Holocaust Memorial Day 2012
The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-01700, in the name of Stewart Maxwell, on Holocaust memorial day 2012. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes that 27 January 2012 marks Holocaust Memorial Day, the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and an opportunity for schools, colleges, faith groups and communities across Scotland to remember the six million men, women and children murdered by the Nazi regime in occupied Europe; further notes that the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day 2012 is Speak Up, Speak Out; values the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz Project, which gives two post-16 students from every school and college in Scotland the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau; applauds Katie McKenna and Dominic Bradley, two former students of St Ninian’s High School in East Dunbartonshire, who took part in the project and who will deliver the Parliament’s Time for Reflection message on 18 January 2012; celebrates the Holocaust survivors who have enriched Scotland as a nation, and re-commits to ensuring that racism, sectarianism and bigotry are never allowed to go unchallenged in Scotland.
17:04
Presiding Officer, 2012 is the 70th anniversary of the start of the programme of extermination of the Jews in the Birkenau chambers at Auschwitz. Friday 27 January, Holocaust memorial day, marks the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The theme for this year’s Holocaust memorial day is “Speak up, speak out” and is based on a famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller:
“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
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 for me.”
That poem sums up the impact of not speaking out against the wrongs that we see.
Although there were terrible concentration camps in Germany, such as Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald, the Nazis built their extermination camps—the ones that were designed primarily to kill and not as labour camps—deep in Poland. There were six of them: Auschwitz-Birkenau; Belzec; Chelmno; Majdanek; Sobibor and Treblinka. That is where they carried out their programme to exterminate the Jewish people.
Between 30 January 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power, and 8 May 1945—victory in Europe day—approximately 6 million Jews were killed. We know that number so well from our history. It is quite unimaginable, but it meant the extermination of almost two out of every three Jews living in Europe and almost one Jew in three in the world at that time.
Of course, the Nazis killed not only Jews. Possibly as many as 200,000 Gypsies were murdered. Homosexual men, Communists, trade unionists and any people who opposed the regime were also slaughtered. Indeed, it has been estimated that the Nazis may have murdered as many as 15 million citizens, including millions of Slavs.
Faced with such evil, where do we begin when we wish to pick one example to highlight the extent of the horror? It is an impossible choice. However, I want us to think today about the euphemistically named Aktion T-4, the programme to murder physically and mentally disabled people.
Between September 1939 and August 1941, that programme of compulsory euthanasia resulted in more than 70,000 of the most defenceless people in society being murdered. It started with children and toddlers, who had to be reported to the authorities if they showed signs of physical or mental retardation. It moved on to adults: schizophrenics, epileptics and people with Down’s syndrome were all targets. They were deemed to be—I find the phrase almost unbelievable—“life unworthy of life”.
In the face of such inhumanity, what can we do today to make a difference? We can start by supporting the efforts of the Holocaust Educational Trust, which has been working since 1988 to educate young people about the Holocaust.
The Parliament heard last week from Dominic Bradley and Katie McKenna, who had been on a Holocaust Educational Trust trip to Auschwitz. I am delighted that the Minister for Learning, Science and Scotland’s Languages has pledged £230,000 in 2012-13 to allow students to take part in the Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz programme. That will allow 380 pupils from Scottish schools and students from colleges to visit Auschwitz in the coming year.
One of the problems that the Holocaust Educational Trust faces in the 21st century is how to keep the memory of the Holocaust immediate and relevant as the number of witnesses diminishes. However, there are ways that we can pass the story on to future generations. I will give a personal example.
On 1 May 2011, I attended the Yom Hashoah event in Giffnock, the theme of which was the story of Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who rescued Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto. I was lucky enough to hear Piotr Zettinger—a man whom Irena Sendler had saved—speak about his experiences.
More important, my daughter, who was 13 at the time, was with me. She has now heard at first hand the experiences of a survivor of the Holocaust. Her experience of listening to that direct witness of Nazi horror means that the story will be projected some 60 or 70 years—or more, I hope—into the future. She will be able to tell her children and grandchildren that she heard the story at first hand. I encourage as many members as possible to ensure that their children get the opportunity to carry the story forward.
I was delighted to learn of a project called gathering the voices, which has been produced by Glasgow Caledonian University. The project has involved recording the oral testimony of Holocaust survivors who moved to Scotland. The interviews and accompanying photographs will go online at the end of the month at the university’s spoken word archive, which will ensure that those voices will never fall silent.
That is important because anti-semitism, unfortunately, is still alive today—even here in Scotland. In a recent written question, I asked the Scottish Government about the number of religious hate crimes that were recorded in 2010-11. Out of 696 charges, 16 were derogatory to Judaism. On the face of it, that does not seem very many, but the Jewish community in Scotland is small, so unfortunately the figures convert to 2.5 charges per 1,000 members of Judaism in Scotland, which was the highest incidence per 1,000 for any religion. To put that in context, the next most targeted religion was Catholicism, with 0.5 charges per 1,000 members—a fifth of the number of charges involving crimes against the Jewish community.
