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Lord Khan of Burnley
That this House takes note of Holocaust Memorial Day.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Khan of Burnley) (Lab)
My Lords, it is with respect and solemn reflection that I move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Many of us have attended Holocaust Memorial Day events across the country, including the national ceremony in London. His Majesty the King attended the commemoration at Auschwitz-Birkenau alongside Chief Rabbi Mirvis, Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich and leaders of 50 countries.
Last week, I had the honour of listening to Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg. What struck me was that, although Manfred is now 94, he related what happened to him as a young boy as though it were yesterday. He told us about the heartbreaking moment when, aged 13, he and his mother were sent off to work while imprisoned at the Preču concentration camp. On their return, his little brother Herman was missing. They never saw him again. For over 70 years, Manfred held a small hope that, somehow, Herman had survived and one day they might be reunited. Sadly, that was not to be. Manfred’s story about his little brother brought home to me that, while we rightly remember that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, we often miss that 1.5 million were Jewish children.
Manfred’s story touched me deeply, as he spoke of his mother and the loss of her youngest son. I am the youngest son in my family and I recently lost my dear mother. I take this opportunity to give my heartfelt thanks to noble Lords for all their kindness shown to me in the last few weeks. It does not really matter how old you are; the loss of a mother affects you deeply. My mother was an inspiration: one important thing she taught me, which is so relevant to today’s debate, is that we must never forget the lessons of history. The history of the Holocaust provides lessons for the whole world. It shows us what can happen when hatred takes over a society, when barriers are created and fellow humans are treated as something different—something to be despised.
Nazi ideology can be hard to comprehend. It was ruthless and fearsome. Children like Manfred’s younger brother Herman were especially vulnerable to Nazi persecution. Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered not only 1.5 million Jewish children but tens of thousands of Romani Gypsy children, 5,000 to 7,000 German children with physical and mental disabilities living in institutions, as well as many Polish children and children residing in the German-occupied Soviet Union.
Along with elderly people, children had the lowest rate of survival in concentration camps and killing centres. People over 50 years of age, pregnant women and young children were immediately sent to gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other killing centres. Until mid-1943, all children born in Auschwitz, regardless of origins, were murdered, usually by phenol injection or drowning. Later, non-Jewish newborns were allowed to live. They were entered in the camp records as new arrivals and tattooed with a prisoner number.
Due to woeful conditions in the camp, few lived long. Children born to Jewish mothers were routinely murdered. Thousands of Jewish children survived this brutal carnage, many because they were hidden. With identities disguised, and often physically concealed from the outside world, these youngsters faced constant fear, dilemmas and danger. Theirs was a life in shadows, where a careless remark, a denunciation or the murmurings of inquisitive neighbours could lead to discovery and death.
Of course, none of these stories could be preserved without the men and women with the courage to tell them—women such as the remarkable Lily Ebert MBE, who died at home in London in October last year, aged 100. Her life after Auschwitz showed that, even in the face of unspeakable evil, the human spirit can triumph.
Ann Kirk BEM died earlier this year, at the age of 96. She arrived alone in London aged 10 on the Kindertransport. She dedicated her life to raising awareness about the horrors of Nazism. Anne was married to Bob Kirk BEM, who also came to the UK on the Kindertransport and died late last year, aged 99. They were a wonderful couple who dedicated their lives to sharing their story—a story of how they left their home and parents as children and made new lives in the United Kingdom.
Anne met Bob at a social hub for Jewish refugees called Achdut, which means togetherness. The couple married in 1950 and had two children. It was not until 1992 that they told their sons about their background, after being invited to speak at an event commemorating Kristallnacht at Northwood synagogue. It was during the couple’s speech that their children discovered the truth of their upbringing. I often think how hard it must be for survivors to give their testimony, to return to those moments, to remember those darkest of days and to recount how loved ones—husbands, wives, sons, daughters—were taken away.
I want also to take a moment to debunk the idea that we did not know what was happening. From 1942 onwards, reports of the mass murder of Jews in continental Europe began to reach Britain. As the tide of the war turned against Germany and its allies, the British Jewish community started to plan for post-war relief work. Jewish aid workers began, after the liberation, to report that some children had survived the Nazi concentration camps.
In May 1945, Leonard Montefiore, a well-known philanthropist, travelled to Paris to meet with the heads of Jewish organisations. Before returning home, he wrote to Anthony de Rothschild, chairman of the Central British Fund—now World Jewish Relief—outlining a scheme to bring
“a few hundred children from Bergen-Belsen or Buchenwald”
to Britain. On his return to London, Montefiore drew up detailed arrangements planning not only how he was going to get the children to Britain but how he was going to give them the best possible care.
The British Government approved his proposal and granted permission for 1,000 child survivors to be brought to the UK. At this point, it was believed that no more than 5,000 Jewish children in central and eastern Europe had survived the Holocaust, and those would be cared for in allied and neutral countries such as Sweden and Switzerland, so the Home Office’s offer of 1,000 visas was a fitting response.
That said, the offer of help from the British Government was not without conditions. The children had to be aged 16 years or under and would be granted permission to stay in the UK for only two years. They were not to cost the taxpayer a penny and the Central British Fund was to be financially responsible for the entire cost of looking after them. The money to do this was to be raised privately. It was later stipulated that only children who had been in concentration camps would be admitted to the UK, although the age limit was raised to 18 in 1946.
In the end, just over 700 children came to Britain. They were known as the boys, even though there were girls too, and they arrived in five groups. The first group arrived in August 1945, is known as the Windermere boys and was made up of 300 children. The second group arrived in October 1945, is known as the Southampton boys and was made up of 152 children. The third group arrived in March 1946, is known as the Belgicka boys and was made up of 149 children. The fourth group arrived in June 1946, is known as the Paris boys and was made up of 101 children. The fifth group arrived in April 1948, is known as the Schonfeld boys and was made up of 21 children.
Their story is less well known than that of the Kindertransport, through which 10,000 Jewish children were saved in the aftermath of Kristallnacht in 1938. The boys set up the ’45 Aid Society in 1963. They wanted to say thank you and to give back to the society that had welcomed them. Over time, the running of the ’45 Aid Society has passed to the children of the boys—often referred to as the second generation—the custodians of the testimonies and life stories of the boys. They keep their testimonies alive and make them relevant for future generations, through educational activities, community events and fundraising.
I want to thank these custodians, but I really want to say a special word to the survivors. Every day that you have lived, and every child and grandchild that your families have brought into this world, have served as the ultimate rebuke to evil and the ultimate expression of love and hope. We need only to look at today’s headlines to see that we have not yet extinguished man’s darkest impulses, but none of the tragedies that we see today may rise to the full horror of the Holocaust.
The individuals who are the victims of such unspeakable cruelty make a claim on our conscience. They demand our attention: that we do not turn away; that we choose empathy over indifference; and that our empathy leads to action. That includes confronting the rising tide of anti-Semitism around the world. We have seen attacks on Jews in our streets and in the streets of major western cities. We have seen public places disfigured by swastikas.
Some foreign Governments continue to rinse their history, and some are not willing to recognise that the Nazis could not have done this alone; they needed willing partners. It is up to each of us, every one of us, to forcefully condemn any denial of the Holocaust. It is up to us to combat not only anti-Semitism but racism, bigotry and intolerance in all their forms, here and around the world. We cannot eliminate evil from every heart or hatred from every mind. What we can and must do is make sure that our children and their children learn their history so that they might not repeat it. We can teach our children to speak out against a casual slur. We can teach them that there is no “them”, there is only “us”.
I have had the honour of attending many Holocaust Memorial Day events over the last couple of weeks, each one different and yet all the more meaningful. My department funds the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and this year granted an additional £80,000 to the existing annual grant of £900,000, to ensure that the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony was televised on the BBC. I have been told that 2 million people tuned in to the ceremony.
As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Stockholm declaration, it is important to take stock of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s achievements. IHRA is perhaps best known for its non-legally binding definition of anti-Semitism. There are many other tools relating to accessing archives and safeguarding sites, and a toolkit to fight Holocaust distortion. These are just a few of the tools developed by IHRA in partnership with the experts, and I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, in particular, in this area.
IHRA is important because it holds each and every one of us to account. We all have issues with our history. The problems we face today are more complex and more subtle. It has been a long process even for democratic countries to confront their own problematic history. Year on year, we see countries rinse their history and rehabilitate people. Well-known anti-Semites morph into nationalists or become heroes in the fight against communism. It was only in 1995 that the French Government accepted responsibility for the deportations and deaths of over 70,000 Jews and Austria finally dispelled the myth of being Hitler’s first victim and made amends to Austrian Nazi victims.
In the United Kingdom and the United States, we need to come to terms with the fact that we did not open our borders and accept Jews fleeing the Nazis. Earlier, I mentioned the Kindertransport. In the case of the UK, we accepted children but not their parents. Most of the children never saw their parents again.
The work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, the Association of Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust to ensure that we never forget is more important than ever, especially as the number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling. Each and every one of us who has had the privilege of hearing first-hand testimony has a duty to keep their memory alive.
That is why we remain determined to create the UK national Holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens—a place where we can learn about the Holocaust, a place which will ensure that we never forget where hatred can lead. Subject to the passage of the Bill, and to recovery of planning consent, we hope to begin construction before the end of this year.
These words of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel are very important:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed, and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky”.
It has been 80 years since the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Americans liberated Buchenwald and the British liberated Bergen-Belsen. We owe it to those who were murdered, those who survived and those who liberated the camps to never forget and to ensure that every generation knows where hatred and indifference can lead.
Before I end, I would like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Anderson. We all know how dedicated she is to tackling anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred. She has never given in, despite appalling levels of abuse directed at her. She is someone I greatly admire.
As a man of faith and as the Faith Minister, I think it is only fitting that I end with the following words penned by the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks—may his memory be a blessing:
“We know that whilst we do not have the ability to change the past, we can change the future. We know that whilst we cannot bring the dead back to life, we can ensure their memories live on and that their deaths were not in vain”.
I look forward to everyone’s contributions, in particular, the maiden speeches of my noble friends Lord Katz, Lord Evans and Lady Levitt. I beg to move.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this important debate to your Lordships’ House today. It has been my solemn duty to bring this debate to the House in previous years, and I congratulate him on his speech. I too am looking forward to hearing the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Evans of Sealand and Lord Katz, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt. I know the whole House will join me in welcoming them.
On Holocaust Memorial Day every year, we remember the unspeakable crimes of the Nazi regime against the Jewish people. We remember also the many political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish, Roma, Sinti, lesbian and gay victims of the Holocaust.
It is on Holocaust Memorial Day that we remember the unique evil of the Holocaust: the killing of Jews because they were Jews, as part of the Nazis’ plan to wipe out the entire Jewish people. The history of the Holocaust is a bitter truth, and we must never shy away from repeating that truth. Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Majdanek and Treblinka are just some of the haunting names of the places where Jews were imprisoned, beaten, worked to death, tortured and exterminated—murdered because they were Jews.
Not all the names of the Nazi camps are so familiar to us. Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen were just two of over 1,000 concentration camps operated by the Nazi regime for the mass persecution and murder of Jews and its other victims. Eighty years ago today, on 13 February 1945, Soviet forces liberated Gross-Rosen concentration camp. By 1945, there were no Jews left at Gross-Rosen because, on 2 December 1941, the head of the camp, Anton Thumann, gave the order that
“no Jew is to remain alive by Christmas”.
On 12 October 1942, the last 37 living Jewish prisoners were sent to Auschwitz.
Isaak Egon Ochshorn, a Jew who was in Gross-Rosen from June 1941 to October 1942, before being transferred to Auschwitz, gave evidence after the liberation of the camps that showed the appalling treatment of Jews at Gross-Rosen. He said:
“The sport of Commandant [Thumann], favoured in winter, was to have many Jews daily thrown alive into a pit and to have them covered with snow until they were suffocated”.
We must never forget.
In this the 80th year following so many liberations, we must also remember that liberation was not the end of the story for the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Many Jews died early because of the harm the Nazis did to them during the Holocaust. The wounds of families that were broken by the Holocaust were felt for many years and are still felt today.
Holocaust Memorial Day was intended to be a reminder of the suffering of the Jewish people in the past, but we sadly know that Jewish people are still not free from persecution. As we heard from the Minister, since 2023 we have seen a shocking rise in anti-Jewish racism on our streets, online, and in our schools. In 2024, the Community Security Trust recorded 3,528 anti-Semitic incidents in the United Kingdom, the second-highest total ever reported to the CST in a single year, second only to the 4,296 recorded in 2023.
Anti-Semitism in this country is growing, and it is shaming that the spike in anti-Semitism we have seen over the past year has directly followed the worst massacre of Jews since the fall of the Nazi regime. When I moved this debate last year, just months after the pogrom of 7 October, I recounted the story of 91 year-old Moshe Ridler, a Holocaust survivor murdered in Kibbutz Holit, just over 1 mile from the border with Gaza. His home was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and then by a hand grenade. To his 18 children and great-grandchildren, may his memory be a blessing.
The deaths of the 1,200 people who were murdered in the 7 October pogrom, as well as the ongoing suffering of the hostages and their loved ones, remind us that the work of organisations such as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust has never been more important. I put on record my thanks to the CEO of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Karen Pollock CBE, who does so much important work to ensure that our children and grandchildren are taught about the horrors of the Holocaust. I also thank the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, its CEO, Olivia Marks-Woldman OBE, and her team, which delivers the annual Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony and thousands of local activities across the country.
Eighty years on and still the Jews across the world experience persecution, discrimination and, at worst, fear for their lives. That is the imperative of our commemoration: we must not merely ensure that the Holocaust is never forgotten; we must remember, actively reflect on and learn about the unique suffering of the Jewish people in the Holocaust. We must teach it to our children and remind our neighbours of the insidious threat of anti-Semitism. We must never forget—and we must hold to the promise, “Never again”. Only by keeping our covenant to remember may we hope to end anti-Semitism for good.
I look forward to hearing the reflections of noble Lords across the House. My thoughts and prayers are, as always, with the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and their families.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, never were the national anthem’s words,
“Long live our noble King!”,
more apt a tribute than when seeing the King spending hours at Auschwitz-Birkenau, paying tribute with the sincerest words possible. I am sure that the entire Jewish community, here and around the world, is moved and grateful.
For some of us, every day is Holocaust Remembrance Day. My earliest memories are of my mother weeping over my bedside because of her inability to get her mother out of Poland and into this country. She blamed herself for her mother’s death.
On my father’s side, he lost his mother and two siblings. His tiny ancestral village on the border of Poland and Ukraine lay during the war in the path of the Russians coming one way and the Germans coming the other. When the Germans arrived, they summoned all the Jewish women to the village square with their valuables. Next door to my family lived a Polish painter, Eugeniusz Waniek, who subsequently went to Kraków and became very well known.
On her way to the square, my aunt Helena rushed next door to him and thrust a set of silver cutlery wrapped in a linen cloth into his hands. “Keep this”, she said, “until we get back”, which, of course, she and her children never did. He did a brave thing, which would have cost him his life had it been discovered: he hid the silver in the cloth in a box in his garden. At the end of the war, he took it with him to Kraków. There was no internet then and he never knew what had become of my family.
I happened to speak about my origins to Norman Davies, the distinguished historian of Poland. In 2008, he wrote in a Kraków newspaper about my trip to the family village. Waniek, the painter, by then 102, was read this by his carer. He declared that he had something for me and, to cut a long story short, I returned to his flat in Kraków, where, in the presence of the media and after a glass of schnapps and some reminiscences, he presented me with the cutlery in the same linen cloth. They are the only artefacts I have that were touched by my lost family. What a tribute it is to the bravery endemic in such small acts in those terrible times. He died three months later.
So it is with some pain that I wonder what Britain’s politicians and leaders mean when they support Holocaust remembrance. What do they mean by remembering it and by “never again”? What I see is ignorance of the history of anti-Semitism and the mistaken framework that treats the Holocaust as consigned to the Nazi past, not the preceding 2,000 years and today. Perhaps with good intentions, the Holocaust has been globalised. That makes it seem as though Jews were just one of many casualties—and it is therefore exceptional to focus on them or on anti-Semitism—and that the notion of genocide can be spread far, wide and thin.
Jewish scholars will tell you that to assemble the Holocaust with other genocides reduces its meaning to that vague word: hatred. It dilutes and avoids the centrality of anti-Semitism. Restricting the Holocaust to the Jewish tragedy—as it should be—does not mean that the loss of Jewish lives is worth any more than any others. But the record in recent years shows a marked reluctance to acknowledge the specificity of Jewish suffering. The Holocaust is entirely different from the other genocides we remember—in history, continuation, manner of execution, worldwide extent, collaboration and result. The Government, by going along with the structure that the Jewish Shoah should not be commemorated on its own, but always in tandem with other Nazi-targeted groups and more recent genocides, have opened the door to generalising the Holocaust. This enables the Jews to be forgotten and not mentioned by “Good Morning Britain” or Angela Rayner when marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. Sadly, it leads on to comparisons between the Holocaust and the Gaza war, most shockingly by the Irish President.
