3. Statement by the Minister for Social Justice: Holocaust Memorial Day 2023

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:43 pm on 24 January 2023.

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Photo of Rhianon Passmore Rhianon Passmore Labour 3:43, 24 January 2023

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd, and thank you, Minister, for your statement. The sheer extent of the evil of the Holocaust remains unfathomable to comprehension. I have also had the honour and privilege of speaking to a number of Holocaust survivors now: children, people, human beings, and it was and is evil in its purest. A number of Members have spoken to the horrors of the Rwanda genocide, but I also wish to disassociate myself with the comments of the Home Secretary regarding 'swarms'.

It is powerful that the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day is ordinary people. It is too convenient and too comfortable for us to fool ourselves that the Holocaust horror was perpetrated by an extreme and abnormal group of political fanatics, and, as BBC2's compelling documentary by James Bulgin demonstrated, the true horror for humanity was the willingness of ordinary men and women to be complicit in this evil: a process of the dehumanisation of people, the acceptance of hate, the use of language by politicians and the acceptance of propaganda. One of the most shocking scenes presented in the documentary was a German solider's home movie, which showed men being thrown into a trench in Lithuania before being shot, but all as a large crowd of onlookers gathered, desperate to watch. Observing this, Bulgin stated, 'It's almost as if shooting Jews has become a spectator sport'—so truly horrifying to watch, eight decades later. And these horrific scenes were also replicated in The U.S. and the Holocaust, which presented us with pits of shot, naked women and infants, and the helpers filmed and laughed as the children were just executed. So, Minister, what can the Welsh Government and civil society do to ensure that future generations never forget such horror and evil? What lessons does it teach us about the power of individuals to effect good or ill on our fellow brothers and sisters?