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I encourage those who are leaving the chamber and the public gallery to do so as quickly and as quietly as possible.
The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S6M-20318, in the name of Kenneth Gibson, on Holocaust memorial day 2026: “Bridging generations”. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament recognises that 27 January is Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD); acknowledges that the Holocaust was the brutal and barbaric murder of six million Jewish men, women and children by Germany’s Nazi regime, and its collaborators, during the Second World War; understands that the date of HMD is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp, where 1.1 million people were murdered, 90% of them Jewish; notes that the official theme for HMD 2026 is “Bridging Generations”, as a reminder that the collective responsibility of all to remember does not end with the survivors, it lives on through their children, grandchildren and all people; recognises that this encourages all to engage actively with the past, and to listen, learn and carry those lessons forward to build a bridge between memory and action, and between history and hope for the future; is aware that the Holocaust is a shockingly dark chapter in human history, and considers that HMD is a crucially important event in the calendar, which aims to highlight the reason why its lessons can never be forgotten and why a zero tolerance approach must always be taken against antisemitism and all forms of prejudice.
12:47
It is an honour to open the debate and build on the excellent contributions in debates in recent years that were led by Paul O’Kane and Jackson Carlaw, which makes it clear that the issue transcends party lines.
Holocaust memorial day is held on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January 1945 and is often mislabelled as a remembrance of a single dark chapter in human history in which the hopes, dreams and lives of 6 million Jewish men, women and children were brutally extinguished. An incalculable amount of creativity, innovation and talent in all areas of human achievement died with them—an aberrant, unparalleled crime severed from time. This year’s theme—bridging generations—unsettles that illusion. When antisemitism—bluntly, Jew hatred—is confined to isolated events, it appears exceptional and anomalous. Viewed across generations, it reveals itself as neither accidental nor episodic, but endemic.
Antisemitism can be traced to antiquity, when Jewish differences in law, custom and faith in one God were recast as misanthropy, separatism and threat. In Hellenistic and Roman societies, that difference attracted civic suspicion, which embedded in the political imagination and laid the groundwork for persecution, then and later. In 136 AD, the crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt resulted in catastrophic Jewish losses, famine, enslavement and expulsion from what is now Israel and Palestine. Jewish communities in exile became increasingly exposed to repression, including murder and forced conversion, from seventh century Visigoth Spain to the Beta Israel in 20th century Ethiopia.
In medieval Europe, antisemitism was increasingly articulated through theology, law and popular culture. The belief that Jews were collectively responsible for Christ’s death, despite the inconvenience of the crucifixion being ordered by Judea’s Roman governor Pontius Pilate, was widely enforced, legitimising exclusion and violence as religiously sanctioned acts. Jews were prohibited from land ownership, restricted to marginal employment and segregated legally and socially.
Between the 12th and 15th centuries, more than 150 documented blood libel accusations falsely alleged that Jews murdered Christians for ritual use. In 1965, during Vatican II, that was formally repudiated and the Pope removed those saints from the pantheon that was associated with it.
The massacre of 150 Jews at York in 1190 was followed 100 years later by the expulsion of all English Jews. Oliver Cromwell permitted their return in 1656. Scotland never had anti-Jewish laws, but few Jews chose to settle here.
In 1096, the first crusade massacred Jewish communities in the Rhineland. When black death struck in the 1340s, killing one third or more of Europe’s population, Jews were scapegoated and accused of poisoning wells. In 1349, authorities in Strasbourg arrested the city’s entire Jewish population and, on St Valentine’s day, 2,000 were publicly killed. Survivors were expelled and their property was confiscated.
Similar pogroms occurred across Europe, including in Basel, Cologne, Erfurt and Mainz. In Spain, where persecution had been periodic, 4,000 Jews were slaughtered in Seville on 6 June 1391, and across Siberia, mobs murdered thousands more, annihilating long-standing communities.
Faced with death or forced baptism, large numbers of Jews converted to Christianity, creating a substantial population of new Christians, who were commonly known as conversos. They were viewed with suspicion by old Christians, who questioned their religious sincerity. In 1413, Geronimo de Santa Fe, a converso backed by the church, led a 20-month one-sided theological debate, the disputation of Tortosa, to convert Jews by discrediting their beliefs and through intimidation. He was successful, and many converted.
Old Christians remained suspicious of the conversos, and in 1495 and 1497 many of Santa Fe’s descendants were accused of corrupted Judaism and burned at the stake. Expulsion of Spain’s remaining Jews took place in 1492, and Portugal followed two years later. France had already done so in 1394; they were readmitted only in 1791, after the French revolution.