For half a century, it has been assumed, without evidence, that learning about the Holocaust prevents lapses into anti-Semitism—but it does not. That is in part because the Holocaust has been detached from the rest of Jewish history and because it has been used as a lesson in morality and democracy. It is easy enough to portray the Nazis as evil and the Jews as innocent victims. The lessons go on to indicate that it was not this generation that committed those crimes and that we are not bystanders. That must not be allowed to become an absolution. It should not be allowed to place anti-Semitism firmly in the past—that is wrong. Even in this country, we should not forget the massacre of Jews in 1190 and the expulsion in 1290. In my own hometown, Christ Church Cathedral is built right in the middle, on top of houses occupied by the Jews. There is too much politicisation, de-judaisation and universalisation demonstrated at Holocaust remembrance ceremonies. This is counterproductive.
The late Lord Sacks, of blessed memory, explained how anti-Semitism mutated from hatred of the religion, then the race and now the only Jewish state. Sadly, it is only a state of one’s own and the means of self-defence that stop genocide, as can be seen from more recent genocides. If Israel had existed in 1938, rather than 1948, and had been able to take in refugees rather than being blocked by the British, how many thousands or millions of lives might have been saved? In the 1940s it was able to take in the Jews thrown out of other Middle Eastern states whose persecution we should also remember.
In 2023, we saw the new Holocaust threats from the invaders into Israel from Gaza, and their desire to repeat it. This Government are rightly keen on Holocaust remembrance, but they should accept that they have a special responsibility for the protection, safety and understanding of the State of Israel.
The Government should acknowledge that they have failed to stop anti-Semitism being demonstrated in our universities and on our streets. Holocaust remembrance is ineffective unless backed up by supporting and understanding a safe and strong Israel—that is the real meaning of ensuring never again.
We need to teach that the Holocaust did not succeed. Since the end of it, we have had 24 Nobel prizes, business leaders, philanthropy, cultural achievements and a new state. The distinguishing feature of the Jewish community down the ages is survival. Let us go forward on an upbeat note. We survived against all the odds; not death, not victimhood.
The Lord Bishop of Lichfield
My Lords, it is an honour to participate in this debate. I anticipate hearing many more thoughtful and powerful contributions like those we have already heard, and look forward to hearing the words of the noble Lord, Lord Katz, who will follow me. I congratulate him on making his maiden speech today, along with the noble Lord, Lord Evans, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt.
I declare my interest as a former chair of the Council of Christians and Jews. With that in mind, I was very glad to see on the speakers’ list today my friend the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, who shared with me as a trustee there. I look forward to what he has to say.
On Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember the lives of the 6 million Jewish men, women and children, along with other groups, who were murdered by the Nazis. This year has been particularly significant, as it marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. As the Minister pointed out, as each year goes by, the number of living people who have their own personal accounts of surviving the Holocaust diminishes. It is the responsibility of us all to ensure that their lives do not simply become statistics in a history book but that they are remembered as people, each with their own stories and experiences.
In that regard, I commend to your Lordships the Forever Project, an interactive experience that I visited at the Beth Shalom National Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire. This project gives people the opportunity to hear from and to have a question and answer session with a hologram of a Holocaust survivor. Through the use of AI and voice recognition, it is an innovative way to preserve their memories and to enable future generations to learn about their experiences. Those memories serve as a reminder and a warning of where anti-Semitism can lead when left unchallenged, and we must be alive to prevent such atrocities recurring. This is why commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day each year is so important.
It is a matter of fact and a matter of shame that, through a distortion of Christian theology, the Church in almost all its branches has historically contributed to the immense suffering and injustice experienced by Jewish people over the ages. It follows that the Church must have a vital role and duty, in partnership with others, in actively standing against anti-Semitism. This is a major task for our renewed theological understanding today.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “For a Better Future”, but to build such a future we cannot be passive; it requires commitment and action from each one of us. Genocide is not inevitable, nor does it happen overnight. It is gradual, beginning with the othering of those whom we consider different from ourselves, and the normalisation of acts of discrimination and hatred. While the horrors of Auschwitz move further into history, sadly, anti-Semitism does not.
One persuasive analogy of anti-Semitism is that of a virus which mutates over time and reinfects society in different forms. The most recent statistics published by the Community Security Trust, cited by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, underline the dimensions of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in our own time, in our own country. The use of social media has only fuelled this, exposing more people to hateful content and enabling anti-Semitism to spread further and faster.
This is preventable. We can choose to shape a better future, built on our shared humanity and on strengthening the fabric of our communities through mutual understanding and trust. We cannot afford to be complacent bystanders. We must actively challenge anti-Semitism and all discrimination wherever we see it, to seek understanding rather than fearing those who are different from us. We must personally question the small remarks, whether they be so-called jokes or throwaway comments, which can appear insignificant but can so easily build to destructive hate on a greater scale.
Interfaith dialogue plays an important role in this, as well as being an example of how those of different beliefs can come together to find common ground and connection. On Holocaust Memorial Day this year, the Council of Christians and Jews organised a profound morning of testimony, reflection and prayer as a testament to the power and significance of that dialogue.
I finish with some words that Rabbi Charley Baginsky shared at that meeting. She said,
“Optimism, in this sense, is not the denial of pain, but the radical choice to imagine and work toward something better, something more just, something that can heal the divisions we face. This vision of a better future is not a distant dream—it is a call to action. It is a call to reject the forces of hate and division, and to embrace the transformative power of empathy, of connection, of community”.
Let us not forget the horrors of the past, but let the memories of those who experienced them spur us on to build a better future, free from hate and division.
Lord Katz (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is an honour to speak in the debate, opened by my noble friend Lord Khan, and to hear from so many noble Lords on this subject, not least, in a few minutes’ time, my noble friend Lord Dubs, whose wise words continue to inspire.
I thank noble Lords from across the House for the warm welcome that I have been given in the few days I have been here. I thank the doorkeepers, attendants and all the staff of the House, who have been so supportive and have done their level best—often in vain—to stop me getting lost. I thank my supporters, my noble friends Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, and my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon, for all the support and encouragement that they have given me.
As the memory of the Holocaust, that most singular act of evil, fades into the distance, and the number of survivors who can bear witness to the cruelty of Nazi persecution diminishes, we must redouble our efforts to etch the Shoah, and subsequent genocides, into our collective memory.
I add my voice to those of many other noble Lords today in thanking the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust for all the work that they do to ensure that this happens. However, they face a Sisyphean task. Research from the Claims Conference published last month found that 52% of those surveyed in the UK did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Nearly a third could not name any of the camps or ghettos established in World War II. Those figures underscore the scale of the challenge, in the face of social media misinformation which seeks to downplay, distort and even deny the reality of the Holocaust, one of the most documented events in world history. Our truth is indeed under attack. This is our responsibility too. Debate is coarsened and conspiracies fed when senior politicians compare their opponents with Nazi collaborators or doubt their loyalty to this country.
My family was one of the lucky ones. My dad’s father was the last of my forebears to come to Britain, making the perilous trip from Bialystok—then in Russia, now in Poland—to the East End of London in 1911. Sadly, we know little of what and who he left behind. We cannot be sure, but it seems highly likely that some of my family would have perished in the war, simply for the crime of being born a Jew. My grandfather was a tailor, as was my mum’s father, who insisted that before putting down a deposit on one of the new houses being built in Edgware in the 1930s, the site foreman walked him to the school that was promised to be a few minutes’ away. He knew, as so many immigrant families do, of the power of education to transform your life chances.
The lesson stuck. His daughter, my dear mother Doreen, spent her life teaching and passed the lesson on. As someone who attended a comprehensive that, before me, had never sent a pupil to Oxford, I understand all too well the importance of a decent education in promoting social mobility and providing opportunity, from—perhaps especially from—the earliest years, to university access and vocational education.
This is a vital part of the Government’s economic agenda. We should view human capital as being as important as physical capital when we talk of removing obstacles to growth. I say this as someone who has spent the past two decades working in transport, specifically rail, including for an operator and for the rail union TSSA, where I had the great pleasure and honour of working for Lord Rosser, much missed from this place. So I appreciate the Government’s drive to invest in the infrastructure that our country so dearly needs to thrive. For long a neglected subject, I am pleased to see that this is a real focus for this Government. I am not a died-in-the-wool railwayman. I do not argue rail for rail’s sake but for what it achieves—connecting communities, enabling prosperity and, again, promoting social mobility. We need more rail and more integrated and accessible public transport. I hope to be a strong advocate for it in this place.
More widely, we must build our way out of the economic malaise that we have inherited, using not just infrastructure but housing to address the crisis that young people face—I salute the Government’s ambition on housebuilding and am most definitely a yimby in this regard—nor can we fall into the trap that investment is a zero-sum game geographically. I am a born and bred Londoner but I insist that investing in London will continue to be good for the rest of the country and vice versa. One should not and must not come at the expense of the other.
I pause to reflect that it speaks so highly of both my party and our country that a little over 100 years since Chaim Katz stepped off the boat, fewer than 80 years after Solomon Goldberg left the East End for Edgware and helped found the synagogue there, their grandson is a Peer of the Realm. This is but one thread in the special tapestry woven by immigrants depicting the contribution they have made, and continue to make, in a thousand different ways.
Sadly, the tolerance and generosity of this nation, which helped so many immigrants to settle and thrive, was not to be found for Jewish people in the Labour Party between 2015 and 2019. As chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, a socialist society affiliated to the Labour Party since 1920, I and my colleagues found ourselves defending our members, who faced the vile toxin of left anti-Semitism, which had been allowed to enter, and fester in, the party’s bloodstream. Inaction and passivity from the then party leader sent a clear signal that this discrimination was tolerated. The party that so many of us had joined because it believed in equality and fought discrimination doubled down rather than face the difficult truths. It doubled down out of political convenience.
Too many suffered during those years, but it would be truly remiss of me not to mention my noble friends Lady Hodge of Barking, Lady Anderson, my soon-to-be noble friend Luciana Berger, and Dame Louise Ellman, who were the particular and public targets of much of the hatred. The impact on the wider Jewish community in this country was even greater, considering that at the height of the Labour Party’s membership then, it had a membership of well over 400,000 and there are but 300,000 Jews in this country. I will never forget tear-streaked conversations with people in Hendon and Mill Hill—lifelong Jewish Labour voters telling me they simply could not trust the party, our party, any more. How could we have let them down so badly?
It is for ever to his credit that the first thing Keir Starmer did when he won his leadership election was apologise for and vow to root out anti-Semitism from our party. He understood the moral and political necessity of this mission, and he succeeded. Working with my noble friends Lord Evans of Sealand and Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, who I look forward to hearing from later, we in the JLM challenged, cajoled and drove Labour to meet the challenges set down by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, following that body’s landmark ruling that the party had broken equalities law. Process and rule change were part of that story, but education and leadership, as ever, much more so. I will for ever be proud of the role we in the Jewish Labour Movement played in helping to save the Labour Party.
My party is still in the foothills of rebuilding trust with the Jewish community, but I think we have returned to a place where Jews voting in the general election last year made their choice on policy platforms, not out of fear, as they did in 2019. We must never—never—allow that situation to arise again. Indeed, if the 2019 election was in part about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, in turn the 2024 election was, in a smaller part, about anti-Semitism in the whole country. As we have already heard from my noble friend the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, following 7 October, which saw the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, anti-Semitism has risen to unprecedented levels, not merely as a reaction to the ground war that started some time after that date, but from the day itself.
Anti-Semitism, to paraphrase Conor Cruise O’Brien, is the lightest of sleepers. Any excuse will stir it to life. On our campuses, on our streets, around our homes, our synagogues and our schools, the levels of anxiety and fear that British Jews feel is palpable—the worst I have seen in my lifetime. The Prime Minister has been clear that this spike in anti-Jewish hate is intolerable, just as he has been clear that the remaining hostages taken by Hamas on that fateful day and being held in Gaza still must all be brought home now.
It surely cannot be difficult for us all to grasp that we must not blame British Jews for the actions of the Israeli Government, just as we do not blame British Muslims for the actions of Hamas. From this basic proposition, surely all else must follow. As ever, it is through education that we must tackle hate on all sides. Integral to this is ensuring that Holocaust education is, in the words of our Prime Minister, “a truly national endeavour”.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
It is a privilege and an honour for me to follow the speech of my noble friend, and I congratulate him on what he has done and what he has said today in his speech. As we know, he has been national chair of the Jewish Labour Movement since 2019. He has a long history in the Labour movement. He was political officer of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, working with our late friend Lord Rosser when he was general secretary. He served on Labour’s National Policy Forum and retains a keen interest in transport matters and rail in particular. He has also served as a local councillor, representing Kilburn for Camden Council from 2010 to 2014. He was a Labour candidate for Hendon in 2017, and for Cities of London and Westminster in 2001, in which role I preceded him—and also lost—many years before. He was recently awarded an MBE for political and public services. I always enjoy meeting colleagues who have been local councillors, with whom I have something in common, and I understand the contribution that local councillors make to life in their communities—we sometimes devalue that here.
Mike also talked about his family history. It is appropriate, on a day when we are debating this topic, that we should remember the family history of people like him and how it led to this country becoming the country it is. He talked strongly about anti-Semitism, a scourge on any country, and on this one when we experienced it. I found the anti-Semitism painful and personally upsetting, and I still do.
Recently, the Prime Minister invited to tea at No. 10 Downing Street—the first time I have been there for some years; well, I am hoping—Holocaust and Kindertransport survivors and above all, their children and grandchildren. There are not many of us left, as has been said, who came to this country on the Kindertransport, and even fewer, sadly, who survived the horrors of the camps. I remember an occasion here, an event that I think the Holocaust Educational Trust organised, in one of the committee rooms. There were Holocaust survivors there, and they asked me what I was. I said, “I just came on a Kindertransport”, and they said, “That’s wonderful”. I said, “Look, compared to what you went through, I just got on a train, and two days later I arrived at Liverpool Street station. What you went through was unbelievably appalling, and we respect what you’ve been through and your sense of purpose and tenacity”. Sadly, there are not many people left in either category, either Holocaust survivors or Kindertransport people, which is why it was interesting to have tea in 10 Downing Street with the Prime Minister. I notice that King Charles has also been to Auschwitz and spoken out strongly in opposition to anti-Semitism.
On the words “never again”, what happened in Israel on 7 October was an appalling tragedy, and with some of the events in Gaza, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur and Syria—and what has happened to the Yazidis—I am afraid it seems that we as a world are not learning what we should.
I shall refer again to Nikky Winton, who organised the Kindertransport that brought me to this country. I became a good friend of his before he died and we chatted occasionally. He was a marvellous example of a human being who devoted himself to helping other people. He got to Prague in 1938-39, he saw what was happening and, unlike other people who say, “This is awful” and walk away, he said, “This is awful. I’m going to do something about it”, and that distinguished him. I will put in a plug for the film “One Life”, which came out about a year ago; I have seen it twice, and I have to say it brought me to tears both times. It is a remarkable tribute to a remarkable individual.
Through the Kindertransport, Britain took 10,000 children, mainly from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Some argue—though this is not the real point of this debate—that 10,000 was not a very large number, but if we did it then we can do it now. Still, that is for a future Bill on another occasion. It is interesting to read Hansard from the time when the Commons was debating whether Britain should take Kindertransport children. There were voices then of the sort that we have heard more recently, but the fact is that this country took the people. As I am sure your Lordships will be aware, just off Central Lobby in the House of Commons, there is a thank-you plaque on behalf of the 10,000 children who arrived in Britain on the Kindertransport, thanking Britain for having given us safety. When I take people on a tour, I show them that and say, “Look, this is where we thank Britain for what they did to save us”.
Like many people, I have been to some of the camps. I went to Auschwitz and I found it a painful experience; it is even painful to think about it today. I was with a friend who had also fled from Czechoslovakia, standing there looking at the suitcases. In those days, people had initials on their suitcases, and we were looking to see if there were any people we knew whose cases were there and who had then died in the camps. I did not see any.
More recently—I think I mentioned this last year—I was invited to Berlin along with Hella Pick, a wonderful journalist, to a commemoration of Kindertransport in the German Bundestag. They had an exhibition about Kindertransport. It was a very moving thing, all the more so because it took place in Berlin in Germany.
I want to reflect on an experience that I think I referred to in this debate last year. Some time ago, I was invited to a school in east London. It was a maintained school, but it was all Muslim boys. The project they were working on was Kindertransport and the Holocaust. I did my little piece about refugees and the Holocaust. The first question in the Q&A came from a 14 or 15 year-old boy, who said, “What do I say to somebody who denies the Holocaust ever happened?” That was such a powerful question. It was a sign that the school was doing a good job and the message was getting home. This was a statement he wanted to be able to repudiate if somebody mentioned it to him elsewhere. Whenever I have spoken to schools about these issues, they really get it. They understand what is going on and it is very rewarding to talk to students. That is why I pay tribute to the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for the work they do.
If anything is going to come out of the tragedy of the Holocaust, it is the next generation who will carry this forward when those of us who were closer to it are no longer here. That is why I was so shocked when Elon Musk was photographed doing a Hitler salute. Maybe he did not mean it; maybe he did not understand, but it is quite shocking when these sorts of things happen.
I sometimes wonder whether decency and the values we uphold are a thin veneer and these things can even be swept aside. I remember reading some years ago about a German soldier who was working, I think, in Auschwitz and who wrote to his wife back in Germany saying, “Make sure the children clean their teeth”. What a contrast between somebody who was murdering Jews—gassing them, day in and day out—and yet was worried about whether his children were cleaning their teeth. I find that difficult to understand. Last year, tragically, we saw some riots. Again, it made me think that sometimes there is a thin protective layer of decency in countries. Our job is to make that layer much thicker. It is a thin protective layer, because the way those riots exploded and people tried to petrol-bomb hostels housing refugees, I found deeply shocking.
