Official Report 1039KB pdf
The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S6M-16002, in the name of Jackson Carlaw, on Holocaust memorial day 2025: “For a better future”. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament recognises that 27 January 2025 will mark Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD); understands that the Holocaust was the brutal, barbaric and inhumane murder of six million Jewish men, women and children from 1941 to 1945 in concentration and death camps, mass shootings and ghettos; acknowledges that HMD takes places on 27 January each year as the date represents the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was the largest concentration camp; notes that the official theme for HMD 2025 is “For a better future”; recognises that there are many actions that people can take to make a contribution towards achieving a better future for all, such as confronting prejudice, reinforcing the importance of learning about both the Holocaust and the more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, and challenging Holocaust denial, distortion and trivialisation whenever such narratives arise; acknowledges that 2025 marks both 80 years since Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated and the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia; accepts that the Holocaust is an incredibly dark chapter in human history, and considers that HMD is a crucially important event in the annual calendar, which aims to highlight why its lessons can never be forgotten and why a zero tolerance approach must always be taken against antisemitism and all forms of prejudice.
17:25
Eighty years ago, we were a world at war, and the consequence of that war was tens of millions of people dead around the world and the extermination of one third of the world’s Jewish population by Nazi Germany.
It was not the first holocaust of which I was aware. Despite growing up in a community where so much of the Jewish population in Scotland lived, they did not talk about it—it was just not mentioned. Members of families living next door to me had no idea that their parents had been involved in the Holocaust or that they had lost relatives in it.
In fact, the first holocaust of which I was aware was the holocaust in Cambodia: the genocide that took place there between 1975 and 1979. It was there in front of me on the television when I was growing up as a teenager. Twenty-five per cent of the population of that country were murdered by Pol Pot in the killing fields, often not with bullets but with a pickaxe through the head. Sixty per cent of those who died were executed. Many of the children who were not executed were abducted and indoctrinated and were then forced to commit the most appalling atrocities themselves.
That was the genocide with which I was most familiar. It was Dr Jacob Bronowski who first hinted, in his television series, “The Ascent of Man”, when he was allowed to visit Auschwitz concentration camp, which was then behind the iron curtain. He walked, overcome with emotion, fully suited, into puddles, picking up, as he thought, the ashes of those who died there, including most of his family. He called it “the tragedy of mankind”.
Since this Parliament first met, 1.2 million Scots have been born. The first Holocaust memorial day was in 2001. Why is it so important that we commemorate these events? It is because, for those young people, it is the testament and the determination of our generation to ensure that those events are not forgotten that is so important to them. I applaud the former Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy, and our former Presiding Officer, Ken Macintosh, who were instrumental in ensuring that there were visits to Auschwitz concentration camp for young people.
I commend the vision schools Scotland programme, promoted by Dr Paula Cowan and the University of the West of Scotland, which does so much for continuous Holocaust education and is now in every local authority across Scotland. I applaud the Scottish Government for the funding that it has made available to ensure that those educational programmes can continue. I am so pleased that nearly all our First Ministers, including John Swinney, the current First Minister, have stood, as I did, in Auschwitz and have been overwhelmed with the enormity and the emotions that will never leave any of us who have visited that place.
Antisemitism continues, which is why it is so important that such education continues. Ten years ago, there was the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Danny Finkelstein, in his memoir, “Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad”, said that, for the first time—this was prescient, because it was published in the summer of the year before last—he worried and feared that events similar to the Holocaust could be unfolding again. In the past few days, he again brought to our attention his grandmother, who, 80 years ago, died as she was being liberated from Bergen-Belsen with her two daughters—one of whom was his mother—sitting by her side on the train. She had given everything to keep them safe and alive in Bergen-Belsen, and she literally expired from that effort as the train departed the camp.
In a local context, I am delighted that St Ninian’s high school in my Eastwood constituency is in the top three places in the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s secondary schools competition. Students were tasked with creating a memorial to the genocide in Bosnia. They created a wreath made of flowers from Srebrenica to commemorate the significant 30th anniversary of the genocide that took place there. Tonight, pupils from Mearns Castle high school are at an event in my constituency, which, unfortunately, I cannot attend because I am introducing this debate. Lexie, Sam and Anna, who are Anne Frank ambassadors, will tonight reflect on their experiences, and tomorrow they will be here when they participate in the Parliament’s Holocaust memorial event.
