The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-15216, in the name of Stewart Maxwell, on Holocaust memorial day 2016. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes that 27 January 2016 marks Holocaust Memorial Day, the 71st 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 2016 is Don’t Stand By; 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 Lauren Galloway and Brandon Low, two students from Auchmuty High School in Fife, who took part in the project and will deliver the Parliament’s Time for Reflection message on 26 January 2016; celebrates the Holocaust survivors who have enriched Scotland as a nation, and recommits to ensuring that racism, sectarianism and bigotry are never allowed to go unchallenged in Scotland.
17:06
Tomorrow—27 January—marks the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I would like to commend the work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which organises Holocaust memorial day, and the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, which works hard to educate people, especially children, about the realities of the Holocaust and to make sure that we never forget what happened in the heart of Europe in the 20th century.
Together with the Scottish Government, the Holocaust Educational Trust takes two pupils from every secondary school in Scotland to Auschwitz every year. We heard very movingly earlier today from Lauren and Brandon from Auchmuty high school—two of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s ambassadors—on their feelings and thoughts about their visit to Auschwitz.
Tonight, the gathering the voices project is holding a reception in the Scottish Parliament, to which I gladly invite all members here. It is a fantastic project that is recording the oral testimony of Holocaust survivors who came to Scotland, thereby ensuring that their voices never fall silent and that even after all the survivors are long dead, people can listen to them and hear a first-hand account of the atrocities that were committed.
It is important for us all to remember that genocide has eight stages and that the eighth stage is denial—the perpetrators deny that any crime has ever been committed. The Nazis destroyed a great deal of the evidence of their crimes as it became clear that they were losing the war. Not only were records destroyed, but the extermination camps were dismantled, or partially dismantled, as the allied forces advanced. However, Majdanek was overrun before the Nazis could completely hide the evidence and although the crematorium was destroyed, the gas chambers were still standing.
The voices of survivors are vital in giving the lie to denial of the crimes of the Holocaust—a denial that continues among some people to this day. More than 1 million men, women and children were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau alone, and in total the Nazis murdered around 6 million Jewish people during the second world war. Auschwitz-Birkenau was one of the six extermination camps that the Nazis built with the express purpose of annihilating the Jews; the others were Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka and Chelmno. All of them were built in the east, in Poland, in lands that were occupied by the Nazis.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust memorial day is “Don’t stand by”. We remember the stories of the brave men and women who did not stand by, but saved lives—in particular, the lives of so many Jewish children. A few years ago, I was privileged to attend an event at which Mr Piotr Zettinger spoke. He had been rescued from the Warsaw ghetto as a very small child by Irena Sendler, one of the people whose story the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is highlighting this year. Irena Sendler was a Polish social worker who smuggled approximately 2,500 children out of the Warsaw ghetto. Those children, including Mr Zettinger, were then sheltered by various ordinary people whose names we will perhaps never know who risked their lives and the lives of their own families to keep the Jewish children safe. Piotr Zettinger was one of the lucky ones because at the end of the war he was alive and, even better, his mother came and found him a few months after the war was over. His father, unfortunately, had perished, but he had one parent left.
It was different for most of the children who came on the Kindertransport to Britain, the majority of whom never saw their parents again. It is unimaginable for us to have to put our child on a train and to send him or her off into an unknown and unknowable future in a foreign country. It is an act of courage, love and desperation. We are lucky not to have had to face such a choice.
Another one of the people who have been highlighted by the Holocaust Educational Trust is Sir Nicholas Winton, who died last summer at the age of 106. Sir Nicholas Winton was responsible for rescuing 669 children from Czechoslovakia on the Czech Kindertransport and finding them sponsors here in Britain. Sadly, the last group of 250 children that he tried to rescue were trapped in Prague. They were due to leave on 1 September 1939, but Germany invaded Poland, war was declared and they could not leave. Most of them therefore died. Of the 669 children whom Sir Nicholas Winton saved, however, many went on to live lives of great distinction, including Heini Halberstam, a distinguished mathematician, and Renata Laxova, a paediatric geneticist, to name but two. Their talents would have been lost to the world without Sir Nicholas Winton’s intervention.
Let us consider, however, the fate of Jewish children who were orphans before war broke out, and who were already desperately vulnerable and alone. That brings me to another person who did not stand by—a lady called Jane Haining, who was a Scottish missionary originally from Dumfries and Galloway. She worked in an orphanage in Budapest looking after the children, both Jews and Christians, who were in her care. She did not come home to the safety of Scotland even when Germany invaded Hungary but stayed to care for her orphans. She was urged to come back to Scotland, but in another display of love and courage she refused to leave.