Despite centuries of persecution, massacre and stigma, Jewish communities somehow endured. In Belmonte, Portugal, the Jewish community was forcibly converted in 1497. In 1974, the community of 300 re-emerged, revealing that it had secretly remained Jewish and had been practising endogamy for five long centuries.
Post-enlightenment, Europe became more tolerant. From Sweden to Switzerland, laws against Jews were gradually abolished, and many assimilated. Yet a particularly virulent strain of Jew hatred emerged—Nazism. By the 1940s, widespread acceptance of Jews after centuries of exclusion, scapegoating and marginalisation transformed an underlying but virulent antisemitism into a brutal convergence of bureaucratic efficiency and moral indifference.
Auschwitz-Birkenau occupies a central place in Holocaust remembrance, which is supported by extensive documentation and survivor testimony. Its immense death toll of approximately 1.1 million people, 90 per cent of whom were Jews, and its gas chambers, crematoria and barracks render its crimes both visible and symbolically representative of the horror that is the Holocaust.
However, genocide took place across Nazi-occupied Europe, with the Einsatzgruppen wiping out entire communities. In five other purpose-built extermination camps—Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno and Majdanek—Jews were cruelly murdered and their bodies were burned.
Belzec underscores a critical challenge for generational remembrance, as its historical significance is obscured by the efficiency of its killing process. It was operational from 17 March 1942 and, by 31 December of that year, 434,508 Jews had been murdered, primarily in gas chambers. No one knows how many had died by the time the camp closed in June 1943. With only two known survivors—one was murdered soon after the war ended—Belzec was relegated to the margins of public memory, despite its central role.
Belzec’s other survivor, Rudolf Reder, who was born in Debica in Austria-Hungary in 1881 and was deported with his wife and children to Belzec in August 1942, escaped in November of that year. He was aged 61 and was aided in his escape by Ukrainian women. His children had, however, been murdered, as had his wife. Following the Soviet takeover of Poland, Reder testified in January 1946 before the Institute of National Remembrance. A major memorial at Belzec was not opened until 2004, nearly sixty years after that.
For many Holocaust survivors, returning home meant renewed persecution. In post-war Poland, where only one in 10 of the 3.3 million in the Jewish community had survived, between 650 and 2,000 Jews were murdered, often while attempting to reclaim their homes and rebuild their lives.
Across eastern Europe, traumatised survivors were routinely met with discrimination and violence. On 4 July 1946, in Kielce, 42 Jewish survivors were slaughtered by civilians, police and soldiers, following a blood libel accusation. Among the dead were women and children. Nine victims were shot, two were bayoneted and the remainder were beaten to death.
Joseph Feingold, a Holocaust survivor who endured Nazi forced labour and a Soviet gulag, was released in 1946. He returned home on the day of the pogrom to find his home town overcome by mob violence. Feingold was beaten unconscious and left for dead. Reflecting later, he described the moment as a realisation that war against the Jews had not ended.
Hatred of the Jews is an ideology that seems eternal. It can be found among religious fanatics, atheists, capitalists and communists. It is a hatred that accuses Jews of being too white or not white enough and is rooted in a ludicrous mythical conspiracy that they are responsible for the ills of the world.
In the 1950s, communist parties across eastern Europe purged their Jewish members. Stalin’s campaign against “rootless cosmopolitanism” was set to culminate in the deportation of all Soviet Jews to Siberia, had he not died in 1953.
Although Arab countries were traditionally more tolerant of Jews than the Christian world was, massacres took place in many of them, where Jews had lived since before Islam. In 1941, 180 were killed in Iraq, 133 in Libya and 97 in Yemen. Iraq’s thriving 150,000-strong Jewish community dwindled to zero. Libya has had no Jews since 1969, and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan also have none.
There has been a 97 per cent decline in Jewish populations across the Muslim world in 80 years. The vast majority emigrated to, and thereby strengthened, Israel, where half the world’s 16 million Jews now live. That is hardly surprising, when attacks on Jewish communities can seemingly happen anywhere at any time.
From the murder of 11 Jewish athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, through 285 people being killed in the 1974 Buenos Aires bombing, and dozens being killed in a series of Istanbul synagogue attacks between 1986 and 2003, to the attack at Bondi beach, where 15 were slain only last month, antisemitism is too often dismissed as marginal or incidental and framed as the actions of isolated individuals rather than a symptom of broader social currents.
Australian authorities identified the Bondi beach attack as being influenced by antisemitic ideology. Despite that, early commentary framed the violence as anomalous rather than part of a longer continuum of hatred. Among those who were killed was Alex Kleytman, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor. On the 75th anniversary of the Holocaust, he publicly warned of rising antisemitic violence in contemporary society. Eight decades after surviving genocide, he was murdered celebrating Hanukkah.