On various occasions in the past year, I have made reference to my late constituent Henry Wuga, who was the last of the Kindertransport children to survive. Today’s young people need to know about the Holocaust because it was young people like them who stood up and did what they could against Hitler and the Nazis. I give the example of the white rose campaign group at the University of Munich, among whom were the teenage brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, who distributed literature to try to call a halt to what was happening. They were taken by the Nazis and beheaded, facing upwards, simply for campaigning against that genocide.
As those who have been there will know, the camp at Auschwitz was designed and run by Rudolf Höss, who had previously run Dachau concentration camp—the first camp that I visited. It was from there that he took the “Arbeit macht frei” slogan, because he felt that an easier way to lure people to their deaths was to make them think that they were doing something useful. As I am sure the First Minister did, anyone who has visited Auschwitz I—not the extermination camp, but Auschwitz I—and who has stood between blocks 10 and 11 will recognise that the people of all ages who were brought there, including children, were put up against a wall, had a bullet fired through them and were murdered for no reason other than that they were Jewish.
This week, His Majesty the King and other world leaders all stood in front of Auschwitz II’s entrance gateway. We have probably all seen those images. What struck me—and, I imagine, many others—was just how few of the survivors remain and how frail they now are. However, we could still see how disturbed they were, not just by the memory of having been there but by their fears for the future. That is why we have such a duty placed on us.
In this debate, I have not rehearsed many of the stories that I have told over all the years in which I have participated in similar debates since I was first elected. I know that other members will contribute their memories. My memories of that camp will never leave me, so I echo the words of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust:
“we must become the generations who carry forward the legacy of the witnesses, remember those who were murdered and challenge those who would distort or deny the past, or who discriminate and persecute today. We can all mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 and commit to making a better future for us all.”
One of the survivors said something that will strike home for all of us. They did not want their
“experience of man’s inhumanity to be the experience of any yet to come of man’s humanity.”
That is why it is so important that we remember, that we stand firmly and that the young people of this country who are so engaged continue to be so and stand with us to ensure that the Holocaust never happens again.
17:34
I congratulate Jackson Carlaw on securing this timely debate, which recognises that this year marks the 80th anniversary of Soviet troops liberating Auschwitz.
“It happened, therefore it can happen again.”
Those sobering words of Holocaust survivor Primo Levi remind us of the importance of memory and vigilance to this year’s Holocaust memorial day theme, which is “For a better future”.
The Holocaust, or Shoah, was one of the most devastating and morally catastrophic events in human history, which claimed the lives of 6 million Jewish people, who were systematically murdered. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1.1 million people died, primarily in gas chambers. More than 90 per cent of them were Jews. Across occupied Europe, the Nazis also killed 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, Polish intellectuals, resistance fighters, Roma people, disabled people, political dissidents, homosexuals and other targeted groups. To Stalin is attributed the saying:
“One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.”
However, the figures that I have mentioned are not mere abstractions. They remind us of the individual lives that were brutally destroyed in terrifying circumstances and the constant need to confront hatred and the abuse of power if we are to have a better future.
The seeds of the Holocaust were sown by violence combined with the manipulation of language and legalities. The 1935 Nuremberg laws institutionalised the exclusion of Jewish people from German society, beginning with the dehumanisation of an entire population. By 1939, the Nazis had stripped Jewish people of all their rights, setting the stage for genocide. The acts of barbarity committed in Nazi extermination camps, concentration camps and ghettos, the mass shootings, and the starvation imposed across occupied eastern Europe remain incomprehensible. Among the most grotesque were the pseudoscientific experiments that were conducted, under the guise of medical research, by Dr Josef Mengele. His victims, who were often child twins, suffered brutal extremes of hypothermia, lethal diseases and noxious chemicals, all while anaesthesia was withheld, thereby subjecting them to unimaginable agony. Those horrors led to the Nuremberg code—a milestone in medical ethics that still guides research today.
Holocaust survivors’ testimonies remind us of our duty to prevent any recurrence. One such voice was that of Judith Rosenberg, who was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Her first night was filled with terror as she witnessed the brutality that claimed countless lives. Judith faced constant violence, starvation and illness. Despite overwhelming odds, she survived and worked in a factory, repairing watches. That earned her extra rations, which she selflessly shared with her mother and sister. When she was liberated in 1945, Judith married Lieutenant Harold Rosenberg and forged a new life in Glasgow. When she passed away three years ago, at the age of 98, Judith left a £500,000 bequest to the University of Strathclyde to advance quantum technology research.
