Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 29 January 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:50, 29 January 2019

Llywydd, can I begin by agreeing with what the Member has said? It is shocking to read that figure, and very hard indeed to credit how it can be true that that number of people would have been captured by that sense of denial of one of the most awful occurrences of the whole of the twentieth century. The job of addressing it falls partly to Government, of course, and this Government will want to do everything we can. I was very pleased to be able to join other Members of this Assembly at the Holocaust memorial service here in Cardiff at the end of last week—an immensely dignified occasion where we heard directly from some people who are still alive who were caught up in those shocking events.

We will want to do what we can, but the problem, as I'm sure the leader of the opposition would acknowledge, is wider than Government; it is a cultural issue more broadly in our society. There is a need to mobilise a whole range of different actions that can be taken to make sure that we never—we never—accept that people who were the victims of those dreadful events are either forgotten or, at the worst, are blamed themselves for what took place.