We all need to speak out when we see discrimination or when we are aware of people being taunted for their race, religion, sexuality or disability. The Government can play its part by legislating against hate speech, but in the end, the responsibility for building a society in which prejudice is eliminated lies with each one of us. Each of us is responsible for the things that we say and the things that we do. In the end, morality is individual, not collective.
I started by quoting the poem by Pastor Niemöller in which he makes the point that, if you do not speak up publicly for others, there will be no one left to speak up for you. I end with a very different idea: that speaking up means challenging not just public figures and institutions but ourselves and those closest to us.
The writer Gitta Sereny wrote a book about her interviews with Franz Stangl when he was in prison in Dusseldorf. Stangl was the commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp. Ms Sereny also interviewed Stangl’s wife, and she asked her this question:
“Would you tell me ... what you think would have happened if at any time you had faced your husband with an absolute choice ... either you get out of this terrible thing or else the children and I will leave you.”
Frau Stangl told her:
“I believe that if I had ever confronted Paul with the alternatives: Treblinka or me ... he would in the final analysis have chosen me.”
After that interview, Gitta Sereny wrote:
“I felt strongly that this was the truth. I believe that Stangl’s love for his wife was greater than his ambition and greater than his fear. If she had commanded the courage and the moral conviction to force him to make a choice, it is true they might all have perished, but in the most fundamental sense, she would have saved him.”
17:12
I congratulate Stewart Maxwell on securing this evening’s debate. I apologise at the outset that I will be unable to stay for the duration of the debate.
I spoke in a similar debate on 5 June 2008. My recollection is that all the members who contributed were resolute in their support for the Holocaust memorial day commemorations and the Holocaust Educational Trust.
In the motion, Stewart Maxwell mentions Katie McKenna and Dominic Bradley, two former students of St Ninian’s high school in East Dunbartonshire, who took part in the Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz project and who delivered the Parliament’s time for reflection on 18 January. Katie and Dominic provided a telling recollection of their experience, which I know that, in the future, they will look back on and appreciate even more. They also provided the exact reason why it is vital that today’s young people have the chance to learn about the atrocities of the past. We must not allow future generations to forget about those events.
Recently, I visited the Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London, which is an example of excellence and will certainly be a way of keeping the memory of what happened alive.
I welcome that contribution from Jamie McGrigor. I have not been there, but if it is as he says, I certainly recommend that people go along.
The lessons from Auschwitz project, which reaches across the whole of the United Kingdom, is an excellent initiative and certainly has a long-term future.
I have been to Auschwitz. I was there in 2000 as part of an InterRail trip to eastern Europe. There were three camps at Auschwitz: the main one, Birkenau and Monowitz, which had been a munitions factory. In 1947, the new Polish Government decided to create the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum. Everyone who has been to Auschwitz will recognise that that was an important decision and an important landmark in teaching people about the history of that location. I am sure that members will know that Auschwitz receives around half a million visitors every year from across the world.
When I walked through the gates under the “Arbeit macht frei” sign, I had the strangest and most surreal experience—the first thing that I heard was people speaking German. Some German school pupils were there to learn. I recoiled for a few moments, but then I gathered myself and realised that that was a wonderful thing.
Anyone who has been to Auschwitz—I hope that we will hear from members who have been there—will have their own story to tell about how the experience affected them and their thinking about some of the activities that go on in the world today. The first thing that people notice when they go into Auschwitz is the silence and the second is the terrible atmosphere. I would encourage everyone to go to Auschwitz or Dachau or any of the other camps that still exist. It is important that not only the present generation but future generations learn about the past and how cruel and callous the human race can be.
Every member has a duty to ensure that education about the holocaust is never allowed to be removed from the curriculum. Knowing the people around me in the chamber and the parties that are represented in the Parliament, I do not expect that it ever will be, but we should continue to ensure that it forms part of the curriculum.
I congratulate Stewart Maxwell on securing the debate, and I am sure that the Parliament will continue to be unanimous in its support for the Holocaust Educational Trust.
Due to the number of members who still wish to speak in the debate, I am minded to accept a motion without notice to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes.
Motion moved,
That, under Rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes.—[Stewart Maxwell.]
Motion agreed to.
17:17
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate, which is the first of its kind to take place in the Scottish Parliament, and I thank Stewart Maxwell for facilitating it. I also thank the Holocaust Educational Trust, which works with schools, colleges and communities across the United Kingdom to ensure that the memory of the Holocaust is preserved.
Not only did the Holocaust destroy lives; it redirected the tides of history. The traditional Jewish communities of eastern and central Europe were swept away and, after much suffering, their remnants were washed ashore in Israel, America and, in some cases, the UK. For 6 million Jews, the Holocaust marked the end of the story; for countless others, it marked the beginning of a radically altered destiny.