Sadly, here in Scotland, Jews report feeling increasingly unsafe. Events in the middle east lead to Jews here being collectively blamed for acts of a Government that they did not vote for in a country that they do not live in. Bridging generations begins with understanding that remembrance is not a passive act. As Hannah Arendt observed, the real risk lies in thoughtlessness—the tendency to overlook familiar patterns of hatred until they repeat themselves. Each generation inherits not only the memory of antisemitism but the responsibility to recognise its reality. Remembrance, then, is not just about the past but about paying careful attention and challenging antisemitism today.
12:58
In the first book of his seminal autobiographical quartet, “Growing up in the Gorbals”, the accomplished psychologist and economist Ralph Glasser reflected that, growing up, he tended to hide the fact that he was Jewish in view of the prejudice prevailing in the society of his day, which
“burdened every step of our lives”
and resulted in the need
“to bury it beneath some protective colouring, so that we might go our private ways like everybody else”.
Growing up in the 1970s among Scotland’s largest Jewish community as I did, I have reflected before on the impact of Dr Jacob Bronowski, in his landmark series “The Ascent of Man”, standing ankle deep in the detritus of Auschwitz—not somewhere that it was possible to routinely visit in those days—and looking at the prospect that his relatives were among the ashes at his feet. Two years later, in 1976, Sir Jeremy Isaacs’s landmark series on ITV, “The World at War”, was the first to use graphic footage of what had happened and brought the full consequence of the Holocaust to the attention of a world that had perhaps known but not fully addressed it.
I thought that I would try to find answers myself.
Forty-two years ago, I travelled along the corridor from West Germany to Berlin, thinking that in Berlin I would perhaps find some answer to what had happened. I stood outside Spandau prison, in which the only remaining architect of the Holocaust, Rudolf Hess, was still a prisoner. The buildings next door, which are all now demolished, held some of the execution chambers where Hitler hung with piano wire not just those who stood against him but Jews who were uncovered in Berlin in the later stages of the war.
Despite the beauty, still, of the Tiergarten, I am afraid that there was nothing about Berlin that offered any answers at all. It was a city still devastated, and the political quarter was still undeveloped. Talk then of reunification seemed far-fetched, but in fact reunification was not that far away.
I went to Vienna, a city about which Angus Robertson has written a remarkable book, but it was very reluctant to address its support for Hitler. The Imperial hotel, where Hitler addressed the masses, is curiously reluctant to admit to playing any part in celebrating the Anschluss at that time or to its complicity in the war that took place. I found no answers there.
I thought that perhaps if I travelled to Auschwitz, which I did 15 years ago, there would be something that would reveal what had happened. I visited Auschwitz again just last November—this time in beautiful sunshine, only to realise that evil itself takes place under the sun, not just on the dark, desolate days that are typically portrayed when one watches movies of the Holocaust—and there stood the most extraordinary apparatus of industrialised murder. More than a million people—not just Jews but homosexuals, Gypsies and goodness knows how many others—were brutally exterminated in that camp.
How extraordinary it was, on that beautiful day in November, when I was standing at the end of the railway track in Auschwitz, where the trains came, to imagine, as I have seen in the photographs, young children jumping off the train after that perishingly brutal journey, thinking that they had arrived at their destination, that this was it and that they were going to live a better life, only to be marched literally 40 yards either way to the two more recently built crematoria at the top of Auschwitz to be exterminated there and then.
There is no answer but that of the testimony that Kenny Gibson has just given in his very powerful speech—that antisemitism has been rooted in society not for decades, not for centuries, but really since Judaism was founded as a religion. It falls to us now, as the testimony about those who were exterminated in the Holocaust becomes not first-hand testimony or second-hand testimony but historical event, to confront antisemitism. It relies on us and those who follow us, the fantastic ambassadors that we have in Scotland for the Holocaust Educational Trust and all those who are determined to ensure that we confront and fight that legacy of antisemitism.
As I found in Poland when I attended the European Jewish Association conference in November, which was the reason why I then went to Auschwitz, it is not just here—it is across all Europe. Antisemitism is on the rise and it has to be confronted; otherwise, “never again” will not be never again—“never again” will be now, and that will be our responsibility. We have to stop it ever happening again.
13:03
I advise members that the Deputy Presiding Officer has permitted me to leave the chamber after the speech following mine, due to a conflicting and long-standing obligation that has arisen only because of the rescheduling of this debate. I very much regret that, as I certainly would have preferred to hear all contributions.