I have spoken to many faith groups, which are all supportive of the cause of refugees. It is a tribute to the many Jewish groups I have spoken to that they are very supportive of refugees. Pretty much all the refugees happen to be Muslims, but the Jewish community is very supportive. That is the sort of thing that should be said more often.
I will finish with one story. I was in a refugee camp in Jordan. It was a decent camp; it had sanitation, electricity and prefabricated buildings. I was talking to a Syrian boy, and I asked him, “What is your situation?”. He said, “Well, I’ve finished my education in the camp. I’ve tried to get a job in the camp, but I can’t. I’ve tried to get a job elsewhere, but I can’t”. It made me think that human beings—I refer to Holocaust survivors in particular—can put up with terrible situations if there is some hope for them at the end of the line. If there is a bit of hope, that is what matters. Our job is to make sure that there is hope and that the scourge of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia is eradicated. Our job is to spread that word. That is why I welcome the chance to take part in this debate.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I very much welcome this debate initiated by the Government during their presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and I congratulate the Minister on his speech. It is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, as it always is to work with him. We are blessed today by three maiden speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Evans of Sealand and Lord Katz, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, who are all on the Bench opposite.
Only the noble Lord, Lord Katz, has spoken before me; the chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement has shown what a great contribution he will make to this House. If I may squint at my phone, I found an interview he did with Jewish News in which we explained how his family originated in Białystok—then in Russia, now Poland. He recounted his preparation for his introduction to this House:
“I was asked by this very nice man ‘We just wanted to check whether any of your family has been ennobled?’ I thought to myself that in the past some of my family may well have been on the run from Russian nobility!”
I thought that that encapsulated a bit of his history.
This year, we mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, in January 1945. I was grateful to be invited to the ceremony led by the Foreign Secretary David Lammy at the FCDO, where we heard both from a Holocaust survivor and from a young woman, among many others. She, like myself, is not Jewish, but she spends a lot of her spare time on Holocaust education because she can see how vital it is to all of us.
I recognise the special pain for the Jewish community, but as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust said:
“The Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation … prejudice and the language of hatred must be challenged by us all. Holocaust Memorial Day is for everyone”.
The Holocaust Educational Trust, another trust that does such great work, noted:
“As the Holocaust moves from living memory to history, this Holocaust Memorial Day presented a key opportunity to bring the Holocaust to the fore of our national consciousness”.
This was a seam emphasised by His Majesty the King, who said:
“As the number of Holocaust survivors regrettably diminishes with the passage of time, the responsibility of remembrance rests far heavier on our shoulders, and on those of generations yet unborn. The act of remembering the evils of the past remains a vital task and in so doing, we inform our present and shape our future”.
My Liberal Democrat colleague, Vikki Slade MP, made a similar point in the debate two weeks ago in the other place,
“as the living memory of the Holocaust reduces, it is more important than ever that each of us keeps it alive through our own annual acts of remembrance and in calling out antisemitism and all acts of discrimination and hate against groups because of their faith, nationality or identity”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/1/25; col. 1163.]
Last October, we sadly lost 100 year-old Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert, to whom the Minister referred. She did so much work to ensure that the Holocaust would not be forgotten. I am delighted that her mantle has been taken up by her impressive great-grandson, Dov Forman.
I was struck by a comment by the Prime Minister about how in Auschwitz he saw,
“photographs of Nazi guards standing with Jewish prisoners staring at the camera – completely indifferent – and in one case, even smiling”.
The Prime Minister said:
“It showed more powerfully than ever how the Holocaust was a collective endeavour by thousands of ordinary individuals utterly consumed by the hatred of difference”.
The Holocaust was not only a crime wider than the SS; it also did not come out of nowhere. Preceding it there were years, centuries and millennia of discrimination and persecution of Jews, both as groups and as individuals. As my colleague, Vikki Slade, said, before the Holocaust there was,
“a decade of dehumanising a whole community”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/1/25; col. 1163.]
Dehumanisation of people—which has been called the fourth stage of genocide—is the key to enabling not only persecution but extermination. Amid all the terrible bleakness and horrors of Auschwitz, I found the arch over the entrance gate emblazoned with, “Arbeit Macht Frei”, — “work makes you free”—the most chilling in its utter cynicism.
When I go to Jewish and Holocaust museums, or indeed to Yad Vashem, which I have visited twice, I not only find the photographs of persecuted Jews subjected to pogroms, and other victims of the Nazis, hugely emotional; I also find desperately poignant the photos of hard-working, bourgeois and successful Jewish families in German and other towns and cities who strove to fit in, to do everything to become respectable citizens of their home country. They sought to belong, and they were still destroyed.
On my bookshelf at home, I have a book that I have had for about 20 years—I think I bought it in New York. It is by Vienna-born Amos Elon and called The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch. It describes how, in the two centuries from the entry of penniless 14 year-old Moses Mendelssohn, later of course a famous philosopher, into Berlin in 1743—entering through the Rosenthaler Tor, the only gate permitted to Jews, and cattle—until 1933, the German Jews increasingly and hugely contributed to Germany's intellectual, political and economic development. The Weimar Republic was the high point of the assimilation and integration of German Jews into German life. The writer notes:
“Alongside the Germany of anti-Semitism there was a Germany of enlightened liberalism, humane concern, civilised rule of law, good government, social security, and thriving social democracy”.
But none of that saved Germany’s or Europe’s Jews, because the continuing discriminatory attitudes of their fellow citizens had never been removed and were there to be exploited.
I was sorry that London’s Jewish Museum closed in 2023. We do, though, have the impressive Holocaust galleries at the Imperial War Museum and the Wiener Holocaust Library. We are privileged to have, as a Member of this House, the Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein—the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein—the grandson of German-Jewish scholar and anti-Nazi campaigner Alfred Wiener, who founded the Wiener library in 1933 in order to warn the world of the Nazi threat. I hope the noble Lord does not mind me referring to him and quoting him in his absence. Within weeks of the appalling attacks by Hamas on 7 October, graffiti was daubed on the Wiener Holocaust Library. The noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein—still, like me, tweeting—understandably reacted, tweeting as @Dannythefink:
“I’m so upset by this graffiti attack on my grandfather’s library. Alfred Wiener had a PhD in Islamic studies and cared deeply about Arab people. To see his Holocaust archive vandalised in this way suggests an attack on Jews not a critique of Israel. It’s dismaying”.
I will finish, as I must, by saying that since 7 October we have seen a distressing rise in anti-Semitic speech and attacks, with hostility to the very existence of the State of Israel. When people chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, this is a call not for two states but for the destruction of Israel, based on not only anti-Zionism but anti-Semitism. We have pledged “Never again”, but political developments around the world, not least in Germany, are deeply troubling. Our vigilance must be constant, vocal and vigorous.
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my registered interests, particularly those relating to Holocaust remembrance. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Katz, on a wonderful speech. He reminded me very much of how I felt when I first arrived here. I can remember being given an office on the third floor, above Royal Court, and then spending the next two weeks trying to find it again. He gave an informed maiden speech. It is clear that his contribution will make a very big difference to this House. I welcome him here; he comes with a magnificent reputation, and I personally look forward to hearing him speak again.
A couple of weeks ago, I stood close to the railway arch at Auschwitz-Birkenau, close to where, over 80 years ago, my friend Ivor Perl last talked to his mother. On the separation ramp, he jumped lines to join her and his little sister, saying, “I want to be with you, mum”. She replied calmly, “No, Ivor, go and be in the other line with your brother”. He obeyed. They would never see each other again. By the time he was allotted a hut, both mother and daughter were dead and cremated, their ashes cooling. Ivor remembered that it was a beautiful warm spring day.
Noble Lords may recall that Ivor inspired the strap-line of the UK’s presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, “In Plain Sight”, meaning that the Holocaust did not happen in dark corners but in bright sunshine, with the whole world watching.
The UK holds the presidency on the cusp of significant change. Within a few short years, Holocaust survivors will move from contemporary memory into history books. How we deal with the loss of witnesses has been vigorously debated for the last few decades. When I took up the role of special envoy 10 years ago, the feeling among some was that empathy was the key, and that everything would fall into place naturally. I had my doubts. Unsupported empathy is fragile and fickle. If there is any doubt about that, consider the indifference the world has shown to the Israeli hostages. Consider the reaction by humanitarian agencies to the three emaciated men who were released—one of whom was hoping to be reunited with a family long dead. Not a single word of comfort came from any of the self-described humanitarian agencies.
For its strategy this year, the UK presidency has adopted a triple-track approach to support empathy around three headings: landscape; archives, including testimony; and objects. On landscape, the IHRA has adopted the safeguarding sites charter, which sets out guidelines for the preservation of murder and detention sites. The UK played a pivotal role in drafting the charter. Across the killing grounds of the Holocaust, sites are deteriorating with the passage of time, neglect and wilful destruction. The charter lays down a set of advice aimed at preserving the sites with dignity.
Complementary to the charter are reminders through people, buildings and places. Our presidency is keen to engage young people, and we did this through the remarkably successful “My Hometown” project. The project invited schools across IHRA member countries to look at what happened in their hometown during the Holocaust. Schools in former occupied countries and those receiving victims of Nazis and their collaborators produced original and moving projects. Participants were from as far afield as Argentina to Greece, and the United States to Poland, and from member countries in between, including the United Kingdom. Most projects attracted favourable media attention, linking familiar buildings and places with the Holocaust locally.
On archives, the presidency has worked with the Association of Jewish Refugees on our legacy project, the Holocaust Testimony portal, which pulls together for the first time testimony from UK Holocaust survivors and refugees who made their home here. This includes testimony from the AJR’s Refugee Voices initiative, the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, the Shoah Foundation and many more archives. We hope that more archives, particularly the smaller and more specialised ones, will join in the coming months. The portal allows the testimonies of individual survivors across the decades to be seen in one place. The IHRA formally established the archive forum, which will encourage the flow of information between archives.
I am a past chair of the Arolsen Archives—the world’s most comprehensive archive on the victims and survivors of the Nazis and their collaborators. The collection has information on more than 17.5 million people and belongs to UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme. In recent years, Arolsen has improved public access to the archive.
To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camps, the IHRA broadcast over social media “80 Objects/80 Lives”, a digital project of one-minute clips which features 80 objects from filmed testimony of British Holocaust survivors and refugees. The objects represent the personal histories and experiences of Jewish Holocaust survivors, during and at the end of the Second World War. Such objects as teddy bears, a doll, a watch or a spoon take on special meaning. A passport with the letter “J”, a yellow star and a bowl from Bergen-Belsen are bittersweet reminders of a lost world. I thank the Association of Jewish Refugees for its creative help with the 80 objects.
The UK is lucky to have such widespread support for Holocaust organisations, and we used the London plenary to showcase the variety and vivacity of these institutions in the UK. Even in these challenging times, the UK continues to have an excellent reputation in the field of Holocaust remembrance, education and tackling anti-Semitism. The former Attorney-General of Canada, Irwin Cotler, known to many in this Room, described our policy as the gold standard for others to follow.
The UK presidency addressed two pressing problems. We have had special conferences that have dealt with the problems of artificial intelligence and bringing people together across differences, and we organised a conference to deal with the teaching of the Holocaust because there was a lack of confidence after 7 October. We will continue to tackle Holocaust denial and distortion, and will continue to the end to look at the Stockholm Declaration. Next week, we will meet again to look at the next 25 years.
We have moved now. That moment that we saw a couple of weeks ago was poignant on all levels. We will never see the like again. Ten years from now, at the 90th anniversary, there will be no Holocaust survivors to speak. As the Minister said, we are now the custodians of their memory. We have a duty to remember and to tell the truth.
Baroness Levitt (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Katz on his powerful and moving speech. I look forward greatly to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Sealand, who will speak after me. It is an honour to follow my noble friend Lord Katz.
Like many others, over the past week or so, because I knew that my maiden speech was fast approaching, I have been anxiously listening to those made by my fellow new entrants to your Lordships’ House. By doing so, I have learned that it is customary to start with thanks. I say this because I want to emphasise that, although it is customary, these are not mere words but something heartfelt and sincere from each of us. The extraordinary friendliness and helpfulness of the House officials, the staff, the police and the doorkeepers have made what could have been a rather overwhelming experience feel achievable.
I pay special tribute to the head doorkeeper, who told me with both humour and firmness when I should say “Good morning” and when I should say “Good afternoon”, depending on whether it was before or after Prayers. I can say with confidence that I am unlikely to forget this early lesson.
I thank all my new colleagues on this side of the House, as well as noble Lords from other parties and the Cross Benches, for the warmth of their welcome. I want to thank my supporters. It has been an honour and a privilege to have had the support and encouragement of my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark. Of my other supporter, I shall say a few words in a few moments.
In my professional life, I was taught at an early stage that you start all addresses by summing up the purpose of your speech in a single sentence. My single sentence is this: I am a criminal barrister. This not only explains what I have been doing for the past 40-odd years but illustrates both what I would like to achieve through my membership of your Lordships’ House and why I wanted to speak in this particular debate.
I am going to guess that, when I said I was a barrister, you probably all thought that you could predict who and what I am. Perhaps words like “establishment” and “conventional” may have crossed your mind. But I thought to myself that, as we are likely to be working together for quite a long a time, I should maybe reveal a little bit more about myself, including perhaps a few things that not many people know about me. I reckoned, I am among friends—none of you are not going to tell anybody, are you? It is all going to be okay.
I was astonishingly badly behaved as a child. When I was 14, I was expelled from a school called Roedean for being disobedient and a bad influence on the other girls. My unfortunate, very worried parents had to find a new school for me, not only in the middle of the academic year but in the middle of a term. One school was persuaded to take me, but I had not learned my lesson. My by now rather less worried and more exasperated parents made weekly trips to the headmistress’s office to try to persuade her not to expel me for a second time. Somehow, I just about lasted the course but, decades later, I was visiting the school under my married name—because I was a little unsure of my welcome—when a familiar voice shouted, in a voice you could have heard in Latvia, “Alison Levitt: you were the worst girl I ever taught!” This was my old history teacher. She went on to say that at school I was a total nuisance, always questioning, always challenging everything. But some years later she discovered that I had become a criminal barrister, “And”, she said, “then it all made sense”.
I am not sure how my fellow barristers will feel about a typical barrister being described as a perennial nuisance, but they will probably agree that a constant questioning of the established order is something we all do, and something of which we are rightly proud. I was called to the Bar in 1988. Women barristers were having a pretty terrible time of it generally, but one of the most demeaning things was that we were not permitted to wear trousers in court. Skirts and dresses only—even when you were having to trudge through the snow to some far-flung court where your client, who was charged with sexual assault, would sit there looking at your legs while you were desperately trying to take instructions and pull down your skirt with your other hand.
Fast forward to 1995, when I was chair of the Young Barristers’ Committee. At my monthly meeting with the then chairman of the Bar, my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith, asked me, “What can I do for the Young Bar?” I took my courage in both hands and replied, “Trousers”. He was a little bit surprised but, entirely characteristically keen to do what he could for diversity and inclusion at the Bar, he spoke to the Lord Chief Justice, and within days the rules were changed. As late as 1995, it was a novelty for women to wear trousers in court—I ask you. This remains a moment of pride for me.
By now, you may have noticed a bit of theme about me. If I wanted to self-aggrandise, I could call it wanting to achieve justice and support the rule of law, but I suspect that, more accurately, it is endlessly and exasperatingly insisting on swimming upstream. One of the reasons I am so delighted to have joined your Lordships’ House is that I have a lifelong interest in the purposes of legislation which creates criminal offences, and for this reason. Sometimes, laws are entirely pragmatic and designed to achieve a particular end—the compulsory wearing of seatbelts comes to mind—but sometimes a law does something else as well. The things that we make criminal say something about what our society finds unacceptable. An example of this is the change in the law which made rape within marriage an offence. Some said at the time that there would be hardly any prosecutions because it would be impossible to prove lack of belief in consent, but I was in favour of it because I thought that doing this sent a strong message that our society does not believe that women are the chattels of their husbands. Now, decades later, juries do regularly convict of this offence, so sometimes we legislators can actually influence and bring about social change.
The converse of this is that if there are laws which we do not enforce, it tells society that we do not think these transgressions matter. By not catching and not punishing shoplifters, for example, we run the risk of beginning to legitimise so-called low-level dishonesty, for which I predict there will be a very high social price to pay.
I have said that I am a criminal barrister, but for the last three years I have been a judge, doing criminal jury trials at the epic Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London. I resigned about two hours before the announcement of my elevation to your Lordships’ House. So, I have very recent experience of the sharp end of our criminal justice system, which I hope in due course to be able to put to some use in your Lordships’ House.
Others will speak about, and for, the police, the prosecutors, the solicitors and barristers and the part they play, but for now I want to say something appreciative about my former colleagues, the judges, because I can tell you that to a great extent it is their hard work and good will that are holding the beleaguered crown court system together. They deserve our thanks. Also, as old habits die hard, if I occasionally address noble Lords as “members of the jury”, I hope I shall be forgiven.
