5. Statement by the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip: Holocaust Memorial Day

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:00 pm on 28 January 2020.

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Photo of Mark Isherwood Mark Isherwood Conservative 5:00, 28 January 2020

Well, you conclude, as you've just concluded, by saying,

'By marking these days of remembrance we can ensure that these horrendous crimes against humanity are never forgotten and we move the world to a situation where it is never again repeated.'

And I fully, 100 per cent, share your sentiments there. Unfortunately, marking the days of remembrance alone won't ensure that, and we all know when we turn on the television at night and watch the news or documentaries, we see peoples' populations being persecuted across the globe because they're perceived to be different to the Government in power or the dominant belief system or religion in the area they live.

So, how do you believe we can more forcefully—at least at a Wales and UK level—lead global understanding and action on this agenda that goes beyond those critical remembrance and commemoration events on specific dates each year and, hopefully, becomes more cultural? Those who lived through the second world war; those who grew up during those years have lived with that memory, but now we have generations, as you know, for whom this appears to be ancient history.

Last Friday, I spoke at the Holocaust Memorial Day event in Wrexham. It was great to see so many people there, particularly young people—young people from the local colleges and some from local schools, who did want to understand, to engage and to ensure that these dreadful things never happen again. As you have indicated, we were commemorating 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau as well as the twenty-fifth anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia. It's also, in April, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British forces. And this year, we've also got the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Stockholm declaration, which established what's now known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and the fifteenth anniversary of the adoption of 27 January as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the UN General Assembly.

I, like you, attended the event in the Senedd two weeks ago with Mala Tribich and Isaac Blake. How do you feel or respond to the e-mail I've received and I suspect many other Members have today, from the Israel Britain Alliance, which reports a significant rise in the number of antisemitic incidents in the UK, which they say—and I quote—that, sadly, no part of our country, by which they mean the UK, has been immune to the world's oldest hatred?

You say—and we add the Welsh Conservatives to this, and I know everybody in this Chamber—we stand with Jewish communities against antisemitism in Wales and around the world. You talk about it being vital that children and young people understand the reasons and you referred to a programme involving 16 to 18-year-old students. In fact, my children attended Castell Alun High School in Flintshire, and most of them benefited from a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau with their school, and the impression made on them was profound, providing a vital lesson that will remain with them all their lives. They happen to be one of those schools that have recognised how important it is that this is given attention, but there are many others, perhaps, that don't. How can we ensure that this becomes embedded on a more mainstream basis, not just in those schools that are at the forefront of this sort of issue, but those that, perhaps, need to be helped further along the way?

I visited, with Assembly colleagues in 2017, the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, and in the hall of names, we saw engraved on the mosaic floor the names of the 22 most infamous Nazi murder sites, and buried beneath these, we understood and learned, are the ashes of the victims. And as Churchill said, the further back you can look, the further forward you are likely to see because the Nazis understood that it's far easier to unite people against rather than for something and they turned against the minorities within.

German authorities also targeted, as you know, other groups because of their perceived difference—their racial and biological so-called inferiority, including children—Roma and Sinti Gypsies, disabled Germans, LGBT people, and certain Slavic peoples, particularly Poles and Russians. No wartime document produced by the Nazis spells out how many people were actually killed, but the US Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates 6 million and 11 million others, taking that to 17 million, including—conservatively estimated—0.5 million European Roma and Sinti Gypsies. In fact, the community itself identifies as many as 1.5 million.

Again, how would you respond to the e-mail I've received today from Gypsy/Travellers I know living near Conwy, who say, 'We love Jews as God loves them, but we watch the tv, we don't see anything about the Gypsy people exterminated by the Nazis and their allies. Please, people, remember this. Please remember 26 November 1935, when the Nuremburg laws were updated to include the detention of Gypsy people, who were made enemies of the state'? And, of course, they talk about genocide; they call it—let's get this right—the Porajmos, or the genocide. And they said that, 'Just small of bits of persecution, small bits of prejudice left unchallenged can ignite destruction. We pray for our Jewish friends and distant cousins that it never happens again.' And, of course, in 1939, we saw the beginning of the killing of disabled adults and children—Germans experimentally gassed in killing centres in Brandenburg, and thousands of disabled patients killed in gas chambers of shower rooms, creating the model that was then rolled out in the Nazi extermination and concentration camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Again, conservatively estimated, 0.25 million disabled people, many of those children—Down's syndrome, cerebral palsy and many others—killed in that horrible way.

And, actually, there isn't much—. I don't think you really have to answer; I think we're coming from the same place on this. At the core of all that is how we move from this being an annual event or something that we periodically talk about and embed this across our society and lead globally in so doing, so that future generations don't make the same mistakes that generations today are still making and generations of the past did themselves. Thank you.