted of rote learning the Bible. There was no Holocaust Memorial Day when I was growing up. I began to learn the true horror of the murder of over 6 million Jewish men, women and children only through my involvement with the Holocaust Memorial Foundation.

I too had the privilege of my life in meeting Manfred Goldberg and watching and experiencing his testimony on Testimony 360. If noble Lords have not had a chance to experience it yet, I recommend it, because he is there in front of you as if he was in front of you physically. We are so lucky that Manfred and the other survivors were so brave to give their testimony.

My journey has involved visiting various museums and learning centres around the world, but it has also involved deep personal introspection. First, I needed to learn the facts; as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has pointed out, it is hugely important that we understand the overall historical context. We need to feel empathy for the heartbreak that this most atrocious of human acts has brought. However, as many have said this afternoon, I know that I cannot possibly fully comprehend what that multigenerational trauma must feel like. I know enough to know that I simply do not know.

My learning journey has taken me to looking inwards and asking myself some very uncomfortable questions that others have alluded to this afternoon. Would I have turned a blind eye to antisemitism as it set in again in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s? Would I have put up the equivalent of the greengrocer’s notice, as Václav Havel sets out? Would I have opted for a quiet life or, worse still, would I have joined in?

Sadly, that learning journey continues, because today, as we bridge the generations, as Holocaust Memorial Day tomorrow asks us to think about, we cannot ask those questions in the hypothetical; I am afraid that we have to ask them in the present tense. Holocaust Memorial Day and Holocaust education in the round forced me to ask myself, “Am I turning a blind eye?”—as the noble Lord, Lord Austin, has just challenged us. Am I standing up for my Jewish friends as they question whether the UK is safe for them to live in today? Am I going with the populist flow, or am I fighting antisemitism as only a small minority of people did in the run-up to the Second World War in Germany?

Holocaust Memorial Day calls on all of us never to forget, but as many have said today, that is only the beginning of the journey of learning. To truly bridge the generations, to learn from and not repeat the Holocaust, we have to learn to act, not just learn.

I fear, as many have said, that we are living in a time when people are scared. The world order is shifting. Mark Carney encapsulated it completely brilliantly last week. He set out eloquently how the rules-based world order that I have been lucky enough to grow up in is shattering. People across the world are scared; they are angry; they are looking for easy solutions. History teaches us that that is very fertile ground for antisemitism.

My involvement in the Holocaust Memorial Foundation has taught me, as others have said, that you win and lose this battle day in and day out. It requires all of us, in whatever role we play, in public and in private, to recognise how easy it is for populist rhetoric to turn into antisemitic actions. To prevent history repeating itself yet again, we all need to stand up and be counted today, on Holocaust Memorial Day tomorrow and, I am afraid, every day.