It is terrible to think of the vulnerability of Jewish orphans, without any relatives to shield them, in Nazi-occupied Europe. Eventually, Miss Haining was arrested by the Gestapo for spying, for working with Jews and for listening to the BBC. She admitted to every charge except the charge of espionage and for those crimes—the crimes of looking after Jewish orphans and listening to the BBC—she, along with many of her charges, perished in Auschwitz, one of a tiny handful of Scots who died in Nazi concentration or extermination camps. There are stained glass windows in memory of her in the Queen’s Park Govanhill parish church, which is only about two miles from where I live and where she used to worship before she went to Budapest. I hope to go and view them some time soon.
The legacy of those who did not stand by continues into the future, long after they are dead, not only in the lives of the children whom they saved, but in those saved children’s own achievements and offspring and in the shining example of love and courage that they present to us today. It is often said that Shakespeare has a quotation for every occasion, but this time I have to disagree with what one of his characters said. In “Julius Caesar”, Antony says:
“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones”.
We can see today that that is not true: the good deeds of those who did not stand by continue to bear fruit today and will do so long into the future. Good deeds are never done in vain. We must, in these rather frightening times, remember the heroism and courage of those in the past who did not stand by, but held out a hand of friendship, support and solidarity to imperilled children. We must not just remember them, but commit to doing the same.
17:13
I thank Stewart Maxwell—
Mr Macintosh, your microphone is not on. Can we have Mr Macintosh’s microphone switched on, please? That is better.
Thank you, Presiding Officer. At least the lights did not go out again.
We are making progress.
I thank Stewart Maxwell for giving us the opportunity to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2016. I also want to thank several organisations and individuals for the work that they do to mark this important day in our calendar, starting with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which has supplied helpful and thought-provoking material to schools, voluntary organisations and local authorities across the country, and has supported a series of events, including a joint ceremony in East Renfrewshire and Renfrewshire on Saturday night, a national remembrance event in Falkirk tomorrow evening, and one that has been organised by Edinburgh schools in Firhill high school on Thursday evening.
The Holocaust Educational Trust runs the lessons from Auschwitz programme, the fruits of which we heard at time for reflection earlier today when two young ambassadors, Lauren Galloway and Brandon Low, spoke eloquently about their impressions and experiences of their visit to the infamous death camp. The HET’s book of commitment is available in Parliament to be signed today and tomorrow; I urge members who have not had the opportunity to do so to sign it.
Members might also have seen the exhibition that is on display in the garden lobby from gathering the voices, which is a remarkable project that is collecting the testimony of Scottish survivors of Nazi persecution. As Stewart Maxwell said earlier, he is hosting a reception in Parliament immediately after the debate, and I am sure that gathering the voices would welcome every member’s presence.
Just one of the faces that is staring out from the photographs and documents is that of a young Bob Kutner. For those who did not have the pleasure of knowing him, Bob was a remarkable man. He was charming, engaging, funny and a survivor of the Holocaust. Bob’s family fled Nazi Germany for fascist Italy before some of them finally reached the relative safety and security of the UK. Bob did not just write about the difficulties and horrors that he had lived through; he devoted long hours of his life to talking to pupils and others about his experiences. His tales of youthful espionage, fleeing across Europe and interrogating Nazis after the war held everyone enrapt. In fact, at this time last year, I heard and saw him do just that with a large group of young people at Williamwood high school. Two months later, in March 2015, he died at the age of 91.
As I represent East Renfrewshire, I have had the privilege of knowing several Holocaust survivors—Marianne Grant, the Rev Ernest Levy, Bob Kutner and Ingrid and Henry Wuga. What stands out about all those remarkable people is not the scars of their experiences but their warmth, generosity and humanity. Our world has been scarred by the apparent genocide of the Holocaust. In parts of the world today, the barbarity of killing people because of their religion or ethnicity continues. People are being thrown off buildings to their deaths because they are gay. Our response to that cannot be anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. It should be the tolerance, kindness and humanity that has been shown by survivors such as Bob Kutner.
One of the most encouraging lines that Lauren and Brandon delivered today was on this year’s theme for Holocaust memorial day: “Don’t stand by”. As Lauren said, she would not stand by and let the Holocaust be forgotten. I can think of no finer tribute to Bob Kutner and his efforts on behalf of others and the millions who never lived to tell their own stories.