So, why make my maiden speech as part of the Holocaust Memorial Day debate? I said a few moments ago that I would come back to my other supporter: my noble kinsman Lord Carlile of Berriew. He and I, as some noble Lords will know, have been married for nearly 20 years. Some of you may have assumed that, because of my family’s surname, I am Jewish, but in fact I am not. He is—at least, his family were. My husband’s parents were both Holocaust victims and survivors: his father’s entire family—first wife, parents, sister, niece—were murdered in Poland by the Nazis. The only one to survive was my sister-in-law, hidden in Poland from the age of two until the war came to an end and she was reunited in the UK with her father. My husband’s mother and her family survived in Poland between 1939 and 1945 by ducking and diving and assuming non-Jewish noms de guerre. For our family, this is the most terrible, up close and personal reminder of what happens when a society forgets why the rule of law matters.
In the 1940s, my husband’s parents arrived in the UK from Poland as refugees from the Nazis. I never met his father, who had died years earlier, but I knew and loved his mother. This is not my story to tell, it is my husband’s, but there is one reason why I wanted to speak of it today. His grandparents, who survived the Nazis but were then trapped in Poland by the Soviet regime, had got through the war by selling a few diamonds, which was all they had managed to salvage of their earlier comfortable life. After the war, they came across a remaining diamond ring, which they then smuggled out of Poland by baking it into a cake and sending it to my mother-in-law, who by now was living in Burnley, Lancashire. This bit of the story my husband cannot illustrate, but I can. This is the ring. I wear it every Holocaust Memorial Day, and I am wearing it today because it conveys this simple message: they survived. They are still standing, right here in the UK House of Lords. So, I too say: never forget; never again.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
Well, my Lords, I have been looking forward greatly to today’s maiden speeches—without trepidation in the case of the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans of Sealand. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Katz, on his maiden speech, and I look forward to that of the noble Lord, Lord Evans; they will bring much to your Lordships’ House. But at this point, I have the heartfelt—I use the word deliberately—honour of thanking my noble kinswoman for her remarkable speech. I had to check with the clerks what the right appellation was. She demonstrated her eloquence, her wit, her determination and her critical faculty, of which I have some experience, all of which will make her a valued Member of your Lordships’ House. Her contributions on many subjects, I think—declaring my interests firmly—will be welcome, especially those founded upon her unusual and profound knowledge of and contribution to our criminal justice system. I should add that she brought me closer, much closer than I had ever been before, to my Jewish heritage, and I thank her for that.
I turn now directly to the subject of the debate. I say that the Shoah, the Holocaust, was the event of the most unnatural scale and horror in the history of humanity. It brought the end of six million lives, some my own close relatives: people who had no interest in politics, no interest in government, no interest in how their country, Poland, was ruled.
I was denied meeting one pair of grandparents because they were murdered. My half-sister’s mother died in Auschwitz, after spending three years there. On her death certificate it says typhoid, but we know that she became ill and was shot against a pole outside a shed in Auschwitz. Visiting there—I will never do it again, because I do not think I could take it—was an extraordinary experience for me.
In my view, what happened to those people has left an indelible mark on the living. I want to talk a little—nobody has yet—about what is generally referred to as survivor’s guilt. It is not a good description of what it is, but I cannot do better at a moment like this.
I do not know how many of your Lordships have seen the remarkable BBC series, “The Last Musician of Auschwitz”. It is required viewing. It tells the story of brilliant musicians, among the best in the world, who faced the moral dilemma of whether they should play music while others in the camps were marching to their deaths as slave labourers. What happened is that survival won the debate, and that is what survivor’s guilt is about: survival often wins the debate and they were right to do what they did, but it did not go away after they had done it.
I have seen it at close quarters. All my father’s family died of murder, except my beloved sister—my half-sister, in fact—who is now a lovely old lady living in a nursing home. She is spared, by dementia, from the memories of her experience as a hidden child. Before she became ill, she wrote a remarkable book, published by Bloomsbury Publishing, about what she remembered of her childhood between the ages of two and seven when she was hidden in Poland. She was hidden by an audacious young woman called Frederika, who was a distant cousin. She ensured that the child, my half-sister Renata, survived the war. After the war, that woman brought Renata to her father, who had been a solider in England—a medical officer. In a glorious flash, he and Frederika had a speedy romance. They married and I am their son.
Until I was 10 years old, I knew nothing about that background. My parents converted to Christianity while my father was a general practitioner in Burnley. My mother walked into Manchester Cathedral and demanded to see the bishop, and that is how that happened. I was not told until I was 10 years old that Renata, by then 20, was not my full sister. As it was put to me, she “had another mummy”. It bonded us for the rest of our lives and still does, but it was an extraordinary early example of what survivor’s guilt is all about.
Another example from my family is my cousin, Willy Verkauf. He left Poland when he was 17, just before the war. He went to Israel, came to Europe and became an art dealer in Basel. How did he express his survivor’s guilt? He discovered a painter called André Verlon, who you will see referred to in books about paintings of the Holocaust. André Verlon became a reputed Holocaust painter and artist. The survivor’s guilt is that André Verlon and my cousin Willy Verkauf were the same person: he invented an alter ego through which he could express his earlier experiences and the loss of his family in the Holocaust. I am proud to own two of André Verlon’s works, which I keep at home.
Then there is my cousin Ewa, who came for lunch with me in this place. She looked at me as though it were completely bizarre that we were having lunch here, that I had no business to be here and asked, “What on earth is going on?” We have all had these sorts of experiences; I can see the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, nodding.
Ewa told me that she was in a concentration camp with her mother and her baby. The baby died and she helped her mother to commit suicide. One day, she was sitting in a room with a number of women in the concentration camp and a Nazi guard came in. He took a 13 year-old girl by the hair and dragged her out of the room. A few minutes later, the girl returned, weeping, saying, “He raped me, he raped me”. A few minutes later still, the guard came back into the room, stood the girl up against the wall in front of all the other women in the room and shot her dead in the back of the head.
My cousin Ewa had real survivor’s guilt, so much so that she married an American and had two fine sons, and did not tell them until she had nearly died that they had had a brother or sister who died in a concentration camp. People have to live with these experiences.
The importance of memorialising the Holocaust is that we must make sure that the rest of society lives with these experiences. The wonderful work of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—I pay great tribute to him; I have watched him in Parliament for more decades than I would care to mention, because we are all getting older now—demonstrates that it is very important to educate so that people know that the Holocaust not only really happened but was the worst event in history.
My real point is that Holocaust Memorial Day is not merely a day in which we remember, but it is very much part of the present. We who carry the sort of history that I have appreciate the huge public support that comes through Holocaust Memorial Day. The day stands as a memorial and a reckoning for all of us who celebrate the innocence of our grandparents and other close relatives and commemorate their death. It is also for those of us who suffer the benefit of survival, as my parents and my cousins did and as I do to a lesser extent in coming to terms with the past, of which I knew nothing until I was 10 years old.
I could say much more, but for now it is enough that, in a debate such as this, I say about the past that we have the opportunity to learn important lessons for the future.
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP) [V]
My Lords, it is a great honour to contribute to this vital debate—a debate in which the House is rightly able to speak with one voice. It is particularly an honour to follow the long list of excellent contributions that we have heard. I welcome and look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Evans, who will be the next speaker. I particularly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Katz, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, on their excellent maiden speeches. I am glad that I was able to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, rather than precede him—I would have risked matrimonial disharmony if I had come between husband and wife. I look forward to hearing the further contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Katz, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, who have made such an excellent start.
The Nazis inflicted great atrocities across a wide range of communities, many of which have already been mentioned today. It is right that we acknowledge and remember all of those. Evil is evil, but it is particularly true that the Holocaust, the infliction of an attempt to wipe out the entire Jewish community off the face of the earth, stands alone as the greatest act of evil in the history of mankind. The murder of 6 million Jews—it is Jews, not just people—is something that we must commemorate at all costs.
When we mention the 6 million people, it is sometimes difficult for us all to get our heads around what that means in practice. Stalin once said that the death of a single person is a tragedy; the death of 1 million people is a statistic. We cannot afford the deaths of the 6 million Jewish people in the Holocaust simply to become a statistic. We should always remember that behind each one of those 6 million is an individual life and story: a father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife or friend.
If there were no other reason than simply to commemorate the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and their families, that would be reason enough to hold the annual Holocaust Memorial Day. However, sadly, there are other reasons that also compel us, rightly, to keep this uppermost in our mind.
First, it is clear that humanity has not learned the lessons of the atrocities of the Holocaust. Since 1945, a range of genocides—a word that is sometimes overused and perhaps wrongly used—have clearly been inflicted throughout the world, from Cambodia to Rwanda, and from Darfur to Bosnia. Therefore, ensuring that we learn the lessons of history is critical to ensure that it does not repeat itself.
Secondly, and even within this country itself, it is clear that anti-Semitism did not simply begin with the Holocaust—and, even more sadly, that it did not end with the Holocaust. The last 18 months in particular have seen a heightening of anti-Semitic behaviour across the United Kingdom. We have seen it in our streets, in our schools and across our community as a whole, with the terrible statistic that 2024 had the second-highest number of anti-Semitic attacks in recorded history.
I was struck by a speech that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, gave in this House some time ago. He contrasted his greater concern for his young daughter, who lived in London, whenever she would go into the city on a Friday or Saturday night to socialise, with that for his son, who served with the Israel Defense Forces. That, for many Jewish people, is an all too commonplace experience in our society. The poison and cancer of anti-Semitism is still with us, which is why we need to ensure that we constantly confront it and do everything in our power to eradicate it.
Thirdly, we need to understand and know the Holocaust to ensure that we learn the lessons from it and are vigilant to make sure that it does not happen again. There is a dangerous and historically mistaken belief that the Holocaust was a one-off terror perpetrated by a few evil fanatics at the top of the Nazi regime. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. The Holocaust was the most extreme example, but it was built upon centuries of anti-Semitism across Europe. While we think of it as a terror, what is perhaps most chilling about the Holocaust were the efforts made by the Nazi regime to make everything appear as ordinary and normal as possible. That was done for the purposes of trying to make sure that the Jewish victims of the Holocaust went to their death as compliantly as possible. To the extent to which the fictions were created of, for example, the showers in the concentration camps, they were not purely built on terror but on trying to create a sense of ordinariness and a belief that nothing unusual was happening.
Fourthly, it was not just the actions of a handful of people; the Holocaust was brought about by both the active participation, and often the acquiescence, of tens of thousands, if not millions, of people who helped facilitate it. They were people who, in other walks of life, we would simply regard as being ordinary and unremarkable. That is why it is wrong for us to see this as some one-off event; that drags us into a place of complacency, in which we believe that the conditions of the Holocaust could never happen again.
While acknowledging the evils perpetrated by so many during the Holocaust, it is also appropriate that we acknowledge the bravery and dedication of many other people in Europe during that decade or so. Many people acted with bravery and risked their own lives in sheltering and protecting members of the Jewish community and others, often directly at the expense of their lives. This took place in the UK as well. I am very proud that, in my constituency—the village of Millisle—there was a centre which served as a refuge for Jewish people directly before and after the war. It helped to look after some of the children from the Kindertransport and it became a home shortly after the war to some of those who had survived Auschwitz. That bond with the past has been built upon in Millisle. Millisle Primary, the local primary school, has recently opened a Holocaust memorial garden. That is a living way in which the current generation can acknowledge what has happened in the past.
Finally, I suspect most noble Lords have had the great honour and privilege—like I have—of meeting Holocaust survivors and listening to the very moving and telling first-hand testimony of those survivors. With the passage of time, the number of survivors is becoming less and less. Perhaps, in another five or 10 years there will not be the opportunity for anyone to receive first-hand testimony. This is why it is important that the mantle passes to the rest of us to carry on that critical message. The work of organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust and the ambassadors of Lessons from Auschwitz is no better exemplified than by the actions of our sovereign, who gave a truly remarkable example to the rest of us this year by becoming the first member of the British Royal Family to visit Auschwitz. That is the leadership example we need to pursue.
Peter Robinson, a former leader of mine, once described politics quite accurately as a never-ending relay race. For concentration camp survivors, their race as individuals on this earth is nearly run. It is up to all of us—the post-war generation—to now grab hold of the baton and to carry on the message of the critical nature of commemoration of the Holocaust and to ensure that—not simply in words, but in deeds—we fulfil the promise of “never again”.
Lord Evans of Sealand (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is humbling—and slightly daunting—to follow such moving and important contributions, particularly from my noble friends Lord Katz and Lady Levitt. I will do my best. I would like to do three things in this speech: give some thanks, briefly tell the story of why I am here, and contribute to this debate.
First, I thank my noble friends Lord Kennedy and Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath for introducing me; the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her brilliant leadership and support; and the doorkeepers and all the Lords staff who have been a credit to this House and an enormous help to me. With all these maiden speeches, I hope they feel cherished—they certainly deserve to.
Of course, I thank my noble friends, but I have also been made to feel so welcome right across the House. After three short weeks, it is clear to me that this House is an extraordinary place. It certainly has its foibles and it is not perfect. But the quality of expertise, scrutiny and debate is world-class. Dig under the partisan froth, which occasionally bubbles up even here, something terribly important is happening: the foundation of so much of what we have as a nation. It is democracy at work.
Why am I here? It started with my parents, both working class; their values were family, fairness, decency and hard work. Together, they were greater than the sum of their parts, and they worked so hard to give my brother Rob and I the start in life that everybody should have: safe, secure and loving.
So many people have helped and encouraged me but I will pick out just three: Dennis Wiseman, my English teacher at St Olave’s school, saw something in me that I did not see in myself; my friend and mentor Len Collinson, who told me I knew nothing about business and then dedicated so much of his time to teach me so much; and the exceptional Baroness Margaret McDonagh of this House, sadly no longer with us.
Noble Lords will all have their own stories about what got them into politics. Over the years, I have worked with some brilliant people from all mainstream parties, all wanting to change places and lives for the better but disagreeing on exactly how—which is what democracy is about. You cannot have democracy without political parties, and the disrespect in which they are held by too many is a great jeopardy for us.
I can remember the day I first got involved in politics like it was yesterday. It was 12 May 1979. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected in a landslide, but it was not that election that called me to action. I was meeting my brother Rob in our local high street. I was late and, as I approached, I saw him being bullied, mocked and taunted by a group of teenagers. Rob has a learning disability. I sorted those kids out—trust me, I did—but on the bus on the way home, I realised that I would not always be there for him. I needed to do something to make the place better, safer and kinder. Why did those kids think it was right to bully and mock, whereas similar kids from our street were kind, generous and inclusive to him? I wanted a country that brings out the best in people and discourages the worst. I joined the Labour Party that day.
I am fortunate, though, to have three families: my own—my wife, brother and daughter; the Labour Party; and, thanks to the only unkind thing my father ever did, imposing on me the life sentence of supporting Chester Football Club, I have Chester Football Club. All three have the power to test me, but I am blessed to have them.
Hatred in politics was alive and well when I was cutting my political teeth in the 1980s, with the National Front on the rise. In 1988, I visited the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where many of the mechanics of the Holocaust were developed before implementation in the larger camps. It was a profound experience which lives with me today: the mundane, everyday things in the well-preserved huts; living quarters, not statistics.
Those who perpetrated the atrocities were people as well. As Steven Pinker has said:
“We have to be prepared … to see that evildoers always think they are acting morally”.
Yesterday, in advance of going on a delegation to Israel next week, I witnessed raw footage collected by the IDF of the 7 October atrocities, which are still happening today. Were they monsters? Maybe, but they were also people like us, which is difficult for us to concede. Despite technological, economic and social advances, we are still constantly rocked and astonished as atrocities are committed today. It is too easy to demonise perpetrators as simply evil.
In 2006, 12 British National Party councillors were elected in Barking and Dagenham. Rapid change, poverty and deindustrialisation all played a part, but political parties, including my own, were also culpable. I am proud of the work I did alongside many others, notably the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, to regain the confidence of residents in mainstream politics there.
I became general secretary of the Labour Party in 2020. I was alarmed to find anti-Semitism alive and well in my own family, the Labour Party. My friend, Dame Louise Ellman, who suffered terrible anti-Semitic abuse, once said to me, “Only now can I really fully understand how ordinary people can do terrible things”. That chilled me. This was not the 1940s in another country; this was England in the 21st century, within a progressive political party. It was a personal pleasure to welcome Louise back into Labour Party membership in 2021.
Keir Starmer provided first-class leadership, and it fell to me as general secretary to root out anti-Semitism. It was not easy. I witnessed the certainty of the self-righteous, and indestructible narratives that resisted challenge and even truth, but I was ably assisted by so many in that task, including my noble friend Lady Ramsey, who led the transformation of our complaints process and did so much to restore the battered confidence of Jewish stakeholders. My noble friend Lord Katz provided exemplary leadership, and the Jewish Labour Movement was courageous and resilient. Other Jewish leaders trusted us when they could have been forgiven for not doing so. It was tough but, together, we changed the Labour Party for good.
However, there can be no complacency. There is still a toxicity in our politics, and, sadly, it is growing. I saw it in the recent general election all too clearly. It is easy to descend to the lowest and to proffer simple solutions to complex problems. My fundamental belief remains that, with the right environment, support and nurture, the overwhelming majority share the values my parents taught me: generosity, kindness and love.
