Holocaust Memorial Day 2012

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

It is a privilege to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hancock. I thank the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) for securing the debate. He made a simple, straightforward and powerful speech, for which I commend him. I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). Nothing is more powerful than the statement of someone who has been there and seen it, so I really do honour that.

Many hon. Members want to speak today, so I will try to keep my remarks brief. Like a number of those in the Chamber, I was privileged a year and a half or so ago, along with Karen Pollock and the team from the Holocaust Educational Trust, to visit Auschwitz. I would like to share with those in the Chamber a couple of things about the visit. What was quite interesting and strange was that, of course, I had seen the place many times because I had seen many films and documentaries about it, so I was not surprised by things that, had I not seen it all on television before, would have overwhelmed me. I am talking about the entrance, the railway and so on. The place was absolutely horrendous, but also, in a way, familiar, because I had seen so many movies and documentaries about it over the years.

The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) touched in an intervention on something very important that came out of the trip. Having seen this vision so many times, I found that it was the smaller things that got under my skin and had an impact. I would like to share two of those things with hon. Members.

The person from HET who was leading the tour was telling us while we were beside the rail track that many political prisoners were also kept at Auschwitz-Birkenau. We were shown the place where they used to play football, and behind us was where the rail carriages came in down the bottom of the hill. The story came out after the war of one particular political leader who was a dissident in the eyes of the Nazis, so he was sent to Auschwitz. He was the goalkeeper. Those prisoners were kept separate from the whole extermination side of Auschwitz. I had not been aware of that, but I learnt it that day. It was a separate camp, almost, even though it was smack in the middle. They knew that there was a rail track on the other side of the hill, because they would hear the noise of the train, but they never actually saw it.

This bloke recounted after the war how one day, while he was the goalie, the ball went way over the crossbar and he ran down the hill to get it. At the bottom of the hill, of course, was the siding where the trains came in, and a train had just come in. Suddenly, he saw thousands of people being moved out of the train, and guards there—the huge, Dante’s inferno-type exercise of a train coming in. He thought, “That’s interesting,” and he picked the ball up and went back to the game. About 40 minutes later, another ball went over the crossbar and he went down the hill again, but there was nothing there—everything had gone. It was so efficient. A train would come in and be emptied. There were troops, dogs and kapos there. Everyone had been moved off. Some 45 minutes later, the train had gone. The hon. Member for Clwyd South described what got under her skin, and I remember that when I was told that story, it got under my skin. That aspect of the story I was told was so powerful that it made a real impact.

I shall describe the second thing that really struck home. So many things about the final solution, Auschwitz and the whole Nazi machine were clearly demented. I might define myself as a very minor political leader; I am a Back Bencher but someone who leads politically in my constituency of Eastbourne. I am pretty rational and logical and I was in business for years before I went into politics. What occurred to me again and again as I was being shown round by the Holocaust Educational Trust was that this was a country—Nazi Germany and the whole empire of Germany—that was fighting a war for its life, a life-and-death war, yet it was so insane about anti-Semitism, Gypsies, people who were homosexual, people who were different and the Jewish population in particular that it would even stop the troop carriers that were on the way to the eastern front so that a train with Jews from Romania could go through first. That is completely insane. I am not being trite in any way; it really got to me. I thought, for God’s sake, these people are leading something and fighting something and it is a war to the death, but they are so completely, perversely mad that they will stop a train of tanks going to the eastern front so that a train of Jewish people who are to be annihilated can go through first. That was a powerful lesson.

I asked one of the students I took from Eastbourne to write me an essay afterwards, and she sent me a 500-word essay a few weeks later. It was a powerful essay. It was fantastic to read. Although she was so young, innocent and naïve, she picked up on a point that hon. Members have mentioned: the reason why Holocaust memorial day, visits to Auschwitz and the Holocaust Educational Trust are so important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham said, is that they remind us of the wickedness of humanity in the slim hope that it will not happen again, or at least not on the same scale. Perhaps if we keep reminding ourselves, it will happen less and less.

I share my hon. Friend’s view that humanity’s capacity to be inhumane to others is unsurpassed throughout history. Remembering the day in Parliament, the mother of democracy, is important. The work of the Holocaust Educational Trust is vital. I pay tribute to Karen and her team. Perhaps humanity can take a small step, every year, towards thinking that such things cannot and must not happen again.

I finish with some challenging issues. Again, my hon. Friend mentioned fear. The reality is that fear makes us behave badly. Sometimes it is power, but usually it is fear. Good people behave badly when they are fearful— something I learned a long time ago. Sometimes we must stand up against fear, even though that fear might be justified, and say, “Hang on a minute. Let’s be rational. Think very carefully about what you’re doing.” That is bravery, sometimes in the face of a mass of people, or even of the media when they are on a witch hunt: standing up and saying, “Stop a minute. Think through why you’re behaving that way, and the consequences.”

That is our duty as parliamentarians, and the duty of the Holocaust Educational Trust is to remind us and newly elected parliamentarians that not only must we never forget the absolute nightmare of the final solution; we must use it to remind ourselves daily that wickedness comes in many forms, and sometimes starts very small.

[Nadine Dorries in the Chair]