What I have to say initially is in no way to diminish the horrors of the Holocaust. Today, antisemitism is on the rise, and, in part, the conflict in Gaza gives some the fuel for an excuse for that. It is the elephant in the room, which I will address sensitively, I hope.
The atrocity of 7 October—the brutality when 1,200 Jewish people were murdered, more than 5,400 were injured and more than 200 were taken hostage—is without any defence. The international outrage that followed was absolutely right, but the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies in exacting revenge—ostensibly on Hamas, but in Gaza—are an outrage with every appearance of genocide. The death toll is more than 69,000, including 17,000 children, and at least 170,000 people have been injured. In the West Bank, the death toll is more than 1,000, including 200 children, and 6,000 people have been injured. Ninety per cent of Gaza’s population have been displaced, and the entire surviving population faces an acute lack of food, with the deliberate actions of the Netanyahu Government preventing access to food and medical aid. I add that those statistics are not from Hamas but from the Red Cross.
I make an emphatic distinction between Netanyahu and the majority of the Israeli population, who have demonstrated against his actions and who are also denied a truly free media. Netanyahu has blockaded not just their press and the aid convoys, but the international press in Gaza. No wonder those actions have been a fertile ground for stirring hatred of the Jewish community wherever it is. For that, there is no defence, but that connection has been fostered by Netanyahu. On 7 October last year, he said to the UN:
“Hamas carried out the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.”
I was born in 1944 and I became aware of the Holocaust from my parents. Later, I read the diary of Anne Frank when I was about 15—the same age that she was when she was eventually exposed and later executed. She hid for two years, from 1942 to 1944, which is the year in which I was born. She died in Belsen in 1945, one of more than 6 million who died in the Holocaust. The connection, given her age and mine, made her more real to me and her story more heartbreaking. Her account of her life shows her optimism on the brink of adulthood, sheltered in the attic, as well as the reality of occupation and the courage of those who sheltered her. For her, that day-to-day life was normal. Her diary is one true account among those of the millions of individuals who were brutally murdered and whose lives were lost. Not many European nations could escape having blood on their hands as the death camps industrialised that murder.
We must not allow the collective memory of the Holocaust to be diminished or tarnished by the action of the Israeli Government in Gaza. The Hamas atrocity does not permit atrocities in Gaza. Gaza atrocities do not permit antisemitism. Sadly, in this month of the bard, it all reminds me of the continuation of man’s inhumanity to man.
13:07
This is the fifth debate on Holocaust memorial day in the current session of Parliament. It has been an honour for me, in my time in Parliament, to participate in each of those debates, alongside colleagues from across the chamber. Holocaust remembrance in this Parliament has been a collective endeavour across the parties. I pay tribute to Kenneth Gibson for leading our debate today, and I pay tribute to Jackson Carlaw for his efforts over the years, along with myself. Indeed, I pay tribute to both members for their collaboration on the commemoration events in the Parliament last week and for their collaboration over many years.
At this point in the parliamentary session, it is important that we all rededicate ourselves to Holocaust remembrance and education and that we put on record today the importance of continuing that into the next Parliament. We can try to read the runes, but none of us knows what that Parliament’s make-up will be. It is important that, whether we are hoping to come back or not, we all rededicate ourselves to ensuring that this place continues to lead the nation in our remembrance and our calls for education.
One of the most encouraging things in the past five years, which have often been difficult years in terms of geopolitics, as members have referenced, has been the voices and the participation of young people in this Parliament and across Scotland in remembering the Holocaust, educating their peers and learning for themselves, often through encountering for themselves the places that Jackson Carlaw touched on and broadening their horizons and their understanding of the Holocaust and subsequent genocide.
We can reflect on the wonderful ambassadors of the Holocaust Educational Trust and of the Anne Frank Trust; on the vision schools Scotland programme, which does such great work in our schools; on the drama work done in schools by Beyond Srebrenica; and on the time for reflection leaders that we heard from this week. We have heard a rich and diverse range of young voices in Parliament—they have been passionate and eloquent, and they have led by example.
That really speaks to this year’s Holocaust memorial day theme of “Bridging Generations”, because it is the duty of all of us to ensure that we are bridging the gap that now exists between living survivors and subsequent generations. We now have a generation of young people who will encounter the Holocaust only through secondary sources and will not have the opportunity to meet survivors, many of whom, although they were children when they escaped the Holocaust, are now advanced in age. I pay tribute to the survivors who continue doing everything that they can to educate.
