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Holocaust Memorial Day

It has been a truly excellent debate, particularly the emotional and moving speech by the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor). I was a co-sponsor of the early-day motion on Holocaust memorial day, which has attracted 176 signatures from Members of all parties. On Tuesday, Holocaust memorial day, I was delighted to welcome the Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks to Lady Margaret school in my constituency for morning assembly. The school, always ranked as one of the country's best performing comprehensives, did us all extremely proud, led by the headmistress Sally Whyte. Two girls participated in the HET visit to Auschwitz in November with me, and we heard from both of them. Both Jennifer Gannaway and Lara Hawkins spoke, with short but moving accounts of their day in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Jennifer spoke of how the accumulated possessions of the victims, which are so clearly on display in Auschwitz, left an important impression on her:"““It decoded the 1.1 million killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau into 1.1 million individuals whose names we saw on the side of their suitcases."" Lara described the overall chilling effect of the experience:"““The only way I can effectively describe to you my feelings after visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau was that I felt completely numb and hollow inside.””" Most importantly of all, we heard from a holocaust survivor, Mrs. Mala Tribich. I believe that she is one of only a couple of dozen holocaust survivors in the UK. The role that people such as Mrs. Tribich are playing and will continue to play in the coming years is a vital one; there is nothing more effective in learning about the holocaust than hearing it related at first hand. Mrs. Tribich brought many of us at the assembly close to tears as she described how, as a small child, she lost her parents and almost all her immediate family. She described arriving at Ravensbrueck and being processed on arrival. She had her clothes removed and her hair shaved. She said:"““When we emerged the other end, we could not recognise one another, we all looked the same. Our identities, our personalities, our very souls had been taken from us. We were dehumanised.””" Mrs Tribich also said something important:"““Whenever I speak to young people in schools I am invariably asked 'Do you hate the Germans?' Well, generally speaking it is not in my nature to hate, but more particularly I always state categorically that I do not attach any blame or hold any sort of grudge against the post war generations. Forgiveness of the perpetrators, however, is quite another matter.””" It is that on which I wanted to reflect briefly today; how we and other European countries are dealing with this horrible past. I have relatives in both Germany and Russia. I also have a huge number of Polish constituents and go to Poland fairly frequently. I wanted to compare how those countries are dealing with their pasts, as regards the holocaust and anti-Semitism. Before I go down that road, I do not want to give any impression of equivalence in the historical experience of those countries. The holocaust was very largely a Nazi German perpetration, the result of the evil mind of Adolf Hitler and the active participation of thousands of Germans and the passive contribution of millions. The Poles and Russians also had millions of victims at the hands of Nazi Germany. Germany has, in my view, done a pretty good job of dealing with its past. All post-war German Governments have recognised the special responsibility that Germany has towards both the worldwide Jewish community and Israel. Most Germans I know are shocked by modern-day anti-Semitism. German towns and cities do a pretty good job of preserving historic Jewish memory; the refurbished Oranienburger strasse synagogue in Berlin is testimony to that. The Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps are well-preserved and attract a lot of visitors. There are still anti-Semitic incidents in Germany, but they are pretty rare, so I commend the work Germany has done over the past six decades. Poland is another interesting case—itself a tragic victim of Nazi-German crimes—but also with a difficult past in relation to its former Jewish citizens. As I have said, I visited Auschwitz in November. I have been there before; my previous visit was in February 1991, when Auschwitz was still arranged as it had been in the communist era, which had only just drawn to a close. What was striking about Auschwitz in 1991 was that the Jewish nature of the holocaust had been written out almost entirely. Of course, a lot of Poles were murdered in Auschwitz as well, but the impression given at that time was that there was no specifically Jewish aspect of the holocaust. I am delighted to be able to say that the arrangement of the camp museum has now been thoroughly changed for the better. Primacy is now given to the Jewish nature of the holocaust, but space is also given to the thousands of non-Jewish victims—including Poles, Roma and homosexuals—who were targeted by the Nazis out of pure prejudice. There is, for example, a Catholic shrine to a Polish victim beatified by Pope John Paul II. That is an extremely sensitive area and more needs to be done, but may I commend the improvement over the past couple of decades in how Poland has dealt with the tragic history of its former Jewish citizens? The HET rightly includes during its ““Lessons from Auschwitz”” trip a visit to the excellent new museum of Jewish life in Oswiecim. At the museum, one gets the impression of how important Jewish life was in towns in Poland before 1939. The same is true of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, which shows the importance of Jewish life across central and eastern Europe in the years prior to the holocaust. Finally, let me say a little about Russia. I do not have enough time to go into the details of this, but I think Russia needs to do more to combat anti-Semitism. Partly, this is a hangover from Soviet times, when, due to foreign policy reasons, anti-Semitism was disgracefully encouraged on political grounds. I saw that in my work in the late 1980s, when I was active in the Soviet Jewry movement on behalf of refuseniks and the student and academic campaign for Soviet Jewry. Anti-Semitism was very much part of the official ideology of the Soviet Union. Therefore, I think Russia would do very well to learn from some of the historical experience of Germany and Poland since 1945. I commend the work of the HET. Some 64 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, it is a challenging role for it to keep learning from that terrible and unique historical experience. It does its job well, and long may that continue.