---

Holocaust Memorial Day

I join the whole House in marking this day and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) for his personal effort over many years to ensure that the House and Parliament mark this important day. The Minister and the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) mentioned the BNP, and I add my condemnation of those Nazis. What I find particularly distasteful is its use of the Union flag to promote its vile and outrageous policies. The House and the whole country acknowledges that. My father fought in the war, in the Royal Air Force, and my mother was a nurse in the war. For all who fought Nazism in Germany, Italy and other parts of the world, I find the BNP's parading of the Union flag in that way quite repugnant. We should be concerned about that. We have Holocaust memorial day for two reasons, the first of which is to remember. We remember those 11 million people and 6 million Jews, the intellectuals, Gypsies, liberals and communists—people whose only crime was an accident of their birth or their views. They were not combatants or soldiers and they were not fighting a war; they were innocent men, women and children. As has already been described, they were slaughtered in an industrial way—it was not a frenzied killing or a knee-jerk reaction, but a cold calculated, brutal act of genocide. It marks—I suppose—the low point in human existence, because the people who did it were led by an elected Government and people who were in other ways intelligent, sensible and rational. Yet because of their hatred for certain sectors of society, they were able to perpetrate that crime. We should never forget the basic fact that it was done in our world, in our continent. The second reason why we should mark Holocaust memorial day was given by George Santayana:""Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."" Sadly, as colleagues have already said, the holocaust that occurred in Nazi Germany, though bigger than almost any we have ever seen, was not the last. We have seen genocides in East Timor, Cambodia, Tibet, Burma, Bosnia, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Darfur—the list is very long—and we must never forget that we have an ongoing role in our lives, in our Parliament and in our communities to ensure that people remember what has happened and that they do not let it be repeated. For that reason, I too congratulate the Holocaust Educational Trust, Karen Pollock and Lord Janner on the magnificent job they have done in getting the importance of listening and understanding across to young people, who perhaps do not have the same connection that some hon. Members have with those who fought in the war or who remember directly. I have not been on one of the trips to which hon. Members have referred, even though I have been invited on a number of occasions. I would like to go—even if saying that I would "like" to go sounds crazy. Sincerely, it is obvious that those who have been have found great strength. Children from my constituency have been on the trips, and it has brought home to them what happened. I pay tribute to those from this country who tried to do something—the Kindertransport has been mentioned. We should not forget the people in this country who tried to do something before the outbreak and in early stages of war. The British Committee for the Jews of Germany and the Movement for the Care of Children in Germany pushed through the idea that children from Germany and the occupied territories of Austria and the Czech lands should be able to come to this country. The first transport arrived on 2 December 1938 and the last left Germany in September 1939, just before the outbreak of war. Indeed, the last transport from the Netherlands to this country left on 14 May 1940, the very day that the Netherlands surrendered. Between 9,000 and 10,000 children came to these shores, 7,500 of whom were Jewish. It was people such as Sir Nicholas Winton who organised and facilitated that. Ordinary families from all over the United Kingdom took those children in. Those children made huge contributions to our society, and we should not forget them or the people who looked after them. It is almost impossible to say anything new about the holocaust. The spirit to which the Minister referred led to so much good writing and eloquence, which, frankly, none of us in this House can match. I conclude by remembering the words of Pastor Niemöller. As a German in 1946, he reflected on the fact that he and others did not come and raise their issues and concerns. In 6 January 1946, he said:""First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;""Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;""Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;""Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out."" Today, in this Chamber, we are marking the fact that we remember. We should not let it happen again.