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Holocaust Memorial Day

The Holocaust Educational Trust makes it clear that the people who suffered during the holocaust included gays, blacks and Roma Gypsies as well as, overwhelmingly, Jews. I must admit that I did not know much about the trust until I was invited to go last September to Auschwitz-Birkenau with a group of Glasgow pupils, along with the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) and some journalists. It has already been observed that these journeys involve a day of preparation before the visit itself, and a debriefing and school projects afterwards. Different things affect different people individually on these visits. For one of the journalists, what struck him was the shoes. He told us that he had a little girl, and he realised that some of those shoes would have fitted her. I was challenged in a number of ways. One related to the position of the Roma Gypsies in our society today. They are a group that some people really despise and would not want living next to them. The visit brought it home to me that those feelings are continuing today and are real. The physical aspect of the visit that struck me was the railway. Some Members will know that I am a fan of railways and that I like travelling by train. Clearly, railways are used sometimes for good things and sometimes for bad things, but to see the railway in the Birkenau camp, which had been specifically built to kill people, struck me as particularly awful. It was built to get the Hungarian Jews into the camps as quickly as possible, quite late in the war. The last thing I did that day was to walk right along the track back to the famous gate. I have visited other sites that I have found moving, including Terezin, near Prague. It was meant to be a transit camp, but 33,000 people died there, including prisoners of war, which should not have happened. In Israel, I visited Yad Vashem. The children's memorial there is a dark place with mirrors and a few lights, and the names of the children who died in the holocaust are read out. I found that quite overwhelming. It is also possible to visit ghettos and synagogues in other towns. The Jews were not the sole victims of the holocaust, but they were largely so. The Holocaust Educational Trust is very good at reminding us that we should oppose all discrimination against all minorities and promote understanding and good relationships. It was a good by-product of our visit to see the children from some very well-off private schools in Glasgow mixing with children from ordinary state schools and, hopefully, understanding each other. The Jews have suffered a lot, historically. Back in biblical times, they were treated as slaves in Egypt. They were expelled from Rome during the Roman empire. In 1290, England became the first European country to expel the Jews, and that lasted until 1656. Clearly, I am not a fan of Edward I, for a number of reasons. It was interesting that he expelled the Jews, largely for financial reasons, and that Cromwell brought them back for similar reasons. They were expelled from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal in 1497. It has been said that Scotland is the only European country not to have exercised state persecution of Jews, although there was not a large Jewish population there in the past. Also, I went to the cinema recently with a Jewish friend, and youngsters in the cinema were making anti-Jewish comments, so none of us is exempt from that kind of thing. As time is limited I shall not go into great detail, but I want to raise the question of why the Jews are the subject of so much hatred historically. There are some superficial reasons such as that the Jews killed Jesus, but, fairly obviously, Jesus was Jewish, all Jesus's early followers were Jewish, and the whole early Christian Church was Jewish. One can say that gentiles such as me who follow the Christian faith are the second-rate believers, and the Jewish ones are the first-rate believers. What are the lessons to be learned from the holocaust? One is that we need to be peacemakers, not just peacekeepers. As previous speakers have mentioned, it is difficult to separate the Jews from Israel. Clearly, some Jews are opposed to the current existence of Israel, and many are opposed to particular policies of the Israeli Government. I fear that for some people being anti-Israel on the surface is a cover for being anti-Jewish underneath. Among committed Christians, there are those who are pro-Arab, pro-Palestine and anti-Israel, and others who are strongly pro-Israel and seem blind to its failings.