In my remaining time, I will touch on something else that is really crucial this year. Scotland’s senior rabbi, Rabbi Moshe Rubin, who will be known to many here, spoke at the East Renfrewshire Holocaust memorial day commemoration on Monday night and raised concerns that the number of schools in the United Kingdom participating in events to mark Holocaust memorial day is reported to have fallen by 60 per cent since the 7 October terrorist attacks on Israel. Surveys also show that many young adults—indeed, a third of young adults in the UK—are unable to name Auschwitz or any other concentration camp or ghetto where the crimes of the Holocaust were committed. When asked if they had encountered Holocaust denial or distortion on social media, 23 per cent of young people surveyed said that they had and 20 per cent of survey respondents more widely in the UK believed that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed, while others did not know that 6 million Jewish people had been killed in the Holocaust. Those figures should concern every one of us, and it should be our duty to renew the call for education and remembrance among young people.
As I said, we have wonderful examples of that happening in Scotland. I pay tribute to the Government, which continues to invest in that work, and I believe that there is a collective will across this Parliament to do that. However, there are really clear examples of what can happen when we do not educate, do not allow a space for debate and discussion or do not encourage young people to ensure they are accessing reputable and true sources.
As we end this session of Parliament, my call to those of us who are fortunate enough to be here in the next session is for a rededication and for an effort to ensure that all young people, and all people more generally, can have high-quality Holocaust education and remembrance.
13:12
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this members’ debate on Holocaust memorial day, and I thank Kenny Gibson for lodging his motion.
On 27 January, we mark the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The date stands as a symbol both of unimaginable horror and of survival against all odds. We remember the 6 million Jewish men, women and children murdered by the Nazi regime and its collaborators and remember, too, the Roma and Sinti people, the disabled people, the LGBTQIA+ people, the political dissidents and the many others who were persecuted, brutalised and killed because they were deemed unwanted, dangerous or less than human.
Holocaust memorial day is not only about remembrance; it is about responsibility, and the 2026 theme of “Bridging Generations” speaks powerfully to that duty. As survivors age and fewer remain to tell their stories in person, the responsibility to remember does not fade but deepens. Their memory must live on through children, grandchildren, communities and institutions, and through our actions as lawmakers.
I have spoken here before about the importance of listening to testimony, to survivors and refugees and to those whose lives have been marked by violence and displacement. Testimony is not passive: when we truly listen, we are changed and are called to act. To bridge generations means to ensure that remembrance does not become a ritual without meaning but is a living commitment to justice, peace and dignity.
We cannot honestly remember the Holocaust without acknowledging what followed. The promise of “never again” was made in the ashes of Europe, yet, in the 81 years since the end of the second world war, genocide and mass atrocities have scarred our world again and again—in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Bosnia, against the Yazidi people, and today, for all of us to see, in Palestine. To say this is not to diminish the Holocaust; it is to honour its lessons. The dehumanisation that enabled the Holocaust did not vanish in 1945. It reappears whenever whole peoples are reduced to threats, statistics or collateral damage. When civilians are starved, burned, bombed, displaced and denied basic humanity, we must have the courage to name what is happening and to insist on accountability, protection of human life and an end to violence.
Holocaust memorial day calls us to a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism, and that commitment is absolute. Antisemitism is real, it is rising and it must be confronted wherever it appears. However, that commitment sits alongside—not in opposition to—our responsibility to challenge all forms of racism, Islamophobia, anti-Roma prejudice, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and all dehumanisation and bigotry. Justice is not selective, and human rights are not conditional.
As Greens, and as parliamentarians committed to peacemaking, we believe that security comes not from domination or erasure, but from justice, equality and respect for international law. Remembering the Holocaust demands that we reject the idea that some lives matter less than others, whether that is because of religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality or disability.
Bridging generations also means speaking honestly to young people. They see the world as it is—fractured, violent and unequal—but they also bring clarity and moral courage. They ask why lessons that we claim to have learned are still being ignored. We owe them more than platitudes—we owe them action.
Holocaust memorial day is a moment of solemn remembrance, but it is also a call to conscience. To remember is to resist; to remember is to stand against hatred in all its forms; and to remember is to act for peace, justice and a future in which “never again” is not a slogan but a reality for all.
I will close with words from Holocaust survivor Eliezer Wiesel in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
13:17
I thank Kenny Gibson for bringing this important debate to the chamber. There have been many great speeches, and I am not sure that my contribution will be as good as anybody else’s, but I shall try.
I am sorry—I will have to sit for a minute.
Would Beatrice Wishart take an intervention?
Yes.
I am grateful to Beatrice Wishart for taking my intervention and I am sure that her speech will be as good as the others in the debate.
