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Holocaust Memorial Day

The theme of Holocaust memorial day is ““Stand up to hatred””. With that in mind, I want to quote from an article about Carl Schmitt. If anyone is an exemplar of hatred, that man is. He was an anti-Semite; he made it very clear that he was a Nazi; and he was a"““leading political thinker of his day””." He"““held that liberalism is too weak to sustain passion and conviction at times of crisis. For him, real politics is about identifying an enemy and a cause you are willing to die for.””" That is the sort of pernicious, vicious material that is often peddled today by the British National party. We should be very aware that that is exactly the philosophy that it peddles within our communities. Some years ago I, like many other Members, was privileged to visit Auchswitz and Birkenau. I say ““privileged”” because the HET, to which I am very grateful, invited me to take along some young students from Stockton. I echo what others have said today when I tell the House that the visit would have been valuable to me in any event, but in the company of those young students I found it more valuable than I can say. There was an ugly reality in the human tragedy that those camps represented, and they clearly had a powerful impact on the students. I hoped that the visit would meet a real need and give them a sense that when humans work together, their solidarity ensures that we can cope with any problem with which we are faced. I believe that the visit did that, but it did a great deal more as well. The students were mortified as they looked at glass cases full of human hair, shoes and glasses, and read the heartbreaking statements of people who had managed to escape and to survive that hideous period. They told their stories of how, during the bitterest of winters, they were made to take off their shoes and were given a pair of shoes both of which were for the left foot or which did not fit them. The humiliation was absolute. That was the absolute force of what the Nazis were about. Those people were starving; they were emaciated; and children were dying around them. There was a hideous sense of fear, which could be felt through what those people were saying. They were so frightened because, while Auschwitz was dreadful, Birkenau was worse. Many knew that they might have to make that journey knowing that it would be the last journey that they would ever make. The hideousness of those atrocities was overwhelming. I saw it in the students' eyes. These were robust, up-for-it students who had been full of beans at 6 am on arrival at the airport that morning, feeling that this was a good visit. However, as soon as Auschwitz hit them, their heads were down and they did not know where to look. They could not believe that humanity had been so degraded. They could not believe that it had produced the hideous glass cases that they had seen and the stories to which they were listening. There was a powerful, overwhelming, eerie silence. The move from Auschwitz to Birkenau was horrendous—all of it. I wanted to cuddle the students. I wanted to put my arms around them and say, ““Together, we can ensure that this will never happen again.”” However, that would not have been appropriate. I knew that, like me, they had to face that reality. They had to ask themselves the question, ““What would I have done if I had been in Germany or Poland at that time?”” I am not a Jewess; they are not Jews. What would we have done? Would we have held the line? Would we have supported those people? Would we have done all that we could to protect them? The question is profound. We all want to believe that we would have supported those people, but I still ask myself this question: would it have been ““me and my children first””, or would I have been a decent person and said, ““Humanity comes first—all people come first””? I have to tell the House that that was an awesome visit. Eventually, something very positive came out of it. I went to the school assemblies and heard the youngsters talk. They gave their impression of the day; they read poems; they discussed with their groups what they had faced and what had happened. I had a feeling that the visit had strengthened their need and concern for human solidarity always to be in their lives—their principled position. It is possible to learn from the holocaust, and to learn from the hideousness of the 1930s. Like many other Members, I was a student, and this was a specialist area of my politics degree course. I knew the numbers, and I knew what the Nazis were about, but facing it is a different matter. I tried to explain to the students that it is sometimes necessary to understand that fear can be transformed into indifference, causing people to say, ““I do not want to know””. The inability to respect differences becomes a way of blocking out the fact that something is happening in one's own street. It is important for us all to recognise that a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau is very valuable. It is equally important for us all to understand—as those students clearly understood—that any form of racial superiority is a tool used by some to divide humans. It is not there to produce human respect; it is not there to produce the best in all nations. Today, we hear the statement to which we all cling and which we must repeat loudly and clearly; we must stand up to hatred. We must say to those who look the other way that if they do not stand up and support decency, there will inevitably be a Rwanda, a Darfur or a Bosnia. One day it might be them and their families who are involved, so standing up is important. Footballers gave us a tremendous example. Black players were spat at and had things thrown at them while they were playing, but they stood up and said, ““Give racism the red card.”” The fact that ordinary youngsters, often from impoverished backgrounds in my communities, have leaders who will give them a steer and something to believe in is crucial. We can do something; we do not have to turn away. We must learn the lessons of the 1930s and say to our children and our communities, ““Never again.”” I would—