The work done in your Lordships’ House is noble in the best sense of the word, but it could be too easy for us to become cocooned in this House and the other place against the harsh political reality. There has never been more volatility, or less affinity with mainstream parties. This is a real danger. Very little in politics is inevitable, but a dysfunctional democracy is certainly a precondition for the worst to prevail.
As my noble friend Lord Dubs, who knows more about this than most of us, said, we must never be bystanders to hatred. That can be difficult, but thanks to the support of so many, I was able not to be a bystander to hatred in that high street with my brother in 1979, to the BNP in Barking and Dagenham, or to anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. It is up to us to spot and stop the small acts of hatred wherever we find them, before they become the norm, before they burgeon with the accelerator of social media, and before it is too late.
David Baddiel has said that anti-Semitism is unique in its ability to shapeshift. It exists in both the far right and the far left, in conspiracies, in populism and even among those who claim to fight racism. No party represented here is immune. I am proud to be a Member of your Lordships’ House, but we need to do more. We are the doorkeepers of our democracy. If we allow democracy to fray and decay—and it is doing exactly that—on our watch, we could open the door again to the kinds of atrocities we are marking today. We must simply never let it happen.
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
My Lords, it is an honour and a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Evans of Sealand and to be the first to congratulate him on an inspiring maiden speech. I have known the noble Lord for many years and can confirm that he is definitely no bystander. He has always been a man of action—and I do not include his support for that peculiar football team, Chester—whether in support of his brother on the high street, or in taking on the BNP in east London and, regrettably for me, the anti-Semites in the Labour Party when he became general secretary in 2020. He will be a great asset to your Lordships’ House.
I was so pleased to be able to support his efforts when he was general secretary, under the leadership of the now Prime Minister Keir Starmer, to tackle the scourge of anti-Semitism in our party, which, as we heard from my noble friend, is one of his three families. The need to do the work that we did, hand in hand with my noble friends Lord Katz and Lady Anderson, and so many others, is proof, if ever any were needed, that marking Holocaust Memorial Day is more important now than ever. I bear in mind the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on this subject.
We must always be vigilant and determined men and women of action. That is what I see right across this House. I saw it when I was working for the Labour Party in helping to lead its response to the damning report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. I saw it then in the calm and assured roles that the late lamented Lord Kerslake and the wonderful noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, played in overseeing the recruitment of the independent complaint adjudicators to ensure that anti-Semitism—indeed, all acts of discrimination—could be rooted out.
I also saw that vigilance and determination in the unwavering support and oversight of the work by my noble friends Lady Hodge, Lady Royall and Lady Lawrence, alongside Jewish communal stakeholders, including—I am very anxious about leaving out some names—the then president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Marie van der Zyl, the current president, Phil Rosenberg, the wonderful Adrian Cohen and the Jewish Leadership Council, the Jewish Labour Movement, which was absolutely central, the Antisemitism Policy Trust, the fantastic Community Security Trust, and those JLM members who were so fundamental, Peter Mason and Adam Langleben, among others. I have seen it too since having the honour of joining your Lordships’ House, including in the powerful maiden speeches from my noble friends Lord Katz and Lady Levitt.
I have also been inspired by the hugely impressive ways in which the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, brings the horrors of the Holocaust to life in his writings for today’s generations by sharing his family’s terrible testimony regarding, among other things, Bergen-Belsen. I am inspired by the wisdom and generosity of spirit of my noble friend Lord Dubs and by hearing of his remarkable experiences of the Kindertransport, and from listening to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, speaking of his family’s horrific experiences. I found listening to the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, deeply moving, as has been other testimony in the House today.
It was only after joining your Lordships’ House that I learned, from the noble Lord, Lord Austin, that I had been inspired by another child refugee from the Holocaust many years ago. Without me even realising it at the time, his father was my head teacher at secondary school. I only learned of Mr Austin’s experience of the Nazis decades after being taught by him and his wife—the noble Lord’s mother—I assume because back then people did not really talk about it, at least not outside their families.
Indeed, it was from my own family that I learned about the horrors of the Holocaust. When I was growing up, my father told me of his time in the Westminster Dragoons, a tank regiment which landed on Sword beach on D-day. He then drove, with his comrades, his flail tank across northern France and eventually found himself part of the liberating forces at Bergen-Belsen. My dad never forgot what he saw there. I am not going to talk about that because others have spoken about those horrors so eloquently and with even more experience than I have of hearing about it. He said that I should never forget what he told me about and what he had seen. He wanted his children to know, to remember and to speak of it—as I am doing today in his honour. He worried even then, when we were children growing up and as teenagers, that some people were denying that it had ever happened and forgetting about it. By continuing to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, as all noble Lords have done so eloquently today, we can and must make sure that no one ever forgets.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, it has been a great honour to hear three such interesting and heartwarming maiden speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt. It is also a great honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay.
Today we are all here gathered in remembrance. The speeches we have heard have been heartbreaking and full of sadness on many occasions, which has moved many of us. Eighty years ago, the world bore witness to the liberation of Auschwitz—a name etched in infamy for its wickedness, a place where a million souls perished. But we must be clear: Auschwitz was not an anomaly, nor was it the whole story. It was but one in a network of extermination camps which sought to systematically eradicate 6 million Jews in Europe. We must resist the temptation to speak of the Holocaust as a horrific event that took place during the Second World War. To do so would be to diminish the full scale of atrocity which spanned nations, years, and generations of suffering.
Although today is a day of reflection, it must also be a day of reckoning, because the hard truth is this: anti-Semitism did not die with the fall of the Third Reich. It was not buried in the rubble of Berlin, nor was it erased by the words “never again”. It persists, it is alive, and it is growing. We have all heard that the Community Security Trust documented the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents in a six-month period. It is no wonder that the CST also uncovered that merely one-third of British Jews believe they have a future in this country and that a staggering 50% have considered leaving altogether. It is truly anathema to me that in the UK—a nation that has been a beacon of refuge and opportunity for Jewish people—there are those who fear for their safety, their children’s futures, and their very place in society. How can this be? How did we arrive at a moment where British Jews, who have contributed so much to our national life, feel unwelcome in their own country? Crucially, what will we do about it?
We rightly place great importance on the memorialisation of the Holocaust. It is an opportunity to educate, to remember, and to honour those whose lives were stolen, but remembrance alone is not enough if it comes at the expense of acting against contemporary anti-Semitism. What is the point of solemn words and candlelit vigils if we fail to confront the anti-Semitism of today? I put it to the House that each Holocaust Memorial Day should be a day not just of reflection but of renewed commitment to tackling contemporary anti-Semitism in all its forms. This commitment must be explicit: annual targets, clear objectives and unwavering political will. Without this, the fight against anti-Semitism will continue to be overlooked, sidelined and deprioritised on the political agenda.
Let us be honest: the pervasive nature of this problem indicates that we are beyond easy solutions. It cannot be resolved overnight, but that must not deter us. We need a patient, sustained effort—an approach that acknowledges the scale of the issue while refusing to accept it as inevitable. We have skirted around this subject for too long; it is time to take it seriously and, as we do so, we must ensure that Holocaust Memorial Day remains firmly rooted in the historic reality of what happened. We remember all victims of hatred, but let us not shy away from the fact that the Holocaust was first and foremost the attempted extermination of the Jewish people. This is not a mere historical detail; it is the very essence of why this day exists. To obscure or generalise this fact is not only a disservice to the past but a dangerous mistake for the future. Making the historical and contemporary link both honours the memory of those murdered and is the best bulwark against history repeating itself. The Holocaust was not inevitable; it was the result of unchecked hatred, institutional complicity, and the silence of too many for too long. That is why we must act now.
Today, as we remember the liberation of Auschwitz, let us also liberate ourselves from complacency. Let us not merely remember; let us resolve. Let us not only mourn; let us act. Let us ensure that when we say “never again”, it is not merely a phrase but a reality that we strive towards. I urge my esteemed colleagues to stand firm against anti-Semitism, to make Holocaust Memorial Day a moment of real commitment and to ensure that British Jewish people can live in this country with the same security, dignity and confidence as any other citizen.
Lord Parekh (Lab)
My Lords, I want to share a few thoughts on the question of the Holocaust memorial. However, before we talk about it, we need to ask: why do we want to remember the Holocaust? What do we wish to remember? What is our assessment of it? These are the questions that this debate was and is expected to answer.
Is the Holocaust in some sense unique in human history, or have there not been cases of collective killings and mass suffering? The first thing therefore to ask is: what is the specificity, the uniqueness, of the Holocaust? I suggest that it is not merely a question of a large number of people being killed—6 million, 4 million or whatever. What is unique about it are the following four things, and never before or after have these four things come together in the way that they did in the 1940s. First, the Holocaust was articulated through the agency of the state. It was not a question of people going berserk and killing each other, or ethnic tribes springing upon each other; it worked through the state, systematically aiming at particular groups and wanting to eliminate them.
Secondly, the state did it because it was guided by a particular ideology, the ideology of racism—the Aryan race, the pure race, the white race. There are different races, and particular races must be eliminated. Thirdly, race acts as a navigator. It helps you to identify groups that you should get rid of. Fourthly, when you do get rid of them, theirs is not an ordinary death. It is a death that is bureaucratised and treated simply as an impersonal event in the life of the state.
Given those four elements—using the state and mobilising its resources, being based on a particular ideology, using that ideology to identify particular groups and then mobilising the state to kill people whom you have identified as undesirable—the question is often asked in many circles: why are you taking the Holocaust as in some sense unique? Why not see it as simply representative of other kinds of suffering? Slavery, for example, has been a long-lasting feature of human life. Why do we not memorialise slavery? Likewise indentured labour or, if we are considering genocide cases, there have been other genocides in history. Why are we concentrating on the Holocaust?
I think I have already answered that question, but I suggest that the kind of suffering involved in the Holocaust was unique for the following reasons. In the case of slavery, there is human contact; the state is not involved. Death comes rarely and when it does it is generally incidental and not planned. There is a human relationship between the slave owner and the slave. A kind of humanity is there in almost all forms of suffering, except when you come to the Holocaust, where humanity disappears and the individual is not just dehumanised; he is “inhumanised”. The language used is the language relevant to animals—cockroaches, worms and so on. In no accounts of suffering of any kind that I have read or heard about have I seen human beings referred to in that inhuman way. This phenomenon of “inhumanisation” is very peculiar to the Holocaust.
If that is so—and I hope this is so—the questions that we have asked about other forms of suffering, and the lessons we have learned, cannot be applied to the Holocaust. For example, in the common attempt to understand why the Holocaust occurred, people say, “Well, the Nazis hated Jews”. It is not as simple as that because there were Nazis who did not hate Jews; they had Jews as friends or as mistresses. Others have said that they did not just hate Jews; they hated human beings as a whole and were misanthropes. That is not true either, because they had good friends. Or it is said that they were evil, wicked persons. That is not quite right either because the “evil” they display is shallow and superficial. It is not born out of the deep layers of the human soul.
That leaves us puzzled. How do we explain the behaviour of a man who has dogs, loves animals, has friends and a mother and a father going to the concentration camp and knocking off a few people and returning home as if nothing has happened? It is this that needs to be understood. In order to be understood, it is this that needs to be questioned. What kinds of human beings are attracted to this or turn into machines of death? That cannot be answered if you look at the ordinary forms of killing. If you were to look at the psychological theory that it developed from ordinary forms of killing and apply it automatically to the Holocaust, it simply would not work.
To these simple questions—why and how—what answer would you give? Hannah Arendt had to invent a new concept: the banality of evil. She had made a massive study of concentration camps and ultimately came to the conclusion that these people were shallow. There was nothing there. You expect wicked people to have depths of an evil kind, but there was no such thing. My suggestion is simply that we have not even started learning lessons from the Holocaust. If these questions remain unanswered, what are we learning from the Holocaust memorials being set up all over the world?
I want therefore to end with a very simple conclusion. There are many others that follow from this. When we say, for example, the Holocaust is evil, we are making a moral judgment on it. It is evil, yes, but what else? Is that enough for us as a lesson to learn? Here I suggest that in the case of the Holocaust and lessons we can learn, we need to be asking certain questions which are not asked in relation to other forms of suffering. Let me take a simple example, with just one minute left.
We judge it, as in all our discussion today, as being in terms of the Jewish people. Is the Holocaust entirely the moral property of the Jewish people? Is it not an indictment of the entirety of mankind and should it not be seen as a human problem, which addresses all human beings anywhere and not just Jews? Of course, Jews were the primary and intended targets, but so were lots of Poles and others. That is one point.
The other question is of a slightly different nature. The Holocaust has happened, but what are the moral consequences? Does this mean that the Holocaust was the price Jews had to pay to win the State of Israel? How glibly we slip into a certain way of thinking and certainly of talking; “Look, they have suffered so much and therefore the Jewish people have a right to Israel” or “Whatever they do is forgiven”. In that case, we do injustice to other people—namely the Arabs and the Palestinians. The simple thing is that we have a lot to learn, and we have not yet started learning it.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Cryer)
Order. I apologise to the noble Lord, but can I ask him to come to the end of his remarks now please?
Lord Parekh (Lab)
These are the lessons we need to learn, and I hope that we will start learning them fast.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I will begin by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Austin of Dudley, who sadly is not able to be in his place today. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, reminded us just a few minutes ago in her excellent speech, Ian is the son of a Holocaust survivor. It was he who helped me understand the significance of this day, long before either he or myself were Members of your Lordships’ House.
Unlike my present diocese of Manchester, Dudley, where I was then the bishop and the noble Lord, Lord Austin, was an MP, did not have a very large Jewish population. Nevertheless, at his instigation, every year we sent two young people from Dudley College of Technology to Auschwitz. They reported back to our annual Holocaust Memorial Day event that was held in the college, where they told very moving stories of what they had seen and how it had made them feel. Their witness, alongside the testimony of Holocaust survivors, helped inspire young people who were born almost half a century after the Holocaust to understand why we today must be constantly on the vigil against those voices that seek to deny the common and equal humanity and dignity of every single human being. Those who denigrate, despise and ultimately seek to destroy those whom I, as a Christian, will always declare as being created in the very image of God.
I now live in Salford, in the midst of the largest Jewish community outside of London. The boundary of the eruv, which permits many of my Jewish neighbours to undertake tasks such as pushing wheelchairs and prams on the sabbath and other holy days, is my garden wall.
This year, I have been delighted to see the success of the Holocaust Memorial Day schools exhibition held in Manchester Cathedral. It features the work of Church of England primary schools across the whole of Greater Manchester from many culturally, racially and religiously diverse communities. The children responded to key themes of the Holocaust in a number of ways. Some of them created origami paper cranes as prayers for peace; others reflected on Pavel Friedman’s poem, The Butterfly, which was actually written in a concentration camp. There was a re-creation of the pile of children’s shoes from the children who lost their lives at Auschwitz—that was very difficult to look at—and a collection of human portraits from many different cultures to celebrate our differences.
Meanwhile, local authority Holocaust Memorial Day events in Greater Manchester, including one that I attended in Manchester Town Hall, had local speakers who were Holocaust survivors or from their families. Respect was shown to them at these events by members of all our main faith communities: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Jain. In my role as convenor of the Greater Manchester faith leaders, I have the privilege of leading representatives of all our major faiths. We are good friends and good neighbours.
The multifaith Challenging Hate Forum, which is hosted by my cathedral, undertook its own visit to Auschwitz, led jointly by my dean and Rabbi Warren Elf. My wife was part of that trip in March 2019. We also have vibrant bilateral groups, such as our Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester, where relationships that are forged and sustained over many years prove so vital when we find ourselves in tense times. I am privileged to work closely with the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region, and to use my voice here in your Lordships’ House to raise concerns that it and other faith communities have first prompted me about.
The Church of England teaching document, God’s Unfailing Word, which was published in 2019, speaks of attitudes towards Judaism over many centuries as providing,
“a fertile seed-bed for murderous antisemitism”,
and of the need for Christians to repent of the “sins of the past” towards our Jewish neighbours. It notes the part played by flawed Christian theology in promoting negative stereotypes of Jewish people.
I am grateful to other noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and my right reverend friend the Bishop of Lichfield, for reminding us that anti-Semitism did not arise in the 1930s but was nurtured and grown over the preceding two millennia. There can be no overlap between the truth of our witness to Christ, which it is the task of theology to articulate, and the darkness of anti-Semitism. We have a duty as Christians to be alert to the continuation of such stereotyping and to resist it. My right reverend friend was a member of the group that wrote this document, though I note he was too modest to refer to that in his own speech earlier.
Remembering the Holocaust serves as a bulwark against the ever-present forces across the world that seek to resurrect vile, violent and murderous anti-Semitism or to perpetrate fresh genocides against other targeted groups. This year marks 30 years since the Srebrenica massacre, when more than 8,000—mainly men and boys—were killed in just a few days by the Serb forces. I am proud that, in Manchester, we—again together, as all our faiths and others—commemorate Srebrenica Memorial Day each year.
In Britain, we take pride—I take pride—in our pluralistic society, one where people are free to practise their religion and express their identity and where they should be able to live without fear of persecution. But we must never take those freedoms for granted. They are the product of a long history of struggle and sacrifice. Yet, as other noble Lords have said, they remain under attack—even in the UK, even today. We must make sure that atrocities such as the Holocaust never happen again. We must speak up and act up when anti-Semitism, racism or xenophobia happen.