17:17
I congratulate Stewart Maxwell on securing tonight’s debating time.
It is vitally important to remember the 11 million men, women and children who were murdered by the Nazi regime in occupied Europe during world war two. More than half of those people were Jewish and they faced that mass extermination simply because they were Jewish. During world war two, two thirds of Jewish people who were living in Europe were killed by the Nazis, although in some countries, such as the Baltic states and Poland, more than 90 per cent were murdered in a few short years.
It is not just the deaths of those people that we must remember but the cruelty, torture and humiliation that many of them suffered and the way in which they were hunted mercilessly by their fellow man. Auschwitz-Birkenau was a primary centre for the annihilation of Jewish people during the Nazi regime and those who were not too sick, young or old were worked to death on minuscule rations in horrific and inhumane conditions. Some were even experimented on and less than 1 per cent of them survived.
In other camps, such as Treblinka and Belzec, little if any work was required from prisoners. They were murdered almost immediately on arrival. Only two people survived Belzec of the 434,000 who arrived there and, in Treblinka, a few dozen survived following a prisoners revolt and escape; more than 800,000 were exterminated.
Holocaust survivors who are alive today vividly recall their horrendous experiences and, on Holocaust memorial day, it is just as important to take the time to remember the indescribable experiences that those people lived through and the lives that they built subsequently. The horror that the Jewish people faced during world war two is one that we truly struggle to understand. However, it is vital that we do not shy away from difficult issues and continue to educate communities across Scotland about the tragic events of the Holocaust.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust memorial day, as Stewart Maxwell outlined, is “Don’t stand by” and that is a message that we must face head on. Atrocities such as the Holocaust do not take place simply due to the actions of one person. Dark and horrific policy makers still gain power in the world, and while bystanders to genocide may not actively be involved in such violence, standing by because of indifference or simply fear obviously has an impact and allows those who are evil to move forward. One does not need to actively support state policies of persecution in order to have an adverse effect on the lives of innocent people.
The message of “Don’t stand by” highlights the accountability that we face in modern society in terms of global responsibility for fundamental human rights and democracy. We must continue to remind ourselves of that message as we fight against any form of bigotry or racism.
We should remember that while the Holocaust was unique in terms of its industrial nature and in many other aspects, right up to the present day we know of many other genocides of the last century: the Armenian genocide, the Ukrainian Holodomor, the appalling genocide in Cambodia and, of course, we all know about Darfur. Darfur, Rwanda and, I believe, much of what is happening today in Syria, can be termed genocide—certainly in relation to the Yazidi population.
As Robert Burns said:
“Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!”
By learning from the Holocaust we can educate people to ensure that such actions do not happen again, or at least that such ideas are kicked as far as possible into the realms where no-one even wishes to contemplate the evils that such appalling ideas generate.
Bigotry and racism have no place in the world, and we must challenge such ideas. We are a country that has been greatly enriched by the lives of Holocaust survivors, as Ken Macintosh mentioned, and we must celebrate and appreciate what they have brought to our society and our people, and the fact that many of them chose to settle here.
We are fortunate enough to live in a country that is not at risk of genocide, but discrimination is far from over and the language of exclusion must be challenged. Holocaust memorial day allows us to begin to work towards a safer future, here and in other societies and communities.
17:22
I, too, thank Stewart Maxwell for bringing the motion before us, and associate myself with the comments in the various speeches that have already been made.
Last year we commemorated the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It would be tempting to think that the enormity of that crime, perpetrated by the Nazis, was brought to an end and that the persecution of the Jews stopped that day. I think that that is to misunderstand the deeply seated anti-Semitism that existed across Europe prior to the war, which the Nazi party fuelled and also fed off. The Jews from a dozen countries who were deported to eastern Europe to be exterminated were very often deported with the complicit support of local populations.
Of some 200,000 people who had survived the concentration camps, 160,000 were to survive into the new year in 1946, while 40,000 died in the immediate period after the war. In addition, there were some 300,000 Jews who had fled Nazi Germany into eastern and central Europe. Of a population of 3.25 million Polish Jews, 80,000 had survived, along with 175,000 Hungarians and 90,000 others. Many had fled to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the USSR was keen for them to leave again. In fact, the only able-bodied adults who were able to leave the Soviet Union after the second world war and through 1946 were Jews. Many of them left; they fled, hoping to return to the homes that they had left behind. Their experience was anything but encouraging. Indeed, in the 12 months after the war, more Jews were killed in central Europe than in the 12 years before 1939.