Although the legacy of the Holocaust persists, it continues to elude understanding and interpretation. Why should so much hatred and violence have been directed against a single religion and culture? What caused a prejudice and intolerance that had existed for many centuries to descend into genocide on such a grand scale? So horrific were the events of the Holocaust, and so far beyond the bounds of normal human experience, that many people lack the imaginative sympathy to make sense of them.
Time and distance play a part in that—the further removed the events of the Holocaust, and the fewer the survivors, the more difficult it will be to keep alive its memory. That is why we must support the work of organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust. Time and distance influence our perception of history, but so does place. The physical and human landscape can be incredibly evocative; it can awaken memories and encourage understanding and empathy.
Since 1999, more than 14,000 students and teachers have visited Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz project. I have not had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz, but it is clear to me from the testimony of those who have—such as the two student ambassadors, Dominic Bradley and Katie McKenna, who addressed the Parliament so eloquently at last week’s time for reflection—that it is an informative and profoundly moving experience.
When he recalled his visit to Auschwitz, Dominic described the effect of seeing the photographs that were taken of prisoners shortly after their arrival at the camp. Many were smiling. To smile in the face of a camera is an instinctive response for some people but, as Dominic said, the smiles could also be interpreted as a defiant expression of self-worth. A darker truth is that the smiles signified the prisoners’ ignorance of what awaited them. It is difficult and distressing to imagine their dawning realisation of that, just as it is distressing to imagine their eventual fate. However, although such speculation is disturbing, we must remember that imagination is the key to understanding, and understanding the key to the empathy that lies at the core of our humanity.
Katie McKenna, the other student ambassador at time for reflection, quoted a survivor who said that we must never allow ourselves to become indifferent to the suffering of others. In many ways, indifference is the worst of human sentiments. To be indifferent is to be callous, uncaring and uninterested. It signifies a lack of curiosity about other people and a supine acceptance of events. I am pleased, therefore, that the theme of this year’s Holocaust memorial day—“Speak up, speak out”—is an outright attack on indifference. The need to attack indifference is well known in Scotland, where sectarianism remains a problem.
Further evidence of the need to speak out, if such evidence were needed, comes in the shape of the recent revelations about the Nazi drinking games in which students from the London School of Economics and Political Science indulged during a skiing trip. That privileged, well-educated individuals descended to such depths is one thing; that they reacted to a Jewish student’s objections with taunts and violence is quite another. The student in question recounted how, as the game escalated, he felt that he could no longer allow the jibes to continue. He is reported as saying:
“The comments built up to the point where I couldn’t forgive myself if I let it slide.”
He was bombarded with abuse and given a broken nose for his trouble.
Speaking up and speaking out is not always easy. I have often heard people justify racist or intolerant remarks by saying, “It’s just a joke. I didn’t really mean it.” Such short-sightedness is ill advised and inexcusable. It is unfortunate that the gap between the everyday and the unspeakable is not as wide as many of us think it is. In his memoir, “The Single Light”, Ernest Levy, a Holocaust survivor who settled in Giffnock and Clarkston in East Renfrewshire, wrote:
“Although in some respects we have advanced ... the lessons of the past are yet to be learned; namely, that prejudice, intolerance and sustained animosity can lead to persecution, murder then to mass-murder, which so quickly degenerates into genocide.”
If we are truly to learn the lessons of the past, we must unite in opposition to hatred and discrimination in all their guises.
17:22
I thank Stewart Maxwell for securing this members’ business debate. His work with the Jewish community, in particular, throughout his time in the Scottish Parliament, does him great credit.
History teaches us many lessons and it is our duty not only to learn them but to promise never again to make those mistakes. Something that is perhaps lost on us when we reflect on the Holocaust is that it was not just a horrific moment in our history, an overnight occurrence or even something that built up over just a few years but the culmination of centuries of anti-Semitism and hatred throughout Europe. Jews were accused of crimes that they did not commit. Lies and myths were spread about their practices and rituals. They suffered systemic discrimination and abuse, and the end result of all that was the massacre of an entire people.
We can see that an increasingly worrying wave of Islamophobia is spreading across Europe when we consider the banning of headscarves in France, the prohibition on minarets in Switzerland and the continual peddling of the myth of the Islamisation of Europe. We recently saw the danger of propagating such myths; we need only cast our minds back to the terrifying actions of Norway’s Anders Breivik.
If the tragedy of the Holocaust has taught us anything, it is that we must remain alert to injustice against our minorities. As Dr Martin Luther King famously said,
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Like other members, I commend the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for all the work that it does. Many of us have been moved to tears when we have heard the tragic stories of the women, children, elderly and disabled people who suffered a fate that was worth than death.
Among the stories of tragedy are also stories of great human endeavour. There are stories of not just the bravery of survivors but the incredible courage and compassion of the people who sheltered potential victims of the gas chambers.