As a schoolboy in Manchester, I studied alongside many fellow pupils who were Jewish. Most of them would have lost family members in the Holocaust. Simply being boys together—we did not have girls in those days in my school, and it still does not—taught me that we were one humanity under the skin. Indeed, the only practical difference between being Jewish or gentile seemed to be that my Jewish friends got to go home a lesson early on winter Friday afternoons.
As others have said, with each anniversary, the memories of the Holocaust slip away from living memory. If we are to hold firm against the evils of fascism and other extreme ideologies—as indeed we must—as each generation of survivors passes on, it is incumbent on all of us to remember the past. Today’s debate plays a vital part in enabling that, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley—a good friend, who does so much excellent work to promote strong relationships between different faiths and communities, and who spoke so strongly and movingly in opening our debate today—for giving us this opportunity to build “For a better future”, to quote the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day.
Viscount Eccles (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate and a particular pleasure to speak in a debate where we have heard three varied, enjoyable, interesting and informative maiden speeches.
I was 14 at the end of the war. I was at boarding school in Winchester, and my memory tells me that we did not know about Auschwitz. However, we were told about Belsen, and noble Lords will all know, I am sure, why Belsen came into the knowledge of the general public in this country, as the first of the camps that we really knew about. We learned about the camps in stages, and we learned about what had been happening in stages: arbitrary imprisonment, forced labour, cruelty, neglect, disease, starvation and industrialised murder.
This was so far beyond our 14 year-old experience, knowledge and imagination. It was a shattering blow to our experience of the war. After all, we had been through a period when it seemed that we were going to lose the war—and then we looked at this and what we were supposed to understand. At evening prayers, who ever took them faced a very troubled congregation.
Then, we thought to ourselves, “How could people be found to run such a system—who would be the guards, bookkeepers, managers and commandants?” We found it very difficult to cope with that. Then there were the misfortunes, the betrayals and the widespread collaboration—all these aspects came out, stage by stage. Then we got to hear about the text of the final solution. Again, that was quite beyond our comprehension. All we could conclude was that it was unattainable and massively evil.
Time goes by and our nature is such that we have to learn to cope. At that time, we did not have the 6 million label. We came to cope by somehow thinking that it was individuals to whom these things had happened. We thought of it as a whole series of individual tragedies and the effect they had had upon their close families and relations. This is probably still the way I think about the Holocaust—as a massive list of individual stories.
Eighty years later, there are two other ways in which we might usefully accept the challenge of thinking about the Holocaust. How did Europe come to create the conditions where the Holocaust was mounted, from the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires through Bismarck and competitive rearmament to the First World War, Versailles and the Weimar Republic, the rise of Hitler, the Second World War and the final solution? I believe that, although we have looked in some detail at that story—that long journey—it merits being looked at in ever more detail to try to come to some resolution about how this could have happened. Whatever one thinks about the Holocaust, it was one outcome of that long journey.
There is a second journey about which we need to think very carefully, and that is what has happened since 1945. During my national service, some of my colleagues had come recently from Palestine, which was still briefly in its mandate condition before the creation of Israel. They told pretty wild, difficult and dangerous stories of the Stern Gang and the PLA. It behoves us to consider what part the Holocaust has played in geopolitical outcomes since 1945 and, indeed, up to today. What part does that appalling event play in the way in which we think about where we are now and where we are going? Again, I feel that the study of and research about this are extremely important.
To sum up, we do our best in our efforts to cope with what is happening to us and around us. In coping, we have more than enough to think about, to study, to research and to remember.
Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury (CB)
My Lords, when the Nazis came to power in 1933, my father was dismissed from his job as a medical researcher because he was a Jew, and he made his way to this country, where he was taken in, made his home, raised a family and became a distinguished scientist. Historically, this is a reminder that although—or perhaps because—the Holocaust originated in Germany, many German Jews had time to leave before the final solution was initiated, whereas the Jews in subsequently Nazi-occupied countries did not have that opportunity, with the disastrous consequences that we all know and that have been described in a number of speeches today.
Personally, my father’s reception in this country has made me for ever grateful to the United Kingdom and made me, for a while, very suspicious of Germany, a suspicion reinforced by the fact that a number of members of my mother’s family died in concentration camps. However, subsequent experiences, particularly my contact with German judges, have given me two insights.
The first is respect for the way in which Germans have come to terms with what happened and have tried to take steps to make sure it does not happen again. Let us hope that the rise of the AfD does not represent a signal of retreat from that.
The second is a realisation that while it was, as has been said more than once today, unique in history, the Holocaust could have happened anywhere. We delude ourselves if we think that lessons can be learned so that nothing like it will happen again. I am afraid that history shows us that racial prejudice, racially motivated violence and even—fortunately, only rarely—genocide have been features of human existence as far back as records go, and that anti-Semitism has been prevalent, sadly, for more than 2,000 years.
Of course, that is not to say that everyone is racially prejudiced or anti-Semitic, or has a predisposition to racial violence, let alone to committing genocide. But one has only to read about how many otherwise apparently decent German soldiers were prepared to massacre helpless Jewish women and children simply because they were ordered to do so by their officers to realise how skin-deep civilisation is, at least in extreme circumstances, a point eloquently made by my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs.
An important component of combating such tendencies in any country is the rule of law, coupled with strong, democratic institutions—a point made by the most recent winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics, who showed that the quality of life in countries with those features significantly outperformed the quality of life in countries which lacked them. It is noteworthy how democracy, the constitution and the courts in Germany all crumbled very quickly in the face of ruthless Nazi aggression, thereby setting Germany on course for the Holocaust. The rise of Hitler shows that democracy is not enough: the Nazis came to power through the ballot box. Had there been humane laws enforced by an independent judiciary, I suggest that the story would have been very different.
Of course, the judges cannot stand on their own, even when supported by advocates as talented as the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, whom I congratulate on her maiden speech. They need to have an embedded culture that genuinely believes in respect for all people and genuinely supports the rule of law. Without that, the road to perdition beckons.
As my noble friend Lady Ludford reminded us, the price of liberty—and, I would add, the price of a decent society—is eternal vigilance. On that score, we are in danger of drifting into choppy waters. I am struck by how ignorant and uncaring most people in this country are about our constitutional arrangements, the rule of law, the role of the courts and why it matters. Even those at the top of our constitutional tree, in what we coyly refer to as “the other place”, are often remarkably and insouciantly ignorant about such issues. Such ignorance helps breed prejudice, and prejudice, if unchallenged, metastasises into persecution, and sometimes something worse than persecution.
Education and research are therefore key. It is through education that we seek to ensure that future generations are encouraged and enabled to recognise and combat racism in general, and anti-Semitism in particular. It seems to me essential that young people are both taught to disavow racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance and educated about our constitutional system and the rule of law.
Some 10 years ago, I would have said that this country had, by international standards, a reasonably good record on anti-Semitism. Recent events, which were well described by the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans of Sealand, in their excellent maiden speeches, show that things have deteriorated, but that people are doing their best to reverse this disturbing development. They deserve our support, both in words and actions.
When it comes to education, I would like to take the example of the work of the Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex, home to the Centre for German-Jewish Studies, of which I am privileged to serve as president. For over two decades, the institute has been dedicated to scholarly inquiry into the history, culture and thought of Jewish refugees from German-speaking lands. This not only preserves the memory of those who fled persecution but, by actively engaging with students, school children and the wider academic community, helps to ensure that contemporary understanding is informed by past knowledge and experience. Anyone who has listened today to the recollections of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Carlile of Berriew, and, from a different perspective, of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, will realise how important it is that these stories and experiences are relayed to the young.
As has been said, 6 million people killed is a shocking figure, but Stalin has already been cited, and there is something about figures that depersonalises it. To get the full horror, one just has to be told the stories that we heard today. If those can be got across to the young, we are on our way to achieving something.
I like to think we are still the same country that took in my father 90 years ago. He was then funded in his research by an organisation call Cara, the Council for At-Risk Academics, which was founded, as it happens, in the same year he came here. My wife is currently supporting a Ukrainian family, one of whom is a lawyer and whose research is now supported by Cara. That somehow epitomises how both the good and the wicked are always with us, and it reminds us how we must fight to promote the good and suppress the wicked.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate our three newcomers, the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt. I am sure they are going to make a distinguished contribution to this House, and all three maiden speeches were well worth listening to.
I have not intervened in these debates in the past. Part of the reason is that I have no family history to relate such as the harrowing stories we have heard today. Also, because I am a Roman Catholic, I have not felt that our religion’s performance allowed me to say much about the Holocaust.
I was in the Foreign Office as an official during the Six Day War. I saw the way in which the Foreign Office reacted, and it was very interesting. The Arabian departments did not want anything to do with it. Frankly, had it not been for Harold Wilson, we would probably have made a lesser contribution to the Six Day War and its aftermath than we did. The combination of Harold Wilson and Lord Caradon—better known as Hugh Foot—meant that Britain ended up having quite a reasonable outcome to the war. The reason I mention this is that they suddenly put together a special department of the Foreign Office, which I was posted to from the Arabian department. One of the things I noticed, which I will come back to later, was an inability of some people to see both sides of the story. That was not because they were malicious; it was because they were just blind to an extent.
I fully support the Conservative Friends of Israel and I have been horrified by the Hamas attack, and in particular the failure, it seems, of the British press to realise that it was Hamas that attacked Israel. Israel did not do any attacking; Hamas attacked. When I look at the three released hostages last week and the gloating of the Palestinians around them, I am sorry, but I cannot feel much sympathy for them. I just wonder at the damage they are doing to their own population. It is absolutely astounding. What is quite saddening to me is what I perceive as the bias in reporting in the British press. I do not see it as being even-handed; it is all, “on the one hand, this; on the other hand, that”. The people of Israel were attacked. They have a right to defend themselves—full stop, as far as I am concerned.
I was 25 years in the European Parliament. I had a lot of time to talk to politicians from other countries of Europe—many of whom had been alive during the war and some of whom had fought during it. One who became a good friend of mine was a German general. He joined at the very end of the war in the boy soldiers brigade in Berlin. I also spoke to a lot of people around Germany. The fact of the matter is that many Germans blanked themselves out from what was going on. If you want to know what I mean, it is the way in which we blank ourselves out from what is going on in British prisons this very day: rats running around, atrocious overcrowding. No one knows about it. No one writes about it. No one deals with it.
Talking to many of my German colleagues, I am afraid it was quite clear that many of them had just blanked it out. They had lived, or their parents had lived, through the terrible 1920s, when the Weimar Republic was frankly unstable, and Germany was a horrible place to live—with massive inflation and the like. Then, along came this little man, who nobody particularly liked and who was not from their class, but, somehow, the country became richer. Things started happening. We often overlook the fact that the dispossessed effects of the Jewish community were distributed largely to the remaining Germans. Many Germans got better flats; they got more furniture; they got all sorts of things. They turned their face to the wall. They pretended they did not know, because they did not want to know. They blanked it out.
That also applies to my own Church. The Pope at that time, Pope Pius XII—Eugenio Pacelli was his name—came from one of the most established families in the Roman Catholic hierarchy. He was probably the most upper-class Pope that we have had in the last 200 years. He cut his teeth, so to speak, as papal envoy in Germany. He spoke fluent German but, in 1870, Italy was reunited and the papal lands were confiscated. That was a dreadful blow to the Catholic Church and the Pacelli family refused to deal with the Italian state. Then along came Mussolini, who signed the concordat and regularised relations with the Roman Catholic Church. Pacelli was influenced by that. By that time, he had left to become the Secretary of State, which is like being the Foreign Minister, and then he became Pope. He also blanked out what was going on. He was looking for Jews who had been baptised as Catholics who could be saved. The rest were cast aside.
When I was a little boy at a convent school, I was quite firmly told that we should not be sorry for the Jews because they killed Jesus. That was in 1953, so that was what was going on then.
My final plea to the Minister is that, if we need one good thing, apart from Holocaust lessons in schools, it is education. People do not understand the different religions, and we need some education so that people understand what the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions are. That is needed because the base of tolerance is knowledge and education.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, what special maiden speeches we have heard today—I welcome them all. I make special mention of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Sealand, which is up the road from Buckley, so we are almost neighbours.
Some of my Academy of Ideas colleagues are organising a summer school in July entitled, “Upheaval: Why Politics Needs a New Language”, so I have been thinking a lot about disputes over meanings of words. In this House of late, we have had tortuous debates about the meaning of everything including extremism, hate speech and terrorism. God knows what far right means these days, and some cannot even define what a woman is.
One word that is increasingly becoming unmoored from its meaning is “Holocaust”. The Holocaust is now used as a free-floating catch-all to describe every violent geopolitical event or even general human evil. But my plea is that words matter. Very much in the theme of the spot-on speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, we must insist that the “Holocaust” word refers to a particular unique event in history. The Nazi death camps were not generic; they were part of what camp survivor Elie Wiesel explains:
“The Holocaust was conceived to annihilate the last Jew on the planet”.
Despite this, even Auschwitz—a death camp designed for the genocide of the Jews—has been turned into an all-purpose symbol of human cruelty. UNESCO describes the world heritage site as a universal
“symbol of humanity’s cruelty to its fellow human beings in the 20th century”.
In this way, the Holocaust is being ripped out of its historical context.
Meanwhile, celebrity social justice activist Naomi Klein said the quiet bit out loud in an essay in the Guardian last year. She wrote that we are entering a new intellectual era, one in which people are openly asking if the Holocaust should
“be seen exclusively as a Jewish catastrophe, or something more universal”.
Klein goes on to argue that perhaps the Holocaust was not
“a unique rupture in European history”
but rather
“a homecoming of earlier colonial genocides”.
This anti-western decolonising lexicon should be a red flag. Remember, in the decolonisation narrative, Israel has been identified as the epitome of the colonial settler state and Jews branded as the embodiment of white supremacy who deserve our ire and Hamas’s actions.
Klein also notes that increasingly, people are demanding greater recognition for other groups targeted for extermination by the Nazis, as though this was in any way on a par with the targeting of the whole Jewish race for extermination.
Beyond the Guardian’s comment pages, it seems that, because we live in an era which treats victimhood as a virtue and confers moral authority on it, a queue of identity groups is laying some claim to the Holocaust experience. There even seems to be resentment in that, when Jewish voices demand that we recognise that it was they who were central to the Holocaust, it is treated as though they have been driven by narcissism.
Gradually, this has expanded into demands that any reference to the Holocaust must also mention victims of other international atrocities, whether it is Rwanda, colonial era massacres or, inevitably, contemporary events in the Middle East. The Islamic Human Rights Commission wrote to UK town halls asking them to boycott this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day on the grounds that it is “morally unacceptable” that Gaza is not considered a genocide alongside the Holocaust.
The problem is that wrenching the Holocaust from its historically specific context, in which all are victims, relativises and almost normalises it and renders it banal. One of the most devastating consequences is that it makes it difficult for the public, especially new generations, to understand the true nature of this industrialised act of anti-Semitic barbarism, and to even remember at all that the Jews were the targets. The consequences of this trend, what Brendan O’Neill’s new book, After the Pogrom, calls the “dejudification of the Holocaust”, were more than evident on Holocaust Memorial Day this year. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, reminded us that a whole swathe of commentators and politicians forgot even to mention the Jews, listing almost everyone else who was killed, apart from the victims: the Jews.
I am not suggesting such errors of omission are conscious acts of erasure. It somehow feels even more chilling that they are more likely examples of unconscious bias and careless forgetting. The problem with relativising the specific Holocaust is that it makes a mockery of “lest we forget”—and we can expect a lot more forgetting if we are not careful.
In my mind, the consequences of this dejudification of the Holocaust is that increasing numbers, especially of young people, do not even recognise when the iconography and language of historic Nazi period Jew hatred rear their ugly heads today. It is always so jolting when I talk to students involved in BDS campaigns and critique their calls for boycotts of Israeli foodstuffs as they wrench them off supermarket shelves, or their demands to blacklist and censor entire countries’ academics, artists, scientists and sportspeople. When, looking at scenes of blood-like red paint daubed on shop fronts, I mention that it echoes 1930s Germany, they look at me blankly.
I rather nervously disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—I know that is nerve-wracking—about his Elon Musk arm gesture point. Whole swathes of young activists I know have been queuing up to denounce that as a Nazi salute, seeing far-right fascists around every corner. But when the same people see starving, emaciated Jewish hostages paraded, jeered at and humiliated by Jihadi baying mobs, or when they see political activists standing outside UK synagogues screaming “baby killers” at Jews—and those activists are my tribe—suddenly, they get a blind spot and they cannot see any Nazi salutes, symbolism or anything. They do not recognise the dejudification trends of the Holocaust past and their re-emergence today, and that is worrying.
So, how do we counter this fake news of a Jew-light Holocaust? We all reach for more education, but it bodes badly for the educational boasts that the new Holocaust memorial museum next door to Parliament is going to solve it all when, shamefully, our very own Parliament banned a Holocaust memorial exhibition from Westminster Hall because it was too political. I am not Jewish, and it is exactly more politics—political solidarity—that I think we need. It is why I was so pleased that grass-roots campaigners Our Fight UK took the Auschwitz Album, Yad Vashem’s street exhibition, to Parliament Square the weekend before Holocaust Memorial Day. Young people like Miles explained that their aim was to urgently
“inform the public what a”
real
“genocide looks like”,
and centre that on the murder of 6 million Jews.
