Holocaust Memorial Day 2012

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)]

It is good to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Dorries. I thank hon. Members from all parties for their contributions to this debate, which have been, by turns, sober, chilling, passionate and personal and sometimes deeply moving. That illustrates the fact that we Members of Parliament are human beings with real emotions and some of us have real experiences that we can bring to bear on a subject of deep importance, not just for this Parliament or this country, but for our world.

This occasion is not just an event in itself; it is about laying foundations for the future in a world where, despite some pessimism expressed by one or two hon. Members, we have constantly to work and hope that we can learn from this and provide our children and grandchildren with a better world for the future. I am confident that hon. Members will join me in ensuring that the message from the House today is not just to condemn the atrocities of the past, but to learn and make sure that we learn well for the future.

There were powerful contributions from 17 hon. Members during this debate. I do not think I can match any of them, but I can match them at least in one respect by congratulating, on behalf of the whole House, both Karen Pollock and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which has expanded its work year by year with great effect. Hon. Members have spoken about the events that they attend in their constituencies. This year events are being arranged nationally. We can all take pride in the focus that the trust, in a leadership role, has brought to that work.

I am pleased to report that, without any hesitation at all, this Government have been ready and keen to follow the investment of the previous Government, and to follow their example in responding to the challenge that the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust set for us and for young people. The annual national commemoration and the local community activities that Karen and her team have fostered have ensured that people think once again about the repercussions of the holocaust on our society.

The key point that has come across in many contributions is that this is an inclusive event, remembering not just 6 million Jewish victims of the holocaust, but the millions of other victims of the Nazis and other genocides. Of course, the Jewish community is painfully aware of the lessons. The challenge is to make sure that other communities understand those lessons and learn from them as well.

The introduction to this debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) was sober, chilling and a great credit to him and to those who rightly decided that, despite the strict word of protocol, it was right for him to be the person who led this debate. He mentioned that the holocaust was not simply a Jewish disaster. It is not simply about one community but the persecution, harassment and abuse of any minority community. He rightly drew attention to the problems faced by black and minority ethnic communities, including Gypsies, and to Islamophobia and the problems increasingly suffered by the Muslim community in this country.

In the same vein, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) referred to the work being set up by MAMA, in order to provide a resource for the Muslim community parallel to the work done by the CST for the Jewish community. The MAMA project will be launched fully later this year, and I was talking earlier today with the team who are delivering the project on behalf of the Government.

The hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) gave a searing personal testimony to the experience of his own family. What he said about the values underpinning what we like to think of as our traditional sense of Britishness was a master class, which I hope will come to the attention of Members throughout the House.

I had not heard of the previous experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), but he spoke with brutal frankness about the circumstances he found in Bosnia during his service there in command of British troops. I had the opportunity some time after my election to the House to go on a short, all-party visit to Bosnia after the accord had been signed, with a view to the development of political institutions in Bosnia. As we were taken in secure vehicles through towns and villages, what stood out was that every third or fourth house going down a street was burnt out, while the others were fine. I asked why that was, because it did not match one’s picture of people being driven out of their homes. It was a case, however, of neighbour turning against neighbour. Whether a family was Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian, once things flared up it was neighbour against neighbour, and that brought me up short.

The hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) and a number of Members contributing today asked why someone did not stop them. Why did somebody not stop them? Surely, if we can learn anything at all from Holocaust memorial day, it is that it is not always “them”; it is sometimes us who have to be stopped. What I saw driving through the villages in Bosnia was that it could be neighbours or lifelong friends who, because people were suddenly segregated in their thinking and their cultures, felt that the right solution was to burn their neighbours out of their homes. Given that connection with the individual circumstances of families and communities, that detachment and alienation surely open the Pandora’s box described so graphically by many people in the debate.

I do not want to trespass on the time that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central will want for winding up the debate, but I must state that our responsibility as a House is to remember those who were persecuted and murdered. Our challenge is to make the experience in the words of the victims and of the survivors a meaningful part of our future.

I have been provided with information that is certainly new to me, and this Olympic year is an opportunity to celebrate two Jewish athletes who competed in the Olympics after surviving the holocaust: Ben Helfgott, a British weightlifter, and Alfred Nakache, a French swimmer and water polo player. Ben was the only member of his family to have survived Buchenwald, and he moved to England after the second world war. He captained the British weightlifting team in Melbourne in 1956 and in Rome in 1960. That is a triumphant example of someone not only surviving and becoming a British citizen, but growing, developing and delivering for the country that he had learnt to love. Nakache, the French 100-metre freestyle champion, was in his country’s squad in Berlin in 1936; and, 12 years later, after Auschwitz, where his wife and daughter perished, he took part in the London Olympics of 1948. Such stories are a mixture of the very ordinary and the hugely exceptional.

We as a Government are working hard to promote the United Kingdom’s Holocaust memorial day. We give a sizeable grant to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and support the Holocaust Educational Trust—I gently chide a few Members who might have been a little confused about the difference between the two trusts in their contributions. Both trusts do hugely outstanding work to raise awareness of the holocaust among young people and the wider community. I thank not only Karen, who has had a lot of mentions, but also Cathy Ashley, chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and her team for their work.

Last year, 72% of local authority areas held a Holocaust memorial day event, which was a big step forward, although I know that the trust will not be satisfied until 100% of areas mark the memorial day with events. That is the task it has set itself to achieve by 2015, which would be exceptional. Surely Members of Parliament can play a key part in ensuring that that target is achieved not only in 2015 but in 2014—why not? I also hope that Members will pick up this year’s theme, Speak Up, Speak Out. Perhaps we should be speaking up and ensuring that our local authorities at least are commemorating, commending or taking account of memorial day.

The Government have committed £2.1 million to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation to fund ongoing restoration works. I visited, as other Members have done, and it was a deeply moving experience. It is essential that we keep the site for future generations to see. The Government will also continue to support the work of the UK’s first envoy for post-holocaust issues. Some powerful words have been said in the debate by many people about the need to be on guard against future events. We had a sober warning of such events, in particular on the African continent. The Government are also supporting the Anne Frank Trust, to educate young people to challenge prejudice and discrimination, and the work of the Jewish museum.

Several references were made to other groups threatened in our society. The most challenging problem in this country in dealing with racism, alienation and discrimination relates to our Gypsy and Traveller community. It is a challenge to all of us as constituency MPs and to the House, and on a day such as this, commemorating events such as this, I hope it is one we will treat with deep seriousness.