The on-going conflict in the middle east between Israel and Palestine often makes people think that the relationship between the Muslim and Jewish communities is a difficult one and one of animosity. However, that is simply not true. People of those faiths share a long-lasting friendship that can be traced back through history. In fact, the Holocaust provides us with one of the greatest examples of that. I recently read the story of Abdol Hossein Sardari, a Muslim Iranian diplomat who gave up his diplomatic immunity and luxurious lifestyle to save as many Jews as possible from the terror of the gas chamber. With considerable danger to his personal safety, he issued blank Iranian passports to whole families, so providing safe passage through Nazi-occupied Europe for 2,000 to 3,000 Jews.
As well as congratulating Stewart Maxwell, I congratulate Glasgow Caledonian University on its gathering the voices project, which has collected and recorded oral histories of Holocaust survivors with a specific focus on their lives in Scotland and the positive contribution that they have made to our nation. By recording the stories of those who came to our country seeking refuge from atrocities, we are reminded of our social contract with the rest of humanity. Today, we have jostled over the referendum, talked about independence and made our cases to and fro about the Scotland that we want. However, regardless of where we sit in that debate, we all agree that Scotland has a duty to be a beacon of peace and humanity for those who seek sanctuary from injustice, regardless of where they come from. We owe it not to the victims of the Holocaust or of any other genocide but to ourselves and future generations never to repeat the horrific mistakes of our predecessors.
17:26
I am pleased to be called to speak in this important and timely debate on this year’s Holocaust memorial day. From the speeches thus far and from my general knowledge of goings-on in the Parliament, I know that there is support for the debate right across the chamber and that, since the Parliament was reconvened in 1999, the tenets that inspire the debate have had many champions from all parties. I, too, congratulate my colleague Stewart Maxwell on securing the debate. I commend him for his hard work over the years in seeking to ensure that lessons are learned and that we meet the challenge of tackling anti-Semitism, racism, bigotry and sectarianism wherever they occur.
On the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, some might ask what the purpose of the debate is. I would say that we are here to commemorate—which is to say, to bear witness to—the 6 million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis and to educate so that we are on constant watch to ensure that such atrocities and mass state-sanctioned murder never happen again.
I, too, have visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the summer of 1982, when I was a young postgraduate student studying at Johns Hopkins University’s Bologna centre, which had an exchange programme with the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. As part of our visit there, we had the opportunity to go to Auschwitz. I remember my visit as if it were yesterday. Like my colleague Stuart McMillan, I remember coming to the gates of what had been a labour camp at Auschwitz, which beckoned people with the words “Arbeit macht frei”. I remember the smiling faces of the young twins in photographs that covered an entire wall and which were taken before the grotesque experiments of the butcher Josef Mengele. I remember the shoes and the industrial-scale ovens in Birkenau. I remember the train tracks that came right into the death camp. I ask myself how it could be that ordinary people—people like you and me, Presiding Officer—could be in Paris or Amsterdam one day and then be taken like cattle on trains from the centre of those grand European cities to end up in Auschwitz-Birkenau. I ask myself how it could be that Europe descended into such obscenity.
On the day of my visit, some of the international students pulled out of the trip, saying that they could not go because they would find it too distressing. I could neither understand nor agree with that view, because I felt—as I still feel strongly—that it was my duty and the collective duty of all of us who have lived and enjoyed basic human rights to visit the death camp and to bear witness to man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. My experience of visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau has stayed with me and has informed my views and inspired me to fight for human rights and dignity and for the freedom of the individual.
I, too, commend the work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, particularly its focus on education. As we have heard, the Holocaust is taught widely in Scottish schools, and post-16-year-olds have the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau. I am sure that their visits will leave an indelible mark on their lives. I believe that that is for the good, for we will not create a better society if we do not understand and learn from the history of our world.
17:30
Jews were being persecuted for generations before they began arriving in Glasgow in significant numbers from around 1900. They gradually migrated from the centre of Glasgow out to Newton Mearns, Whitecraigs and Giffnock—the community into which I was born 53 years ago. I grew up surrounded by Jewish friends and families, many of whom had very direct experience of the atrocities that took place during the Nazi persecution, but they said nothing of it. It was not something that they shared outwith their community until much later. I would say that that began sometime in the 1970s, as television programmes started to take a greater interest in what had happened and Holocaust deniers began to emerge to suggest that no such atrocities had taken place.
We should remember that the collapse of Nazi Germany was latterly an organised collapse, but was rapid in its early stages. However, it was not so rapid that the Nazis were not able to dismantle and destroy evidence of camps, of which Treblinka was one, as Stewart Maxwell mentioned. I was therefore fascinated to read last week that new evidence is emerging at the Treblinka site through use of new technologies such as underground radar, which has established the existence of five mass-grave pits and two structures that were the gas chambers. Because of Jewish tradition the graves cannot be disturbed, but people are now in the process of mapping out where the graves are so that, in camps that the Nazis destroyed—and which some people would like to deny existed—there will be an opportunity for future generations to pay their respects and for us to commemorate those atrocities.