This is obviously a difficult subject to discuss, but does Beatrice Wishart agree that young people are really important in relation to the Holocaust commemoration debate? I am sure that she will have seen—in Shetland and her community—young people standing up to speak and contributing to ensuring that we all continue with Holocaust remembrance.
I thank Paul O’Kane for his intervention and for giving me a minute to breathe. I also thank the two young Holocaust Educational Trust ambassadors for their powerful contributions in the chamber earlier this week at time for reflection.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust memorial day is bridging generations. As the number of living camp survivors dwindles, we seek to continue to pass on their testimony—the lived experience of the horrors of the Holocaust—to young people, so that future generations learn, in the hope that history does not repeat itself.
It is our duty to ensure that the brutal and barbaric murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during the second world war is not forgotten. There is no place for antisemitism, but—as other members have said—it is on the rise and it must be called out.
We hear the voices of those from the Jewish community in the UK today, who fear for their own, and their children’s, safety. We must root out and challenge Holocaust denial and revisionism wherever we find it. Today, we rightly focus on the victims of the Holocaust, and we also remember others who perished at the hands of the Nazi regime.
Like Christine Grahame, I learned about the Holocaust when I was quite young. Both my parents signed up to serve King and country in the second world war: my father was an Army film cameraman out in Burma, and my mother was in the Women’s Royal Naval Service—the Wrens—and was stationed in London for part of the war, when bombs were being dropped on the city.
In those days, news came via the radio, newspapers or newsreels in the cinema. Near the end of the war, news seeped out about death camps and gas chambers in Europe. I remember my mother recalling her shock at seeing in the newsreels the haunting images, with which we are all now familiar, of the liberation of camps with names that have gone down in history: Dachau, Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz-Birkenau. She could not comprehend that people could inflict such horror, brutality and degradation on other human beings. That was more than 80 years ago, but we would be wrong to think that genocide is consigned to the history books—sadly, we have seen it in too many other places in the intervening years. Like Christine Grahame, I read Anne Frank’s diary when I was in my teens.
Shetland has its own unique place in the history books. During the second world war, a fleet of small fishing boats crossed the North Sea between Norway and Shetland under cover of winter darkness. It became known as “taking the Shetland bus”, bringing to safety those who were fleeing persecution and whose lives were at risk in Nazi-occupied Norway. The fishing boats returned to Norway with supplies for the clandestine operations of the brave Norwegian resistance. Around 350 refugees came to the UK via the Shetland bus route, including some Jewish people, and each person was a life saved.
When we pass the important history of the Holocaust down the generations, we should instil the timeless democratic ideals of pluralism, difference and diversity. It is crucial that we hold on to openness, human rights and co-operation in global affairs and in our domestic politics. Words matter, as does action. We look around the world today and we see prejudice and persecution, and people being targeted, such as those at Australia’s Bondi beach last month. Nowhere is immune.
In bridging generations, we must stamp out prejudice in all its forms.
13:22
I thank Kenneth Gibson for bringing the debate to the chamber, and I pay tribute to the wonderful contributions from members across the chamber, in particular the exceptionally moving contribution from Beatrice Wishart.
These debates matter, because they give us the space not just to reflect on history and on the past, and to think of all those who were lost, but to consider what that history asks of us here, now, today. Marked on 27 January, Holocaust memorial day falls on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz—a place that has come to symbolise the sheer scale of the brutality of the Holocaust. Six million Jewish men, women and children were murdered by the Nazi regime and its collaborators, but alongside them, there were people, not necessarily Jewish but with other characteristics, who were murdered, too: Roma people, disabled people, deaf people, LGBT people, political opponents and others who were deemed unworthy of life. That was not an accident of history—it was a result of ideology, dehumanisation and systems being turned against people.
I recently attended the Holocaust memorial day event in the Scottish Parliament, and I want to reflect on that experience because it has stuck with me, as these events often do. We heard directly from a Holocaust survivor. She spoke about her childhood during the war: about the fear that was constant, about hiding and about the calculations that she and her family had to make again and again simply to stay alive. Those were not abstract decisions—they were human ones, made under unimaginable pressure, where a single mistake could cost the family everything.
She spoke about living in France—in occupied territory—and explained that her family was hiding from not just Nazi SS soldiers but the Vichy police—ordinary police officers, wearing uniforms, representing the institutions that people were meant to trust. She did not draw parallels to the present day, and I am not claiming to do that on her behalf, but it was a reminder to me of something deeply important—that threats do not always look like what we might expect. Sometimes, they look official; sometimes, they look legitimate; and, sometimes, they present as order.
She went on to describe how Jewish people were stripped of their humanity, gradually, through language, labelling and being spoken about as lesser, a problem and something to be managed. As I sat listening, it was impossible not to reflect on the power of language and how easily harm can be justified once people are never seen as fully human.