I draw to members’ attention the experience of Jews returning to the village of Kielce in Poland. It had a pre-war population of some 20,000 Jews, of whom only 380 were left by the end of the war. Many of them gathered in a Jewish mission in the centre of town. A young boy who had left home and stayed out overnight explained himself to his parents by saying that he had been kidnapped by the Jews in that building and that many other children had been, too. In fact, the boy had simply been away looking for food and did not want to explain why he had raided food from somewhere else. There was no substance at all to his story. The mob stormed the building and, of the 380 Jews who had survived the Holocaust, 42 were killed and another 80 were injured. Young girls were hurled out of the top-floor windows of the building.
Scores of Jewish people were killed on trains trying to return to the properties that they had left behind. In many cases, they were shunned when they arrived and fled for their lives thereafter. It has to be understood that, in whole parts of Europe, a new middle class had evolved as a result of the opportunity that people had taken from the deportation of the Jewish community, and they had no interest in the Jewish community returning.
The deeply rooted anti-Semitism that preceded the war did not end with the liberation of the concentration camps—it carried on. That is why the lessons of the Holocaust, which we have heard about in Parliament today and which we commemorate with this anniversary, are so important that they must be restated at every opportunity.
I want to touch on the sentiment with which Ken Macintosh concluded about the attitude of many of those who survived. That coincides with an anonymous poem that was found in Ravensbrück concentration camp after the war, which says:
“Remember, Lord, not only the men and women of good will but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted on us, remember the fruits we brought thanks to this suffering—our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of this; and when they come to judgment, let all the fruits we have borne be their forgiveness.”
It is a difficult thing, but the heart of many of those who went on to survive—this country has an honourable and proud record in that regard—is the legacy and memory that we must celebrate. We must never simply say that it cannot happen again; we must work to ensure that it does not happen again.
17:26
I congratulate and commend my colleague Stewart Maxwell on securing the debate. I also commend Brandon Low and Lauren Galloway, who led time for reflection today and delivered powerful presentations to the Parliament. It has become traditional for us to hear from young people about their thoughts and experiences following a visit to Auschwitz to mark Holocaust memorial day. Every year, the presentations that we receive at time for reflection continue to be powerful and thought provoking.
I have stood in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and on the platform at Birkenau where individuals were sorted into lines—those who were considered to be productive for labour in the concentration camps and those who were to be sent unknowingly to an immediate death. Standing there, it is difficult to compute the enormity of that situation and the idea that human beings could do something like that to one another.
As has been said, the Holocaust did not simply appear out of the sky and arrive all of a sudden. There was a long lead-in to it and the Nazis capitalised on a wave of anti-Semitic sentiment that was often fuelled by prominent individuals and media outlets. That promoted and endorsed a certain view of the Jews, which allowed that view to gain public traction and desensitised many people to the horrors that would be committed in society, even before the final solution was enacted.
We often say that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. What I take from today’s presentation by Lauren and Brandon and from the “Don’t stand by” call that is being made on Holocaust memorial day is that, I fear, we are reaching that stage again. If we look around, we see inflammatory rhetoric being put across in the pages of mainstream newspapers in relation to individuals of certain religions or ethnic backgrounds and we see the rhetoric of certain high-profile political candidates and politicians in relation to those of specific backgrounds.
I also fear that many of the lessons that have been learned and arguments that have been made since the Holocaust are lost and falling on some deaf ears as economic difficulty is once again blamed on a specific section of society. We must stand firm against that, and ensure that that rhetoric does not win the day and that people who put across those arguments and who would be susceptible to them are shown not only the error of the arguments but where they lead. They would have led in the past to the Kindertransport being turned away, in the way that many people are arguing that unaccompanied refugee children should not be accepted into our borders. They led in the Holocaust to the mass extermination of people.
That all started from arguments about who was responsible for economic difficulties that society faced and with the idea that individuals of a certain religion or background should be identified publicly by some form of insignia. Those elements are all now creeping back into mainstream discourse so, as we were told today, we must not stand by but stand firm against that kind of creeping rhetoric and against such intolerance being allowed to come back into society.
I support the arguments that have been made. We have much still to do to ensure that such extremism does not rear its head in mainstream politics and society again.