In 1947 at Auschwitz, which is mostly as it was during the second world war, a bottle was buried. The Auschwitz museum has for the first time released the contents of that bottle—sketches that are the only artwork that survives documenting the exterminations at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They represent entirely the stories that we have heard about children being ripped from their parents’ arms while guards smirked, cattle trucks and corpses littering the ground, with chimneys in the background. There are some 6,000 such works from Auschwitz that have yet to be seen but which are now gradually being released.
I knew that because of my upbringing it would be a difficult visit for me to Auschwitz, so I organised a personal guide. He was a man called Robert Novak, whom I have made friends with and stay in touch with to this day. I asked him, as someone whose grandparents had lived adjacent to the camp and who had operated there as a guide for some 18 years, how he kept his tour and the story fresh. He told me of a tour that he had done the previous week. As he was going round with the group, he noticed the mark on one man’s wrist and realised that he was talking to—it is a rare occurrence now—somebody who had survived. He lost sight of him at one point during the trip and went back to find him in a room. He asked, “What’s up?” The man replied, “I think this is the room where my father was murdered, so I wonder if I could, with your permission, have just a few minutes to say goodbye.” We must not forget, when we talk about the large numbers involved, that every murder was the murder of an individual and that those are individual stories that amount to a collective atrocity.
People ask “Why?” I commend to them Professor Ian Kershaw’s book “The End: Hitler's Germany, 1944-45”, which was published last year. It paints a picture of the maelstrom of the final days of the war and of the death march from Auschwitz, and demonstrates that ordinary Germans sought to try and give some comfort or food to Jews on the death march and were, themselves, summarily executed for their trouble.
Let us reflect today, with a Jewish community that is shrinking in Scotland, on how important it is now that what was once the memory of the Jewish community has become the collective memory of all in Scotland of what happened. Let us just remember on Burns night that more “inhumanity to man”—to use his expression—
“has been done by man himself than any other of nature’s causes.”
17:35
I. too, congratulate Stewart Maxwell on securing this debate on an issue that is of great importance to all humanity.
Those who were born in the 1950s, as I was, will remember that the second world war was a regular topic of conversation throughout their childhoods, and that television programmes such as the historical series, “All Our Yesterdays”, and dramas such as “A Family at War” were frequently on the television screen. However, we did not see much at all about what happened in the concentration camps, possibly because it was too close to the time when those events took place to screen programmes about them.
Although my generation was spared the rigours and sacrifices of the war, people we knew who lived through it had experiences that they often related—although, as Jackson Carlaw mentioned, perhaps not those who had been in Auschwitz or Treblinka.
Since then, however, even the cold war and the then ever-present threat of the mushroom cloud seem—I emphasise the word, “seem”—to have faded from people’s everyday consciousness. Now, schoolchildren and young people in Scotland are, thankfully, even further in time from such a conflagration. However, because of that, it is imperative that we do not take our eye off the ball that is war and “man’s inhumanity to man”. War is the responsibility of all of us, as are the effects that it has on our fellow human beings. Therefore, to enter into a war for reasons of political expediency, dogma, philosophy or a twisted religious faith leaves us open to responsibility for giving support to the gross excesses of the behaviour of the combatants.
Six million Jews, 200,000 Roma, 200,000 mentally and physically disabled people, Poles, Russians, socialists, communists, Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals—all were the direct victims of the Nazis’ hate and sectarianism, and many millions more died in the war for Hitler’s imperial expansionism. Those human beings were killed not by monsters or aliens but by other human beings.
Civilians were also killed around the world because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed 430,000 civilians and created the hibakusha—the survivors and their children who were affected by the radioactive fallout. Also among the dead are the unknown numbers of people who died in Japanese forced labour camps in the far east. All those people are victims of what Studs Terkel, in his wonderfully sad book of witness statements, called “the good war”.
It is for those reasons that I believe that I have been privileged to attend Garnethill synagogue in Glasgow for a remembrance of Kristallnacht. It is also for those reasons that we need to keep alive the memory of Jane Haining, the Church of Scotland missionary who refused to abandon the 400 Jewish orphan girls who were in her care in Budapest, and who died with them in Auschwitz two months later.
We need the Holocaust survivors and the hibakusha to continue to speak to the children of today. We need the Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz project to impart first-hand knowledge to our young people. We all need to remember that bigotry is not a joke and war is not a fun adventure, because its impact on people lasts longer than a lifetime.
17:39
I congratulate Stewart Maxwell on securing this debate and on the eloquent way in which he set the tone of the debate, which others have ably followed. So eager was I to support Stewart Maxwell’s motion and the campaign that I think that I might have tried to sign it twice—an example of voting early and often that I suspect will not have gone unnoticed by the parliamentary authorities.