The theme for Holocaust memorial day this year is bridging generations, and it was great to see at that event a pupil, Finlay Cleland, from Banff academy in my constituency, reciting a poem that he had written after visiting Bosnia, where another horrific genocide was committed. It gives me hope to see young people taking note. Seeing our efforts to pass down that history being picked up and guarded is exactly what we must aim for because, without that, remembrance risks becoming something that we mark rather than something that actually changes us.
It is about not just remembering the dead but protecting the living. I hope that we listen, learn and carry the lessons forward, not just in words, but in deeds and in the choices that we make to protect our human rights and values and have humanity every day.
Stephen Kerr is the final speaker in the open debate.
13:26
Karen Adam is right. There have been some excellent speeches—in fact, all the speeches in the debate have been excellent. I thank Kenny Gibson, Jackson Carlaw and Paul O’Kane for the work that they have done in keeping the spirit of remembrance and connection with Holocaust memorial day in the Parliament.
I also pay tribute to Beatrice Wishart, who gave a very moving speech. She brought to my memory the famous broadcast of Richard Dimbleby reporting from Belsen. Members will be aware that, when he filed his report, the management at the BBC were reluctant to broadcast it. It was only because Richard Dimbleby threatened to resign if it was not broadcast that it was broadcast at all. I am afraid that that, too, is an apocryphal story, about the nature of man’s inhumanity to man and perhaps our determination at times to hide away from brutal realities.
Holocaust memorial day was created not simply to remember the past but to guard the future. The 2026 theme, “Bridging Generations”, as has been said by many members, could not be more necessary than it is now. We are living through a period in which the facts of the Holocaust are not just fading with time and the passing of generations but are being openly challenged, distorted, mocked and weaponised. That should alarm every one of us.
After the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s, we said collectively, as a human race, that what happened to Europe’s Jews would never happen again. Maggie Chapman has, rightly, identified a whole list of occasions since 1945 when that lesson has not been remembered and that vow has not been kept. We said that the systematic attempt to eradicate an entire people—men, women and children—would stand for ever as a warning to humanity. However, today, antisemitism is re-emerging with a confidence that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago—not whispered or hidden but shouted, shared online, excused as politics and, too often, indulged by institutions that should be holding the line, including schools and public bodies that quietly step back from Holocaust education or commemoration because it is seen as too difficult or too controversial.
Since 7 October, something deeply troubling has happened. The events in the middle east have been used as a licence by some to reopen the sewer of anti-Jewish hatred—hatred that is racial in nature, whatever language it dresses itself up in; that holds Jewish people collectively responsible; that denies their right to safety; and that treats their fear as something to be dismissed.
The consequences are not theoretical. Jewish people in this country—people who have lived here for generations—now speak openly about feeling unsafe, about hiding the symbols of their faith and about considering whether this country is still a place where their children can grow up without fear. That should shame us. We saw last year in Manchester how quickly hatred turns into violence; as has been referenced, we have seen similar events around the world, including on Bondi beach. These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of something darker—a culture in which historical truth has been weakened and moral boundaries are blurred.
Therefore, Holocaust education has never been more important, not as a ritual or as a box to tick, but as a defence against lies. The Holocaust is now being challenged in ways that are new, and on a scale and with a confidence that is incredible. Young people are being exposed to denial, trivialisation and outright conspiracy online. The language of genocide is being distorted and the facts are being blurred. The intent is clear—to erode and distort memory and, with that, any sense of collective responsibility.
I do not accept that the pathway that we are on is an inevitability. Freedom of expression matters, but it must never become a cover for propaganda or fake history. There is a difference between debate and denial, between criticism and dehumanisation. A society that forgets that difference does not stay free for long.
Today, we remember the victims and we honour the survivors, but above all we recommit ourselves to the future, to education, to vigilance and to the courage to confront hatred wherever it appears, because memory alone is not enough. What we do with it now will decide whether future generations inherit truth or something far more dangerous.
Thank you, Mr Kerr. I now invite Siobhian Brown to respond to the debate. Minister, you have around seven minutes.
13:32
First, I thank Kenny Gibson for lodging the motion for today’s debate, which provides us with an invaluable opportunity to commemorate Holocaust memorial day. Whenever we have this debate, I always find it deeply moving to hear all the heartfelt reflections that members offer, but I find it equally uplifting that, during such a vital period of remembrance, we can all stand shoulder to shoulder.
There were so many excellent speeches; every single one was excellent, but I am just going to highlight a few. Kenny Gibson gave a very powerful speech. Kenny, I sometimes think that you are a walking encyclopaedia—
Minister, could you please speak into the microphone?