17:31
Like others, I thank Stewart Maxwell for again lodging a motion on Holocaust memorial day for discussion at a members’ business debate. The debate is to remember the victims of genocide, to stand in solidarity with the survivors who live among us in our communities and to recognise our responsibility to raise awareness of what it means to live in an equal and just Scotland.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust memorial day is “Don’t stand by”. It builds on the legacy of last year’s reflections, which focused on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. This year, the theme is forward looking with a clear call to action in the present.
As we focus on the contemporary relevance of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, we should consider our individual responsibilities not to be bystanders to hate crime, prejudice or international threats of genocide. Nor should we be unaware of the suffering of people who flee from such persecution. Very sadly, we have recently seen instances of abominable hate crimes and killings of innocent people, including the Paris killings on 13 November and the Burkina Faso attacks on 18 January. Those and other incidents should be constant reminders to us of where intolerance and disrespect ultimately lead us.
Ken Macintosh, Kenny Gibson, Jackson Carlaw and Mark McDonald made memorable speeches. The debate clearly reaffirmed that we must ensure that the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides are not forgotten, trivialised or—crucially—denied. Schools, colleges, universities, faith groups and communities across Scotland are remembering Holocaust memorial day with candle-lighting ceremonies, memorial events, music, drama and poetry. I thank the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and Interfaith Scotland for their partnership in organising the commemorative programme of events this week.
I also thank the Holocaust Educational Trust for placing the book of commitment in the Parliament this week and for the outstanding work that the trust does. The Scottish Government is pleased to have been able to provide funding for senior pupils from Scottish schools to visit Auschwitz for some seven years—since 2009. As a result, well over 2,000 school pupils have visited Auschwitz and learned from the experience. A few years ago, I had the honour of taking part in one of those visits, and I will not readily forget it. Mark McDonald described the experience well. I am pleased that the First Minister has recently announced the Scottish Government’s continued commitment to the programme by confirming that the funding will continue in 2016-17, which will enable more young people in Scotland to take part in the lessons from Auschwitz project.
It is not only the experience of visiting Auschwitz that is powerful. The lessons from Auschwitz programme supports young people to go on to be ambassadors for the project. As the motion says, two of those ambassadors—Lauren Galloway and Brandon Low from Auchmuty high school in Fife—led a moving and eloquent time for reflection at the start of this afternoon’s business in Parliament. We should be proud of young people such as Lauren and Brandon, who share their experiences and teach others about the importance of understanding and respecting different religions, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours—and, crucially, the importance of never forgetting what can happen without such tolerance.
As I said, events will be held in remembrance across Scotland. Tomorrow, my colleague Alex Neil will attend Scotland’s national Holocaust memorial day in Falkirk town hall on behalf of the First Minister. He will be fortunate enough to hear from Inge Auerbacher, who was born in Germany and who, between the ages of seven and 10, was in the Terezín concentration camp in the former Czechoslovakia. Inge survived when the red army rescued her family in May 1945 and she has gone on to live a distinguished life and have a distinguished career.
We are fortunate in Scotland to live in a liberal society where there is less personal risk in challenging prejudice and discrimination. We cannot imagine the trauma of those who lived through the Holocaust or more recent crimes such as the genocide in Srebrenica—indeed, it almost seems impertinent for us to try to imagine what that experience was like.
In Nazi Europe or during the wars in the Balkans or elsewhere, challenges to authority would likely result in deportation or death. We cannot imagine having to make such decisions, and it is important that we do not condemn what we did not experience. However, we should also not perpetuate the idea that only a certain type of person can stand up against discrimination and excuse ourselves by saying that we are not the right person. We should not absolve ourselves of our responsibility. Sometimes, in certain circumstances, ordinary people undertake extraordinary acts of courage.
Sir Nicholas Winton has been mentioned. I am sure that members will have been moved, as I was, when they learned of his death and heard about his amazing contribution to saving many young people through the Kindertransport in Czechoslovakia. As others have said, that is an example of one man’s courage against a truly terrifying and pitiless regime.
Earlier today, the First Minister signed the book of commitment here in the Parliament, and I encourage my colleagues in the chamber to take the time to reflect and add their names.
We must never be complacent about intolerance and hatred. We must challenge and eradicate all forms of discrimination and prejudice wherever we can.
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. The speeches that have been made have reflected our personal commitments to education about and commemoration of the Holocaust and other genocides around the world. It is a fitting way for the Parliament to commemorate this important day.
Meeting closed at 17:38.Previous
Decision Time