Holocaust Memorial Day

Tom Morrison Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tom Morrison (Cheadle) (LD)]

I am honoured to be here for this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) for leading the debate, and opening it with such an incredibly moving speech.

Genocide does not just happen. There is always a path: there is always a terrifying and evil journey towards it. The intention to destroy a group of people is an unspeakable idea. It is difficult to comprehend and yet it has happened not once but multiple times across the globe. Remembering the Holocaust is not just a Jewish issue; it is a human one. Education, reflection and, crucially, action become more and more important each day as we face increasingly fractured communities, inflammatory online rhetoric, and the casual othering of minority groups. Recent events both in the UK and abroad reiterate that “never again” cannot rest on remembrance alone; it needs conscious action.

The Nazi regime systematically murdered 6 million Jews, including 1.5 million children. That is 6 million stories, 6 million people who loved, 6 million people who added immeasurable value to this world. That murderous regime also killed Roma and Sinti people, disabled people, gay men, political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others that they deemed undesirable. In total, around 10 million people were murdered. But the Holocaust was not carried out by mobs and Nazis alone. It was enabled by the systematic involvement and compliance of institutions, including the police, civil servants, universities, courts and local authorities—the very institutions that were created to protect and serve. Instead, those institutions enforced discriminatory laws, facilitated deportations, and normalised othering and, eventually, murder. Prejudice becomes policy when institutions fail to act against hatred.

We are talking about a scale of suffering and terror that is beyond comprehension, and that is why personal stories are so crucial to our learning and reflection. I would therefore like to share some stories of my constituents who survived.

In 1939, Leonard Kaufmann’s uncle managed to secure a place for him on the Kindertransport, leaving behind his siblings and parents who later died. At four years old, Leonard remembers sitting on a barstool on his arrival to the UK, all alone and waiting to be collected, not able to speak English, scared and completely unsure of what was to come. Leonard went on to lead a successful career and have a happy family home in Gatley, despite experiencing one of the hardest starts to life anyone could imagine. He was a proud administrator at Yeshurun synagogue, which sits proudly in the heart of Gatley.

Peter Kurer was taken in by a Quaker family in Manchester with his brother and parents after they learned the SS were coming for his father. Later, Peter selflessly volunteered considerable time towards the establishment of a retirement home in Didsbury for Jewish refugees.

Martin Hyman shared with me the story of his mother who grew up in 1930s Vienna and was expelled from school simply for being Jewish. Aged just 13, she was sent alone to Britain on the Kindertransport. She never saw her parents again.

Sadly, these stories are not unusual. Martin said to me:

“In 1938, 272 Jews were recorded as having lived in the street in Vienna where my mum grew up. She was one of only 13 who survived the Holocaust.”

They reflect the experience of thousands of children whose lives were saved only because others acted. I am asking everyone in this House today to imagine the pain and suffering inflicted from just these singular stories and multiply that by 1,000 and then multiply it again.

I would like to pay tribute to Paul Porgess, a survivor of the Holocaust who was not only my friend, but a mentor to me. Paul was born in Czechoslovakia to parents Victor and Olga. During the second world war, his family were deported to the ghetto in Warsaw. After falling ill, Paul was separated from his parents, but was helped to escape by the Polish resistance. He eventually made it to England, where he earned a doctorate in chemistry at the University of London, before moving to Cheadle with his wife Joan. He was one of the first Liberal councillors to represent the Cheadle area and did so for four decades.

During his time on the council, Paul held a many positions, including on the equal opportunities special panel and the social inclusion and community cohesion working party. His experience so early on in life drove his passion to prioritise inclusion and community in Cheadle, and he also fought tirelessly for refugees in our region. Paul knew more than anyone just how important it was to be the voice for those who could not defend themselves. I was deeply honoured to replace Paul on Stockport council, and still to this day I try to ensure that I live up to his legacy. I miss him dearly.

It is no secret that hate crimes have risen year on year, misinformation continues to spread like wildfire online, and politics is becoming increasingly polarised. I visited the Community Security Trust earlier this week and heard directly about the work and resource that goes into ensuring that Jewish communities are protected. But heartbreakingly, the Heaton Park synagogue attack on Yom Kippur just three months ago shows that despite every effort to ensure people are safe and secure, the evil of antisemitism poses a real and murderous threat to our Jewish communities.

The latest statistics, published in October, showed that Jewish people had a higher rate of religious hate crimes targeted towards them than any other faith group. We have a duty today to remember, reflect and take action to stamp out this hatred now. Martin Hyman highlights that his grandparents, like many others, believed that civilisation, culture and the rule of law would protect them. But that was not the case. The Holocaust was not a sudden collapse of morality, but the end point of an insidious process in which discrimination was legalised, exclusion enforced, and dehumanisation made routine by ordinary people.

Education plays a critical role in responding to that. Organisations such as the Northern Holocaust Education Group and the My Voice project work to ensure that survivor testimony and lived experience continue to reach schools and communities. The Holocaust Centre North provides a permanent exhibition, learning programmes and an archive rooted in local survivor and refugee stories, helping young people and the wider public understand how a global atrocity unfolded through ordinary lives.

When people feel connected and invested in common values, they are better able to work together to address division and tackle hatred. The Common Ground award is an important initiative that goes some way in supporting that aim, and I hope that the Government will keep on funding it. The Government must also publish the community cohesion strategy that was promised last year, so that communities can work together to confront all forms of extremism by building understanding and trust.

Britian is a country of shared values and it has a history of being a nation that offers a hand to those in need. We must never forget that and must continuously pursue that aim. We celebrate the idea that people in our country should be able to live free from discrimination, and that no one’s rights or dignity should ever be taken away or compromised because of who they are, where they come from or what they believe. We must not lose sight of that, even though there are some who seek to undermine it.

A Jewish man in Manchester recently said to the Manchester Evening News,

“My daughter, she wears the Star of David but she puts it away…Ours are the only children that go to schools behind fences with guards.”

That cannot continue, so we must revert to our shared values, celebrate our differences and call out all forms of hatred and bigotry. “Never again” cannot rest on remembrance alone. It requires conscious action, every day. Holocaust Memorial Day offers an opportunity to reflect on not only what happened, but the responsibility we all have to ensure that the legacy of people like Paul Porgess never fades.