I am sorry. I sometimes think that Kenny Gibson is a walking encyclopaedia. He gave a very in-depth historical overview, outlining how deep-rooted Jewish hatred can be and how it must be challenged.
Jackson Carlaw set out his very personal journey, over many years, of trying to understand why this happened, only to find that there is no answer. He made it clear that antisemitism is on the rise and that we all have a responsibility to challenge it and to confront it at every opportunity, and the same view was echoed by Maggie Chapman and Beatrice Wishart.
Paul O’Kane and Stephen Kerr raised the importance of education. As Mr O’Kane said, our Parliament must move forward in leading the nation in remembrance and also education. We need to bridge the gap and ensure that living testimony continues through education.
I thank Beatrice Wishart so much for her very emotive contribution. Genocide is not consigned to the history books, and it is important that we bridge the generations.
Today, we honour the 6 million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered as well as the millions more who were targeted, persecuted and killed by the Nazis. We also pay our respects to the countless number of innocent people whose lives were callously cut short in the genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
Holocaust memorial day marks the liberation of Auschwitz, a place of unspeakable cruelty and an inescapable reminder of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime.
It is vital to understand that that crime against humanity was not sudden in nature, nor was it inevitable. It was instead the result of creeping yet purposeful dehumanisation of the Jewish people, whose very basic human rights were eroded in a climate of the most extreme hatred.
When I had the privilege of visiting Srebrenica last year with fellow member Paul O’Kane as part of a delegation to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Bosnian genocide, I was overwhelmed by the care that was given to building a lasting legacy to the 8,000 Muslim men and boys who were massacred by Bosnian Serb soldiers. That was the largest incident of mass murder in Europe since the second world war, but much like the Holocaust, its roots can be tracked back to intensifying levels of prejudice, which sowed the seeds of the genocidal acts that would later follow.
Such deplorable events have left lasting scars on our world, and they are a stark warning of the terrible consequences if we stand idle in the face of bigotry and discrimination. Committing to confronting and learning from the horrors of the past must never serve only as words but must be a moral obligation and a call to action that unites each and every one of us. The recent horrific attacks that occurred in Manchester and at Bondi beach, in my home city of Sydney, show us that there must be a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism. That is why the Scottish Government is taking decisive measures to ensure that all our diverse communities are robustly protected against those who seek to cause them harm.
Our hate crime strategy aims not only to ensure that victims of prejudicial criminality are cared for and supported but to strategically address the roots of such behaviour by engaging constructively with partners in the justice system. Schools play a vital role in supporting children and young people to challenge prejudices such as antisemitism, and they help our young people to value a diverse and respectful Scotland. By educating our young people about all cultures, faiths and belief systems, we support them to become responsible and truly global citizens, while helping to counteract prejudice and exclusion at the earliest opportunity.
We see Holocaust education as a vital component of that work, which is why we continue to be committed to providing opportunities for Scotland’s children and young people to learn about the Holocaust and contemporary antisemitism in our curriculum. That includes providing grant funding of up to £200,000 in this financial year to the Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz programme, which gives students and teachers an opportunity to visit Auschwitz. We also give £40,500 of funding to Vision Schools Scotland, which encourages effective school-based Holocaust education by supporting teachers in their teaching of the Holocaust and in addressing antisemitism.
Before I close, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the Scottish ceremony that was kindly hosted at the Parliament last Thursday night by our friends at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which Karen Adam referred to in her contribution. It was an honour to share the platform with two remarkable individuals: Joan Salter, a survivor of the Holocaust, and Var Ashe Houston, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide. They shared with us very personal and, at times, emotional and heartbreaking yet inspiring stories of survival in the face of some of the worst adversities that one could possibly imagine. Also in attendance and providing a range of poignant reflections, as Jackson Carlaw referred to in his contribution, were a number of young people, including ambassadors from the Anne Frank Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust. Their compassionate and considered contributions brought to light why the message of this year’s theme—“Bridging Generations”—is so vital in these precarious times and why, by carrying forward the voices of the past, we can work collectively towards a better future.
We are now, more than ever, duty bound to preserve the memories of Holocaust survivors. This responsibility takes an even greater resonance as we seek to guard against growing distortion and those whose motivation is to undermine the truth and the horrors that human beings can inflict on one another. By remaining unified in our resolve to resist exclusionary and dehumanising narratives and instead champion the inclusive values that underpin our society, we together can have a Scotland where each of us may flourish, in safety and in peace.
Thank you, minister. That concludes the debate.
13:39
Meeting suspended.
14:15
On resuming—
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