The initiative is truly worthy of the extensive cross-party support that it undoubtedly enjoys, not to mention the impressive and enthusiastic engagement of civic Scotland. A key part of that engagement is with schools throughout Scotland, including in my constituency. I am looking forward to rolling back the years on Friday when I head back to Kirkwall grammar school to see how pupils and staff there are marking the occasion. Under the theme of “Your voice is yours: use it”, secondary 2 pupils at KGS have been using film, drama, presentations, pledge cards and other means to reinforce the importance of using our voice to challenge what we believe to be wrong.
Delivering that message is—as other members have mentioned—something that Dominic Bradley and Katie McKenna did powerfully and compellingly at time for reflection last Wednesday. The visit to Auschwitz—an experience that they gained through their involvement with the Holocaust Educational Trust—clearly had a profound and, surely, lasting effect on those two young individuals. Katie McKenna’s disbelief at how ordinary people could stand by while such atrocities were visited on European Jews and other minorities during the state-sponsored terror of the Holocaust was a reaction that is doubtless familiar to us all. Katie asked:
“Why did no one speak up?”—[Official Report, 18 January 2012; c 5351.]
She may still be no closer to an answer, but her determination to speak up and speak out was plain.
“Speak up, speak out“ is the central theme for Holocaust memorial day 2012, and it is absolutely fundamental. Any complacent assumption that anti-semitism, racism or bigotry are scars of the past demands the most robust and full-throated rebuttal; so, too, does any suggestion that they are problems that are only found somewhere else. The Parliament can be proud of its record on speaking up and speaking out, and on taking action against crimes of hate. I expect that to continue, and this evening’s debate is an important part of that process. I may disagree with the Scottish Government’s recent approach to legislating against sectarianism, but the renewed focus that that gave to the debate about how we tackle a long-standing scourge on too much of Scottish society was very welcome indeed.
As a Liberal and a staunch defender of free speech, I have always felt that we tread a difficult line when we place curbs on that freedom. However, when that freedom is used to incite hatred and even violence towards others—especially vulnerable people and minorities—and to rewrite history in the hope of fuelling conspiracies, stirring up deep-rooted enmity and prejudice and possibly encouraging the past to repeat itself, we are right to place limits on that freedom in order to safeguard wider freedoms.
I thank Stewart Maxwell for bringing the debate to the chamber. Does Liam McArthur agree that although the Holocaust is an example for humankind, and a scar on society from which we must learn lessons, we are still making the same mistakes around the world, for example in Bosnia, Africa and so on? It is crucial that the Parliament and the people of Scotland learn our lessons from what happened in the Holocaust and ensure that it is not repeated anywhere else.
Mr Malik makes a very pertinent and important point. The scale of what the Nazis did 70 years ago is perhaps unprecedented, but the horrific shadow of genocide hangs all too shamefully over our more recent history. Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur all stand as poignant reminders that, as Robert Burns would have observed, the capacity for “man’s inhumanity to man” remains undiminished.
Defining genocide is not without controversy, as the political debate in France and the US over Ottoman atrocities against Armenians demonstrates. Legal disputes also exist over whether Mladic and Karadzic are guilty of genocide or merely of crimes against humanity. As important as that debate may be, however, it is immaterial to victims and requires of us no less a commitment to speak up and speak out.
With the passage of time, first-hand testimonies of the Holocaust are disappearing, but that should not mean a fading of the individual—or, indeed, the collective—memory. Holocaust memorial day, the Holocaust Educational Trust, the visits to Auschwitz and the other camps and the integration of those issues into curriculum for excellence all help in that respect, as will the excellent gathering the voices oral history project at Glasgow Caledonian University to which Humza Yousaf and other members referred.
There is cause for optimism, but there is no reason for complacency and every need for vigilance. I leave the final word to Katie McKenna, who reminded us last week that
“we have a voice and we all have a responsibility to use that voice to speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.”—[Official Report, 18 January 2012; c 5352.]
17:44
I join fellow members in commending Stewart Maxwell for bringing the debate to the chamber this evening.
Holocaust memorial day is a relatively recent date in our calendar, but it is an important one. As a history graduate, for me it is important because it is, “Lest we forget”.
In 2012, the theme of speak up, speak out is another important milestone in the journey. It is important for those who have survived, but it is also important for those who must hear. Stewart Maxwell talked about the chain of evidence going down the generations, and I take great pride in the young people in my constituency who are hearing and speaking out.
Katie McKenna and Dominic Bradley, who are ex-St Ninian’s high school pupils from Kirkintilloch, have been mentioned more than once. As members have said, they led time for reflection last week. Stewart Maxwell and I had the honour—I think that honour is the right word—of having lunch with Dominic and Katie beforehand, and they shared their memories with us, as they did later with the chamber. Siobhan McMahon has highlighted one of Dominic’s key memories—the smile as, hopefully, a statement of self-worth—and Liam McArthur has just repeated Katie’s concluding remarks about using our voice responsibly to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.
