Holocaust Memorial Day 2012

Matthew Offord Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

Thank you, Mrs Dorries, for allowing me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. It is a bit peculiar that the previous occupant of the Chair decided to speak himself and leave me off the list.

I will change my remarks in light of the debate. Not only do I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) on securing this debate, but I thank him because some cynical people would say, “Why didn’t someone with a large Jewish population in their constituency request this debate?” However, success to me is not just introducing a Holocaust Memorial Day Bill or simply securing a debate; for me, an MP with many Jewish constituents, success is seeing so many hon. Members from constituencies without Jewish constituents or any kind of Jewish heritage here today. For that I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Croydon Central, for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans), for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) and the hon. Members for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) and for Bolton West (Julie Hilling). I thank them all.

This debate reinforces for me that Holocaust memorial day is not just for people who are Jewish; it is for everybody who has concern, in whatever form, about the holocaust. In my constituency, we commemorate Holocaust memorial day with contributions from the Bosnian community and from Cambodians and Rwandans. Of course, it is only natural that we have contributions from many of my former council colleagues, whose family, friends and relatives were in the holocaust and who have relatives who, luckily, escaped from it. Councillor Maureen Braun, a friend of mine, and Councillor Richard Weider have regaled us with some of the events that happened to their relatives in a former life.

With regard to the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz project, I have visited Auschwitz twice, the first time with my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General. I was pleased to see him there, because I am not aware that he has a significant Jewish population in his constituency. I also went last year with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and another hon. Member who is not able to be here. My two visits were different. On the first occasion, I valued the experience for the same reason that the hon. Member for Lewisham East stated, and I learnt a great deal about the historical acts that occurred there. The second visit was important because I was able to gauge the reactions of some young people from my constituency who attended. On visiting the first camp, we were all in our own world with headphones on and everyone was fairly quiet, until we came to the hair, which was mentioned earlier, and the glasses. For one young man in particular, witnessing the pile of glasses personified the holocaust. That was a powerful, moving experience.

The second part of the visit, in the second camp, is an equally quiet event. It is peculiar because there are no birds singing. An occasional dog barks at the far end of the camp, but we hear nothing, as though nature knows some kind of horrific atrocity occurred there. I thought at the time that it was the long, exhausting day that made me feel so emotionally tired, but it was actually the realisation of what occurred in that country—in that part of the world—that makes us all so emotionally drained.

One discovery that I made on the trip was Elie Wiesel’s book, “Night”. It is appropriate that I am reading it at this time of year on the lead-up to Holocaust memorial day. Elie makes some rather good observations, which are useful and could also be applied to the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust. He writes:

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

The work of the HET is so valuable because it reminds us all of what occurred in that part of our terrible history and that we must prevent it from ever happening again.

I conclude by saying something that has been said before. I congratulate Karen Pollock on her well-deserved MBE, which is a recognition not only of her work, but of that of all her team and everyone at the Holocaust Educational Trust, which is keeping alive the recognition of what happened in those terrible years to many Jewish people, many of the Roma community, many artists, homosexuals and different ethnic groups. For that I am particularly grateful.