Holocaust Memorial Day

Debate between Mark Tami and Lord Evans of Rainow

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans]

I wholeheartedly agree. The hon. Gentleman must have been reading my speech, because I was about to come to that exact subject. I wish him well in Hungary; I am sure that he will be a fine representative for the whole House.

When we stop remembering our collective history, because we no longer have first-hand accounts from people who were there, or simply because it shows the unpalatable truth about how we can turn on a minority, we risk making the same mistakes. It is inevitable that they will be repeated. Evil men know that. Adolf Hitler knew it. He frequently referred to the Armenian genocide, which took place between 1915 and 1923, during the Turkish Ottoman empire. One million people were murdered and another million were displaced, but the memory of it had all but disappeared by the 1930s. The world had moved on, and the vigilance against similar events had all but disappeared. History, it appeared, could simply wash the blood away. Adolf Hitler knew that when he went to war against Poland and Russia: he thought that if he could win, he could commit mass murder and genocide throughout Europe—he thought he could get away with it.

My application for this debate came to the Backbench Business Committee in the wake of a surprisingly under-reported outburst by the deputy leader of the Hungarian party Jobbik. During a debate in the Chamber of the Hungarian Parliament, he demanded that a list be drawn up of every Jewish Member of Parliament, and Government Members claimed that their very presence posed a national security risk to the country. Such words should bring a chill to any rational person’s heart. The response by the Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, was impassioned. He said:

“as long as I am standing in this place, no one in Hungary can be hurt or discriminated against because of their faith, conviction or ancestry.”

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a telling case and raising important points. One critical issue is that we cannot let people believe that, with the ending of the war, all these attitudes suddenly went away. There were pogroms in eastern Europe after the second world war. Education is clearly the key to ensuring that future generations never forget what happened.

[Graham Evans]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. The moment we hear about such statements, it is up to us all—in this House and in similar democracies throughout Europe and indeed the world—to highlight them.

This aggravated anti-Semitic sentiment was not an outburst from a political outsider. This nationalist party received 17% of the vote in the 2010 election and holds 47 seats in a 386-seat Parliament. Some polls suggest that as much as 21% of the population would describe themselves as Jobbik sympathisers. It is estimated that some 600,000 Hungarian Jews died during Nazi occupation. We know—we learned when we visited Auschwitz—that 400,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered there in 1944. Golden Dawn is Europe’s most recently successful far-right party, winning 18 seats.