I am delighted that that is also happening this week in Kirkintilloch high school. Kirkintilloch high school sent Andrew Anderson and Caitlin Thomson to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2011, and they shared their memories and feelings of the visit across the school. For the past four years, Kirkintilloch high school has held a week-long Holocaust project, which involves every year and every subject across the school. Members will not be surprised to hear that, as an ex-school librarian, I am delighted that the school library is involved in that project throughout the week to ensure that the young people receive evidence and not prejudice or misinformed stories, as can happen. The project is viewed within Kirkintilloch high school as an integral part of the respect agenda. It was interesting that last year’s assembly left the pupils with a clearer understanding of the scale, the horrors and the tragedy of the Holocaust. It also ensured that the pupils’ respect for others and for themselves will continue to flourish in that school.
As a history graduate, I conclude by supporting the work of Holocaust day and the Holocaust Educational Trust. Long may such learning continue on humanity’s journey to peace.
17:47
I thank Stewart Maxwell for raising this matter.
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, the Jews. In September 2009, along with Jo Swinson, I was a guest of the trust on a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau with a group of Glasgow pupils and journalists. Such journeys involve a day of preparation before the visit and a debriefing and school projects afterwards. Different things affect people on the visits. One of the journalists on our visit was struck by a pair of shoes among the pile of shoes because he had a little girl and realised that the shoes would have fitted her. I was challenged in different ways, one of which related to the position of Roma Gypsies in our society today. Frankly, some people still despise that group—as they did then—and would not want to live next to them. The visit brought it home to me that, in some ways, attitudes have not changed very much.
The physical aspect of the camp that struck me most was the railway, which has been mentioned by Annabelle Ewing. Some members will know that I am a fan of railways and like travelling by train. Most railways are built for good purposes, although they might occasionally be used for bad ones. However, the railway in the camp, which was built with the sole purpose of killing people more quickly, struck me as particularly awful. It was built to get the Hungarian Jews into the camps as quickly as possible quite late on in the war. The last thing that I did on my visit was walk along that railway track.
I have visited other sites—including Terezin, near Prague, and Yad Vashem, in Israel—which I also found overwhelming. The Jews were not the sole victims of the Holocaust, although they were the largest group to suffer. As the Holocaust Educational Trust is good at reminding us, we should oppose all discrimination against all minorities.
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 Jews—a situation that lasted until 1656. 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, but Stewart Maxwell reminded us that anti-Semitism is—sadly—alive here as well.
Why have the Jews been subject to so much hatred historically? There are superficial reasons—for example, the Jews killed Jesus, but Jesus was Jewish, too. All Jesus’s early followers were Jewish, and the whole early Christian church was Jewish.
What are the lessons to be learned from the Holocaust? One is that we need to be peacemakers and not just peacekeepers. It is difficult to separate the Jews from Israel. Some Jews oppose the current existence of Israel, and many oppose particular policies of the Israeli Government. However, I fear that, for some people, being anti-Israel on the surface can be a cover for being anti-Jewish underneath.
On the home front, we need to learn to treat minorities better, including the Jews, disabled people, gay folk, those who are in poverty and other groups. On the foreign front, a lesson to be learned is how to deal with the middle east. It is easy to be a strident supporter of one side or the other, but surely one role for us in this country would be to be peacemakers in the middle east.
I call the minister, Roseanna Cunningham, to wind up this moving debate. [Interruption.] I ask for her microphone to be switched on, please.
17:52
I will start again—I am not quite sure what happened to the console that I tried to use.
Few people who see the film footage of the opening of the concentration camps at the end of the second world war come away with any emotion other than sheer horror, so we should congratulate Stewart Maxwell on obtaining the debate to focus on Holocaust memorial day 2012. The debate gives all of us an opportunity to remember that 11 million people were executed because of their race, their religion, their sexuality or their disability. They were ordinary men, women and children. When all the numbers are added up, they come to twice Scotland’s population. That figure is astonishing, staggering and almost unbelievable.
This year, Scotland’s national Holocaust memorial day commemoration will be held in Dundee tomorrow, when John Swinney will represent the Government. A full programme of events has been planned, and I am sure that everybody in the chamber joins me in sending our best wishes for a successful event.
It goes without saying that the Scottish Government is committed to tackling all forms of discrimination and to promoting a multifaith and multicultural society that is based on mutual trust, respect and understanding. We can build that only if we do not allow ourselves to forget those who suffered and died in the Holocaust and those who continue to suffer because of genocide.
A number of members have mentioned the funding to ensure continued support for the Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz programme. The extra funding will enable a further 380 pupils from schools and colleges to participate in the four-part programme. Stewart Maxwell and Siobhan McMahon talked about the importance of that experience for young people.