Our urgent educational and political task must include exposing the rise of the newly powerful forces which are acting to exterminate the Jews now—“Never again” is now. Yes, I mean Hamas, Iran and the Houthis, but closer to home there are the radical Islamists and their numerous apologists, who, if we are honest, are influential in many political, cultural and media institutions. Too many of us look the other way, bite our lips, and will not name and shame. It is about time we spoke up, loudly.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I congratulate and thank the new Members of your Lordships’ House on their maiden speeches, all of which were deeply moving.
It somehow seems fitting that I should make my first speech since recent surgery to repair an undiagnosed femur fracture—on which I have been unwittingly, if somewhat painfully, hobbling for months—by speaking in this debate. It was, after all, my childhood Jewish refugee surgeon, Hanuš Weisl, who put me back together again more times than I care to remember. He lost almost all his family in the Holocaust. I think of him today and his family members, whom the wonderful Wiener Holocaust Library has established were murdered in Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. May they rest in peace and may their memory be a blessing.
Inevitably, all of us, as we have heard in this debate, turn our thoughts to our precious Holocaust survivors and to the world’s promise to them immediately after the war: “Never again”. How do we best honour them, our Holocaust survivors? I ask myself what “Never again” means. Does it, for example, simply mean no more concentration camps, crematoria or gas chambers—the physical structures which the Soviet troops stumbled upon in disbelief 80 years ago? Does it mean no more Nuremberg laws, to which Matthew Pennycook, in his powerful Statement of 23 January in the other place, implicitly referred in terms of the Nazi legislation discriminating against Jews and depriving them of rights and property? Mercifully, both are very unlikely in today’s world.
So I ask myself another question: how do we counter the challenge that remains? How do we perform the task of eradicating what the Minister described in his poignant opening remarks as man’s darkest impulses? Does that insidious and poisonous prejudice—which informed, by osmosis and within a remarkably short period of time, the culture underpinning the abomination that was the Holocaust—still exist?
We have already heard about the IHRA’s current theme, “In Plain Sight”. That phrase reminded me of something that the remarkable Holocaust survivor, Manfred Goldberg, whom the Minister mentioned, said to me about the promise “Never again”. Manfred told me that he had genuinely taken it for granted that the promise would be kept; he took it at face value at the time and for all time. I know that he is horrified that the hatred is back and in plain sight.
That brought home to me that it is not enough for me to say, “We will always remember you and the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust”. In an age of pernicious poison spread via social media, we need to acknowledge the racism still in plain sight on the streets of our capital most weekends. I refer of course to the demonstrations in central London, the first of which—the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign—unbelievably started organising while the 7 October pogrom was under way.
As well as being the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, 2025 is the 60th anniversary of Labour’s Race Relations Act receiving Royal Assent. As noble Lords will know, the Act made the promotion of hatred on the grounds of race, colour and ethnic or national origins an offence. The vile vitriol being visited on our Jewish communities clearly runs counter to the Act. This is racism, pure and simple, and it is happening in plain sight. I ask the Minister to say in her closing remarks whether she agrees that a fitting way both to mark the Act’s anniversary and to assure the survivors that “Never again” means exactly that would be for His Majesty’s Government to be even more clear that what is happening on our streets is racism and it will not be tolerated.
I take one common, supposedly innocent chant as an example. Now, I know what is meant by “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—survivors certainly do. It means the destruction of Israel. It means the mass murder of Jews for being Jews, as we saw Hamas perpetrate on 7 October. It means a one-state, not a two-state, solution.
It is understandable that, in our desire to see peace in the Middle East, some want to believe that we are dealing with a peace-loving entity in Hamas. Yet if there is one organisation that has shown time and again that it is absolutely against peace and that it does not want a two-state solution, it is Hamas; rather, it wants to kill Jews and destroy the State of Israel. I refer noble Lords to Hamas’s statements of 24 October 2023, 30 January, 14 June and 24 October 2024. Its racist, genocidal hatred on grounds of race is in plain sight.
In conclusion, I want to take up the challenge set by my noble friend Lady Eaton in her excellent speech. I welcome the assurance given by the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, on Monday that Hamas can play no part in the future of Gaza’s governance. But can the Minister assure the House that its supporters here in the UK will not be allowed to reduce her and our sincere, renewed pledge of “Never again” to a meaningless mantra recited to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day? Surely we can all agree that that is the least our survivors and the millions of victims of the Holocaust deserve.
Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab)
My noble Lords, it is an absolute privilege to follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, and so many of the exceptional speeches we have heard today. I pay tribute to the maiden speeches of my noble friends Lord Katz, Lady Levitt and Lord Evans. They were powerful speeches all, and I hope noble Lords will agree that they will be influential and strong voices in this place.
As we have heard today, the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day was “For a better future”. Today I want to pay tribute to an organisation and the people within it who are seeking to create a better future for us all by educating our ever-changing world about the horrors of the past so that we do not replicate them in our futures.
Generation 2 Generation is a charity that enables descendants to tell their family Holocaust stories to a range of audiences across the UK. It currently has 41 speakers and is recruiting more. This academic year to date, the speakers have been booked to deliver their family stories to more than 390 audiences, reaching over 45,000 people. I am sure noble Lords will agree that that is impressive. Its key aim is to ensure that the Holocaust is not forgotten or denied, and to challenge racism and discrimination in all its forms.
Last Sunday, I was privileged to speak to some fabulous volunteers who wanted the stories of their families to be told and not to be forgotten, to be an education to a world where propagation, propaganda and misinformation is rife. So, let me tell your Lordships about Sabina Miller.
Sabina was born in 1922. She was Jewish, one of five, and she grew up in a warm, comfortable, loving and happy home in Warsaw. When the Nazis invaded in 1939, their home was taken from them and the family was forced to relocate to the ghetto. Some 400,000 people were crammed into just over one square mile. Hygiene was impossible, food was so, so scarce, and disease was rampant. Like many, Sabina contracted typhus. She was overwhelmed with the disease and was unconscious for 18 days. She remembers her mum standing at the end of her bed saying, “You’ve got to live. You will live. You must survive”. But when she awoke, both her mother and her father had died.
The situation in the ghetto was desperate, so Sabina covered her star of David and effected an extraordinary escape. She found illegal work alongside other Jewish girls on a farm—20 years old, digging potatoes, cleaning out stables and forced to sing anti-Semitic songs while they worked. While she was there, she received a postcard from her beloved sister Esther. It said, “I’m on a train. I don’t know where I’m being taken. If anyone finds this card, please send it”. Esther must have thrown that card from a train, and someone, in a simple act of kindness, delivered it. Those were the last words that Sabina’s sister would ever address to her. Shortly after, Sabina heard that the Sokołów and Węgrów ghettos where the remainder of her family had been taken, had been, to quote the Nazis, liquidated. Her siblings, her parents, her cousins, her aunts, her uncles, her grandparents—all gone. She said later, “The fact that people have families and I haven’t is something which hurts dreadfully”.
That was just the beginning of Sabina’s amazing story of survival. She spent the winter of 1942 living in an ice-cold, small ditch, warily begging for food. She changed her identity many times, was imprisoned, was interrogated on four separate occasions by the Gestapo and was eventually sent to a forced labour camp in Germany, where she remained until the war’s end. I cannot do justice to quite how unbelievable Sabina’s story is, and how unlikely it was that she would survive.
But survive she did, as did Lela Black, born in Salonika and sent to Auschwitz with her husband, her daughter and the rest of her extended Greek family. She was the only survivor. Some 50,000 Jews lived in Salonika before the war; approximately 96% of them were murdered in Nazi death camps.
I also want to mention Tony Chuwen, a Polish Jew who survived two concentration camps, hid in the German army and escaped to Finland, finally skiing for three days over the frozen sea to Sweden. Tony, while he was serving in the German army, at huge personal risk shared his meagre rations with the woman cleaning the barracks, a Jewish woman held in a prison camp. Years later, he attended a Holocaust event and heard that two women had survived their time in a Nazi camp by sharing scraps of food that one of them had been given by a German soldier.
Sandra, Gloria and Jacqueline are the descendants of these strong, extraordinary people. They volunteer for Generation to Generation. All three women told me how their relatives completely rejected any notion of bravery or resilience. Instead, these survivors asked, “Why me?” And they answered, “I was lucky”. Their stories are dotted with unexpected acts of kindness from Jews and non-Jews alike. And perhaps that was part of their luck.
We know, in this place, that anti-Semitism, racial hatred and genocidal violence are still with us. I hope—and I know that the volunteers from Generation to Generation also hope—that by sharing these stories from survivors, one day people will no longer be dehumanised, treated as other, humiliated, terrified or murdered because of their race, creed, nationality or religion. Let us remember the horror and the evils of the Holocaust, and let us not rest until justice is done for the victims in our world where genocide again threatens our humanity.
Lord Gold (Con)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, this afternoon. I, too, would like to add my congratulations to the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans of Sealand, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, on their excellent contributions and maiden speeches. I have no doubt that each of them will make a wonderful contribution to this House. I would like to tell the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, that from my position I was able to see that her husband was smiling right through her presentation, with such pride. I have also come away thinking there is no such thing as a quiet breakfast in their household.
The noble Lord, Lord Khan, in opening this debate in such a powerful way, mentioned seeing Manfred Goldberg last week. I, too, had the privilege of listening to this wonderful, articulate 94 year-old, who vividly described his life in Germany pre-war and how, miraculously, he managed to survive the brutality and suffering imposed on him by the Nazi regime. Unfortunately, though, Manfred is now in the minority; very few Holocaust survivors remain alive to tell us of their experiences and give us first-hand testimony to the wickedness imposed upon them and millions of others.
Unless we continue to remember the Holocaust, and the wickedness shown to the Jewish minority and other minorities across Europe, there is no guarantee this will not happen again. The photograph of released hostage Eli Sharabi captured by Hamas on 7 October 2023, looking so gaunt and emaciated, reminded so many of us of the liberation of Belsen in 1945 and the horror discovered there. We say “Never again”, but the rise in anti-Semitism here—3,528 cases reported by CST in 2024—across Europe and in Australia, Canada and the USA, makes the risk of repetition a real possibility. Particularly worrying is the rise of anti-Semitism in our universities. Although much can be done to inform and educate those born after the war, especially our children—the Holocaust became part of the English national curriculum in 1991—hearing from survivors who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust is the best way of achieving this.
If this cannot be done face to face, giving our children the opportunity of hearing from survivors remotely is the next best thing. Therefore, it is commendable that at a recent Holocaust Educational Trust dinner, our present Prime Minister announced a national ambition that every schoolchild should hear the recorded testimony of a Holocaust survivor. Other initiatives include investing a further £2 million for Holocaust education, announced by the Chancellor in her Budget, and for the teaching of the Holocaust to continue to be compulsory in state schools and expanded to include academies. These initiatives were announced by the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, following a curriculum review.
All this is excellent, but to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to inform and educate today’s and tomorrow’s generations, the creation of Holocaust centres and memorials all around the world is so important. That is why I strongly support the building of a memorial and learning centre. While the Holocaust galleries at the Imperial War Museum are impressive, building a lasting memorial here, right in the centre of Westminster, next to our Parliament—which has always stood for liberty and freedom all around the world—is making a massive statement that we in the UK remember now and will not forget in the future the events of the 1930s and 1940s which resulted in 6 million Jews and other minorities being slaughtered.
Let the world know that in this wonderful United Kingdom, our home, we will always stand against tyranny and prejudice, wherever they raise their ugly heads. The 2015 Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission report recommended the building of a “striking and prominent” new national memorial, to be located in central London. There can be no more striking and prominent location than right here in Victoria Tower Gardens. Objections have been raised to this location. It is argued that there are security and traffic issues, that the atmosphere of Victoria Tower Gardens will be changed, that access may be restricted, that too many people might visit the memorial—3 million visitors a year are expected, and I hope that we increase on that number—and that there are alternative sites. Frankly, I do not believe that these objections stack up. Security and traffic issues will arise wherever the memorial is located, and we will sort them, as we always do. As for the atmosphere in the park, I know how sensitive those responsible for the memorial are to this issue and how they truly believe, as do I, that the park can be improved.
By going ahead with the building of the memorial and learning centre here, we are raising awareness of the Holocaust and acknowledging its importance, just as was achieved last month by the visit of His Majesty King Charles to Auschwitz on Holocaust Memorial Day, commemorating 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. No other memorial in any location in the world will be as prominent as this one—
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
The earlier part of the noble Lord’s speech was very moving and compelling, but a number of us have avoided burying this debate in a difficult discussion about the Victoria Tower Gardens proposal. Will he do the same and move on to another subject?
Lord Gold (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for that intervention. It so happens that I am through on this. I just wanted to add one last word, which is that we should be very proud of going ahead with this. I accept the noble Lord’s intervention and have nothing else to say except to pay tribute to everyone who has spoken here today. Every single speech has been most moving.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, I have been in your Lordships’ House for just over two years and this is the first time I have taken part in a Holocaust Memorial Day debate. It is a humbling experience to listen to all the moving speeches.
As we all know, the word “Holocaust” is most commonly associated with the Nazi genocide of Jews in Europe during the Second World War. It is one of the darkest and most horrific episodes in human history and highlights man’s inhumanity to man. Six million Jews were murdered—not 1 million or 2 million but 6 million. How could it happen? When I watch the grainy black and white footage of the concentration camps, it feels as though it happened yesterday—not in some distant medieval time, not 100 years ago, but yesterday and as if I could almost touch it. How could anyone conceive of the idea that they could eradicate an entire race of millions of people from the face of this earth and not be held accountable by future generations?
Where were the voices of reason, of right-minded men and women in Germany at that time? How could a nation that gave the world great literature, philosophy and classical music descend into such barbarity? It is said that when the news of what was happening in these concentration camps first reached London and Washington, the political establishment refused to believe it, thinking that it was simply not possible. Yet, due to some complex geopolitics, Germany was taken in by this evil, grotesque ideology, led by unscrupulous men, resulting in this mass murder on an industrial scale.
Learning about such horror should remind us all of the dangers of nationalism, xenophobia and the rhetoric of hate. Regardless of our political differences, it is our responsibility to oppose politicians and leaders who prey on people’s fears and promote hate. It is up to us to defend democracy, freedom, life and liberty. Over the centuries, mankind has committed countless horrendous mass murders, massacres and atrocities. Some have faced justice, others have not. The German playwright and anti-Nazi activist Bertolt Brecht wrote:
“When crimes begin to pile up, they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard”.
In 1948, the United Nations established the genocide convention, which remains the main international legal instrument for preventing genocides. Yet, tragically, this has not prevented further atrocities being committed. In July 1995, right in the heart of Europe, 8,000 men and boys were murdered in cold blood by Bosnian Serbs in what is known as the Srebrenica massacre. In July 1994, in Rwanda, over a million people were slaughtered. Back in 1995, the Turkish army systematically murdered well over a million Armenians—an event widely regarded as genocide.
In 1968, American troops slaughtered hundreds of unarmed civilians in a village in Vietnam and gang-raped women and girls in what became known as the My Lai massacre. The only man convicted of this crime, William Calley, was later pardoned by President Nixon, and that speaks volumes about our present-day justice system.
In November 1984, after the assassination of the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, we witnessed the planned massacre of many thousands of innocent Sikh men, women and children in Delhi. Forty years have passed yet justice remains elusive.
In India, at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13 April 1919, during the British Raj, General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on an unarmed crowd of over 20,000 people, killing hundreds. The British historian Nigel Collett, in his biography of General Dyer, titled The Butcher of Amritsar, claimed that over 800 men, women and children were mown down in just 10 minutes, with hundreds more dying from their wounds.
I could go on with many more examples, as history is full of such atrocities and massacres. Above all, though, the Holocaust is the worst of them all. It happened.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sahota, and to wind up from these Benches a debate in your Lordships’ House. Sometimes that is also a privilege, and today clearly falls into the latter category.
It has, of course, been a pleasure to listen to the many fine speeches from all parts of the House. I hope I will be forgiven if I single out right at the start the three impressive maiden speeches that we have heard—those of the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans of Sealand, and the diamond-studded speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, who, not for the first and perhaps not for the last time, left the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, following in her wake. I must say in all seriousness that I have heard the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, speak many times in this Chamber but, even by his standards, today’s speech was outstanding and extremely moving. The fact that the three maiden speakers chose a non-party-political topic for their speeches means that I can congratulate them even more fulsomely than is usual. I know I speak for everyone here when I say we are looking forward to their many contributions in future years.
In this debate, as the annunciators remind us, we are asked to “take note of” Holocaust Memorial Day. Although that is the traditional form of the question for such debates in your Lordships’ House, I suggest that a debate asking us to take note is particularly appropriate for this topic. The Holocaust happened because people did not take note. They did not take note of what was being said on their streets, of what was being decided in their Parliament or when extremists marched through their streets, shops were boycotted and Jews were discriminated against in public services, in professions and in the public square. They simply did not take note. As my noble friend Lord Balfe said, they blanked themselves out.
The Holocaust did not happen overnight, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield reminded us. It was planned, and the plans were made public. It was actually founded on and in law. One of the overlooked casualties of the Holocaust, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, remarked, was law and justice. The murders in the gas chambers were preceded by concentration camps, the concentration camps by ghettos and the ghettos by discrimination, and that discrimination was rooted in law and upheld by the German courts, their lawyers and, yes, their judges. The fact that it did not happen overnight prompts us to ask: why did people not take note? Where were the protests?