The trips to Auschwitz offer an important link to the terrible events and their continuing implications for society. There are lessons and attitudes about discrimination and diversity to be learned. Since the Scottish national events were set up in 2000—we should commend those who were involved in doing that—public awareness of the Holocaust and other genocides has been greater.
Stewart Maxwell eloquently read out Pastor Niemöller’s poem, so I will not repeat it. It is the inspiration for this year’s Holocaust memorial day speak up, speak out theme, and it challenges us to think about the responsibility and duty that we all have to speak up when we see or hear something that we believe to be wrong, not just on a mass scale, but on a small scale. The poem concludes with a powerful and challenging observation:
“Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me”.
It challenges us to learn about what happens when we do not speak out and about what can happen when we use our voice.
Humza Yousaf reminded us that many people did not turn away, even in the midst of the horror, and even at great personal danger—such people existed then, too. Bill Kidd put a name to one of those people when he talked about Jane Haining. Over the weekend, I heard about a similar individual: Edith Stein, who is now a saint.
We should, of course, always speak up and speak out in our lives. By remaining silent and taking the position of bystander, we may think that the problem will disappear, but we could be enabling vile and despicable behaviours that, as we are only too aware, can have tragic and far-reaching consequences. There is the old cliché, which is really not too clichéd, that for evil to triumph, it only needs good men to stay silent. Such behaviours and consequences are utterly unthinkable, but the reason why we acknowledge Holocaust memorial day every year is that such unthinkable atrocities actually took place within living memory.
Stuart McMillan talked about how cruel and callous humans can be. Sadly, the Holocaust was not the last attempt at genocide. Members have mentioned one or two other attempts. I scribbled down the attempt in Cambodia, which has not been mentioned so far. I vividly remember the dreadful events there. In fact, at the time, I knew Cambodians who heard nothing more from any of their family ever again—that was it. However, they were lucky because they lived in Australia and did not experience what was happening. There is also what happened in Srebrenica in the Balkans. We have only to think about what happened a few years ago to know that we could still be doing such things if we are not vigilant. I have named only two places. Such dreadful events continue to happen, so education is vital.
We know that, during times of economic challenge, tensions can become exacerbated and can sometimes lead to a breakdown in community cohesion. Maintaining vigilance internationally and domestically is vital.
Annabelle Ewing talked about ordinary people being in Amsterdam or Paris one day and finding themselves in a concentration camp the next day, and about how utterly disorientating and shocking that was. While she was speaking, I thought about other ordinary people. There were ordinary people in Germany—people like us—who became the perpetrators of horror. We are not absolved of responsibility if we see ourselves only as victims and do not remember that ordinary people sometimes become perpetrators. We must be vigilant about that.
I do not know how much longer I have, Presiding Officer.
That is up to you.
I do not want to try people’s patience.
It is extraordinarily important to remember that there are two sides and that ordinary people find themselves on both sides, as victim and as perpetrator. That is why we must engage with one another and establish dialogue with a range of groups and individuals. Dialogue brings us together, removes the fear of the unknown, helps us to find common ground and build friendships, and challenges stigmatisation, which holds back many individuals and communities. It offers us the chance to embrace the full diversity of life, to have first-hand experience of cultures that we did not grow up with, and to learn that more pulls people together than pulls them apart.
The Scottish Government believes in one Scotland of many cultures and faiths. It believes in a nation that values diversity and recognises that a multicultural society is vibrant, successful and energetic. It believes in a nation in which people from all backgrounds can live in peace and in which people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds can achieve their potential. We should take pride in being the only nation in Europe that has never had official state-sponsored discrimination against the Jews, but we should not allow that to lull us into a false sense of complacency, because none of us here is free from the possibility that, if we are not careful, we could wake up one day and discover that we, too, are perpetrators. We may have simply dodged that, but, in truth, we may have come close to behaving in just as awful a way many times.
That point—[Interruption.]
Your microphone is not on.
I have taken my card out. Can I shout?
Your microphone needs to be on for the purposes of the official report.
Two ladies from the Channel Islands were deported to Auschwitz with the co-operation of the population in the Channel Islands, which had been occupied by Nazi Germany. It is too easy for us in this country to hide behind the notion that ordinary people here would not have behaved as ordinary people elsewhere did. It is a chilling thought and one that we must always carry with us. That is why the education of young people today is so crucial.
It is vital that we remember that. We were not under occupation, and we do not know how people would have reacted if we had been and how many would have been prepared to collaborate in doing precisely the same thing—perhaps to different groups of people or to more groups of people than elsewhere. That is why vigilance can never be relaxed. Every time vigilance is relaxed anywhere in the world, something happens. That reminds us that we as human beings have a capacity for violence that is unmatched elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
Holocaust memorial day provides us with an opportunity to develop a fuller understanding of race, equality and tolerance, and the importance of being constantly vigilant so that discrimination and prejudice do not creep into what we do as a society.
Meeting closed at 18:01.