Like others, I miss the presence of the late Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, especially on days like this. As he pointed out, there were no protests when, on one day in 1933, all Jewish lawyers in Germany came to their offices and cleared their desks—under compulsion of law, let us remember—nor was there a protest when doctors had to do the same, and then all the other professions. There was simply silence, indifference. No one took note. Nor was there any protest in Austria when, on one day in 1938, one-sixth of Vienna’s population, the Jews, were banned from owning property. That was one-sixth of a city, but there was not a single protest.
If Holocaust Memorial Day is to mean anything, it must encourage us to speak out and call out injustice. We have a duty to take note. I suggest that, as part of that duty to take note, we should consider Holocaust Memorial Day, which is now a quarter of a century old, and pay tribute to the work of many organisations. This includes the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust, so ably led by Karen Pollock, which work so hard to commemorate and educate. I also commend respectfully the work done by my noble friend Lord Pickles in this area.
Let me make three points. First, let us be clear about the unambiguous aim of the Holocaust. It was the systematic and industrial murder of Jews with the aim that there would be no Jews left in the world. The Holocaust was put into effect by means of laws which explicitly referenced Jews and made special provision for them. The Nazis had no trouble using the word Jews. They knew who their victims were and, just as importantly, why they were the victims. The Jews were to be murdered simply and only because they were Jews.
So, in common with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, I ask: why do so many organisations seem to find it so difficult to use the words Jews or Jewish when commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day? The Royal Free Hospital referenced
“millions of people killed during the Holocaust”—
no mention of Jews. Barnet Council referenced the “victims of the Holocaust”—no mention of Jews. Cambridge City Council is another entity for which the word Jews appears to have become verboten. This is not a party-political point, so let me single out for praise Islington Council, with its solid Labour majority, which referred to
“the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust”.
If Islington Council can do it, so can everybody else.
Of course we can, should, will and must remember other victims and why they were victims—because they were gay, or Roma, or had mental or physical disabilities—but the overwhelming majority of the victims of the Holocaust were Jews because they were Jews, and they deserve to be remembered as Jews. We do not remember the victims of the Holocaust by denying who the victims were or why they were the victims.
Secondly, let us be clear about the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Just as we do not remember the victims by denying why they were victims, we do not commemorate the victims by lumping the Holocaust together with other genocides and tragedies. We must not globalise the Holocaust, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, put it. There is space in the human heart for all victims. To recognise the uniqueness of that appalling enterprise the Holocaust in terms of its numbers, its industrialised systems of murder, and its use of entire state apparatus for one purpose only—to rid the world of Jews—is not to denigrate, demean or ignore other genocides, whether in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, or anywhere else, a point powerfully made by the noble Lord, Lord Parekh. We do not remember the victims of the Holocaust by denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust.
Thirdly, we certainly do not remember the victims by denying that there was a genocide at all or by using the murdered Jews of the Holocaust in some perverted form of inverted history to attack living Jews. We are used to the ramblings of Holocaust deniers and those who refuse to confront the reality of the Nazi genocide and we rightly ignore them, but denial comes in many forms. To give the most egregious example, the President of Ireland, in his speech at a national Holocaust commemoration event, began by saying that the Holocaust started with the “manipulation of language” and then, astonishingly, referred to the Holocaust an as “attempted genocide”, twice. If you talk about an attempted genocide, you are denying that it was a genocide.
The President of Ireland also used his speech—at a national commemoration event for the Holocaust, let us remember—to deliver his views on Israel and Gaza. I will not trouble the House with what he said, as it does not merit repetition in Hansard—or, frankly, anywhere else. His words were so incendiary that Irish Jews who protested the president’s use—or, I should say, misuse—of that sacred platform were forcibly removed from the venue. Jews being manhandled out of a Holocaust commemoration event; how could that happen? It happens because there are too many people who are only too willing to attend and speak at events commemorating dead Jews but who are nowhere to be seen when it comes to protecting living Jews.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester was absolutely right when he reminded us that the hatred of Jews did not begin in Nazi Germany in 1933. My noble friend Lady Eaton was equally right to remind us that the need to protect Jews did not end in 1945. For all the talk of a Jewish diaspora, living Jews today —the Jewish community—are overwhelmingly based in two locations only: North America and Israel. The former, at least for the moment, can look after itself, but the latter needs and deserves our support. It is not just that Israel was born in the shadow of the Holocaust; it is that if there had been an Israel, there would not have been a Holocaust. It really is that simple.
When the first Zionist Congress met in 1897, no one then knew which of the various strategies for the survival of the Jewish people would prove successful. Would it be to embrace communism or socialist Bundism? Would it be to advocate for western assimilationism, or even to join forces with Arab nationalism? They all had their supporters, but which was the was the right path? Today, we know the answer to that question. The Holocaust gave its final, bloody say. The answer of history was found in the piled bodies and heaps of ashes at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and elsewhere.
As in 1945, so also in 2025: the simple fact is that Israel and Zionism, which is no more and no less than the right to Jewish self-determination, is essential for the future of the Jewish people as a nation. We do not have to like modern Israel any more than we like or do not like modern Greece. We can agree or disagree with its Government, its policies and its actions. However, we cannot commemorate Jews, who were victims in the Holocaust because they could not defend themselves, if we deny Jews today, whether individually or collectively, the right and the means to defend themselves.
Where others did not take note, we will take note and we will do more. The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, asked what is meant by “Never again”. I will answer that large question with a very short answer, building upon a point made by my noble friend Lord Gold. It means that we will not stand by silently at a time when pictures of starved and emaciated Jews—who have been starved and are emaciated only because they are Jews—which we saw as black and white pictures in our history books, have reappeared as colour images of released Israeli hostages on last night’s TV news.
In accordance with Jewish tradition, I will not end these remarks on a sad note. Let me end by congratulating the usual channels—the powers that be, if I can borrow William Tyndale’s magnificent phrase—for arranging this debate today. Holocaust Memorial Day was a few weeks ago, but today is a very appropriate day for this debate. That is because today is a Jewish festival known as Tu Bishvat, celebrated each year on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat. It is one of the four new years in the Jewish calendar—the monarch may have two birthdays but we have four new years. Each serves a different purpose: Rosh Hashanah in the autumn begins the Jewish new year for many purposes, but Tu Bishvat was the date for calculating the agricultural cycle for the purpose of biblical tithes. In modern times, it has become a celebration of ecological awareness, when many trees are planted. It is often known as the “new year for trees”.
On Holocaust Memorial Day, we commemorate the many Jewish communities who were uprooted, and the millions of individuals—men, women and all too many children—who were cut down. Family trees, such as mine, are shorn of many branches because they were consumed in the fire and the horror of the Holocaust. But in the spirit of Tu Bishvat, we will today pledge ourselves not only to take note of the destruction wrought by the Holocaust but to plant afresh, to nurture new growth and to help those communities, both in Israel and throughout the diaspora, to blossom and flourish again. Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must loudly and confidently proclaim: “Am Yisrael Chai”—the people of Israel lives.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, we have had a powerful and moving debate. This debate, as ever, is your Lordships’ House at its best, and it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, who delivered an incredible speech. I wish him, and the trees, chag sameach.
Before I move on to the substantive part of my speech, I start by offering a huge mazeltov to my noble friends who have made such wonderful maiden speeches. There might be a little Yiddish and Hebrew in my speech today—good luck, Hansard.
I start with my good and noble friend Lord Katz, the chair of the JLM, who was its chair when I was its parliamentary chair. I think it would be fair to say that he was my partner in crime and my friend, as we fought for the heart and soul of our party. It was a rollercoaster, but, because of him and many Members of your Lordships’ House, we won. Today, I know that Chaim and Solomon would have been so proud to see him deliver his maiden speech.
I will follow, I think, by talking about my noble friend Lady Levitt, whose speech was spectacular. I love the idea of her as a 14 year-old getting expelled. I too was always naughty, but I was too scared of my teachers to be that naughty. She was quite clear about why she is here and about the rule of law—but I think all Members of your Lordships’ House will remember the jewellery. I do not know how the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, will ever match that with additional gifts to his wife. I am quite clear that, while he may be lucky to have her, we on our Benches are delighted to have her. That was an extraordinary and incredible speech.
I turn to the third maiden of today, from my noble friend Lord Evans of Sealand. We did not quite celebrate his role in defeating the evil of the politics of Jeremy Corbyn. My noble friend was the man who helped rescue my party from the brink and who suspended Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party. I will always be grateful for the work that he did. He delivered on the now Prime Minister’s commitment to rip out anti-Semitism from the Labour Party by its roots. Importantly for this side of the House, he was general secretary of my party when we won the general election—and for that we are grateful.
It is an honour to close this debate, which was so well opened by my noble friend Lord Khan. This House is very special, and the fact that this debate, of all debates, is being opened by a practising Muslim and closed by a practising Jew shows just how far our society has come.
As we have heard, this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is an especially poignant occasion: the last major anniversary when we can expect to have significant numbers of Holocaust survivors able to share their testimony. It was attended by His Majesty the King, a symbol, if ever there were one, to the Jewish community and the world of the importance of this date and the place that the Holocaust shares in our collective history. This is the last major anniversary where it is the words of survivors, not ours, that touch our hearts.
That is why, as ever, I am in awe of my noble friend Lord Dubs, who has once again reminded us of his modesty. It may have been just a train that he got on, but we are so grateful that he did and that his parents were brave enough to put him on it. As he reminded us, Nicky Winton gave us a blessing: he gave us my noble friend, an inspirational colleague. Nicky Winton also provided us with the clearest example of how one person truly can change the world.
It has been a privilege to hear so many noble Lords share their personal experiences and reflections during this debate. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield reminded us, for many of us, this is now our responsibility. If the words “never again” are to be made real, the onus is on us and on every generation going forward to tell the stories of our families. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, of her family’s heartbreaking stories. For me, her story will always be about “survival by silverware”; I will never forget it.
The personal testimony of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, about his family reminded us of the impact of the Holocaust on those who survived, and the impact of survivor guilt. This theme was also touched on by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles.
It is also incredibly important on days like today to remember those who liberated us, because they too had to live with what they saw. I thank my noble friend Lady Ramsey not just for her speech but for highlighting the role her father played in the liberation.
My story, too, is a personal one. When I spoke in this debate last year, I spoke about my family arriving in the UK in the 1890s, having fled the pogroms of Tsarist Russia. As far as we know, not one of those who chose to remain in the shtetl survived the Shoah. I am proud to be British, but I also realise how lucky I am to be British. For my family, anti-Jewish hatred is not an academic exercise; it is formative to my understanding of my place in the world. The Shoah helped shape not just my existence, but my world view. My family knows only too well, as do the families of many in your Lordships’ House, where hate can lead and the importance of security and freedom—and the requirement, the duty, to fight for the core human rights we take for granted at our peril. That powerful point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Neuberger.
We are here today to remember those who were murdered because of who they were, not what they did. They were apparently easy targets for ideologues and dictators who sought to gain and abuse power by scapegoating communities, amplifying tropes and embracing hate and fear over hope, building on thousands of years of hatred towards my community. As my noble friend Lord Parekh reminded us, they also used the tools of the state to murder Jews.
At a time when my community and many others are once again scared, I want to find some hope in this horror—some light in the darkness. As we do this, I want to thank the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for his work. His dedication to Holocaust memorial and the fight against anti-Semitism, both here and across the globe, are not just recognised but celebrated. I, for one, am grateful for his service. He is one of the lights in the darkness.
On Holocaust Memorial Day, people across the world came together and lit candles to remember the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust and the hundreds of thousands of others killed for being gay, disabled, Roma and Sinti, black, trade unionist, a Jehovah’s Witness—anyone considered a threat to the Aryan people. As the noble Lord, Lord Weir of Ballyholme, reminded us, behind each of the statistics and the people we talk about there was a person, a family and a story. I want to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that this Government are clear on the unique evil that the Holocaust was and the specific, devastating impact on the Jewish community. In 1933, there were nine and a half million Jews living in Europe; in 1945, there were not.
Language matters, but so do symbols. When we talk about lighting the darkness, the candle’s flame represents the human soul and serves as a reminder of the frailty and beauty of life. As we remember the appalling acts of the Holocaust, it has become so much more than that. This frailty and beauty are ever present at the children’s memorial in Yad Vashem, which represents one and a half million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust. In the underground chamber, the flame of a single candle is reflected by countless mirrors, while the names, ages and home towns of children who were murdered are read out in Hebrew, English and Yiddish. Each reflection reminds us of a life not lived; a child who was murdered before they could make a mark on the world; a family that was never going to grow. The wrenching power of this sacred memorial to what was lost, for me, at least, allows us to see the totality of the Shoah—the true scale of the loss. I know that if I were to visit it a thousand times, each time my heart would break.
Yad Vashem allows us to see the depravity to which man can sink when we begin to see our fellow human beings as somehow less than us, less worthy of dignity and of life. We see how evil can triumph when good people do nothing; how silence led to one of the most appalling crimes in history; how people were targeted for who they were, how they prayed or who they loved. But Yad Vashem is more than just a memorial and museum to remind us of man’s capacity for evil: it also provides us with hope—the stories of the righteous among the nations who refused to be bystanders. It is here that we need to find our hope: a reminder that we are not impotent; that we can all stand up against the politics of hatred and that our actions can change someone’s world, can be a light in the darkness.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, reminded us, listening to first-hand witness is vital and provides a light in the darkness, a source of hope and inspiration. At a special ceremony held in Parliament to mark Holocaust Memorial Day earlier this year, we heard the testimony of Alfred Garwood, someone I had not heard before. He was born in a Nazi ghetto in 1942, imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen and liberated by the Red Army when he was being moved to another camp, all before his third birthday. He survived only because his father had been born in London and was considered valuable to the Nazis. Alfred spent the rest of his childhood in Britain and grew up in the centre of a community of Holocaust survivors. He has devoted his life to understanding the psychological impact of trauma related to the genocide. His words will stay with me for ever: “If you are consumed by hate, the only people you successfully hurt is yourself”. He is a light in the darkness.
As many Members of your Lordships’ House have said, we cannot ignore what is in front of us, and what is in front of us, as reported by the CST this week, is shocking levels of anti-Semitism on our streets, which are scarring our towns and cities. The report released by CST yesterday recorded 3,528 anti-Semitic incidents in 2024. There are only 250,000 Jews in the UK. There will not be a Jewish family who was not touched by an anti-Semitic incident in the last year. Ten are being reported every day. This is the second highest number on record, surpassed only by the appalling figures of 2023, when there were 4,296 incidents, the majority of which followed the pogroms of 7 October. As my community grieved about events abroad, where they were worried about their families in Israel, they were being targeted at home. Their only crime was to be Jewish. This is not acceptable in 21st-century Britain.
These rising numbers are a wake-up call for us all. How can it be that one of the smallest minority communities in the UK is facing such hatred? While the number of incidents is high, we must not lose sight of the fact that not all hate crimes are reported. How many Members of your Lordships’ House who are regularly targets of the racists report every incident? Even I do not. My life has to be more than their hatred, and sometimes I do not want to pick up the phone and say what happened to me in the street. But we must appreciate the scale of that challenge.
However, while it is easy to be disheartened, that is not the approach I am prepared to take. The work of the CST, the Anti-Semitism Policy Trust, the Holocaust Education Trust, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Association of Jewish Refugees ensures that they are all lights in the darkness; as is Generation 2 Generation, so strongly promoted by my noble friend Lady Brown of Silverton. She gave such powerful testimony, and I am delighted that she is working with them. All the groups and organisations that are working together demonstrate that we are never powerless in the face of hatred.
I, for one, am very aware that I owe my safety and security to the dedicated team of professional staff and volunteers at the CST, who have protected me when I have been in the middle of a racist storm. CST, HET, HMDT and AJR are out there every day, actively tackling anti-Jewish hatred, educating about the dangers of where hatred can lead and remembering that crime of crimes, the Holocaust. Their work also shows that we all have choices. We can choose to be the light; we can call out those who hide in dark places. We have the choice to ignore what happens to others or to act on behalf of others. It is much easier when someone stands in front of you if you are targeted than having to fight for yourself.
This is our obligation: not simply to bear witness but to act, as the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, made clear. What does this mean today? It means confronting bigotry and hatred in all its forms. It has no place in the classrooms of children, on the campuses of our universities, in our hospitals or in the corridors of power. Nor does it have any place on the streets of the United Kingdom.
We must never forget that our children are not born to hate; they are taught to hate. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Lord, Lord Gold, made clear, they can also be taught about love and history.
This year, Holocaust Memorial Day has reminded us that our freedoms are all too fragile. There is a responsibility on all of us to do everything we can to protect and cherish them. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, reminded us of both the international context and the scale of anti-Semitism. The noble Lord, Lord Sahota, spoke movingly about the banality of evil and how many other acts of violence there have been in our society.
Today, we reflect on where we are, where we were and where we are going. I will give the final word to a Holocaust survivor, the late Sir Ben Helfgott, who said:
“My Holocaust experiences may have hardened me, made me more realistic about human nature, but I was repelled by the evil I witnessed. I despaired, but I did not let cruelty and injustice break my spirit. I refused to poison my life with revenge and hatred for hatred is corrosive. Instead I was left with a dream—to live in a world of understanding, compassion, fraternity and love for my fellow man”.