Despite Scotland’s reputation for tolerance, antisemitism is a troubling reality here. In the final three months of 2023, 46 antisemitic hate incidents were recorded in Scotland—the same number as in the whole of 2021. Figures for last year are not yet available, but I anticipate that they will have risen further. Social media platforms such as X and Facebook have become cesspits of Holocaust denial and far-right extremism. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the level of Holocaust denial content rose by 30 per cent between 2021 and 2023. Deniers aim to sow division and undermine truth. On digital platforms, coded language and memes are used. Hate groups target Jewish students at universities. Conspiracy theories are spread anonymously online.
However, even with such challenges, Scotland continues in its pursuit for a better future. The Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz programme takes Scottish students to Auschwitz-Birkenau to reflect on the relevance of the Holocaust today and share their learning with others. In my constituency, individuals such as David Cockerill of Largs academy now champion the importance of Holocaust education. David was chosen as an ambassador for the trust, and he will share his reflections on his visit to Auschwitz at a commemorative service this weekend.
The arts play a vital role in preserving Holocaust memories. Plays, films and literature are pivotal in keeping the conversation alive. Meanwhile, organisations such as the Anne Frank Trust instil empathy and inclusion in young people. However, education and commemoration alone cannot secure a better future. Combating antisemitism in the 21st century must involve social media companies removing harmful content. Schools should encourage critical thinking and empathy. Organisations and leaders can amplify the voices of those who are impacted by antisemitism.
As we reflect on the Holocaust, we must heed its lessons. As Primo Levi reminds us, “it can happen again”, but it is within our power to ensure that it does not. Let us honour the memory of the victims and survivors—for their sakes and for the many generations to come.
17:40
I am happy to speak in support of this important motion, and I congratulate my colleague Jackson Carlaw on bringing the debate to the chamber.
As the motion rightly says, 2025 marks 80 years since Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated, as well as the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia. This year’s Holocaust memorial day theme, “For a better future”, is highly appropriate, and never more have we needed it.
As the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust points out, antisemitism has increased significantly in the United Kingdom and globally. That is especially the case following the 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel, when about 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 hostages were seized, with the war in Gaza taking place thereafter. I note that many of the hostages have still not been released.
Extremists on all sides continue to exploit the situation in order to stir up anti-Muslim and antisemitic hatred in the UK. As a result, many communities across the UK are feeling vulnerable, with hostility and suspicion of others continuing to grow. We should all be concerned about that.
We must also never forget the well-documented genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
I was just reflecting on the genocides that the member mentions. Given the situation in Ukraine, does he agree that it is regrettable that, as yet, the Holodomor that was inflicted on the Ukrainian people by Stalin has not been recognised as a genocide?
I concur. That is something that needs to be righted, for that is a huge wrong.
Individuals are oppressed by the horrific crimes that we have heard about, and, as we mark Holocaust memorial day, it is also essential to mention Gypsy, Roma and Traveller history.
Every year in June, as part of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller history month, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust remembers and commemorates the richness that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities bring to our everyday lives now and in the past. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust also reminds us that, during the truly horrendous crimes of the 1940s, Jews were not the only people who were tackled by the Nazis and removed from their homelands and communities. For more than a decade, from about 1935, Europe’s Roma people, historically often labelled as Gypsies, were targeted by the Nazis, who wanted total annihilation of those individuals.
In 2023, I was delighted to host in the Parliament a group of young Gypsy Travellers who came from my region to talk about their experiences. They were happy to discuss their situations and said that, even today, they felt persecuted. They also wanted to know about the horrors of the Holocaust and how it affected generations of Travellers in the 1930s and 1940s.
It is all too easy for society to put labels on particular groups, whereas, in reality, people are all individuals with the right to learn, the right to be heard and the right to survive.
As I have said many times in the past, we should all be committed to ensuring equality of opportunity for every one of us. We deserve that in our communities. We want individuals to have the opportunity to participate, and we should not allow marginalised groups to be oppressed.
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and I sincerely hope that Holocaust memorial day 2025 can be an opportunity for people to come together and learn from and about the past, and to take actions to make a better future. We must never forget these heinous crimes against humanity, and we must do all that we can to remember, remember, remember.
17:44
I thank Jackson Carlaw for securing this annual debate, and for the partnership working that he has undertaken with me in helping to organise Holocaust memorial day commemorations in the Parliament this week. I urge members to attend the commemoration event on Thursday evening.
I know that it is important to many people across Scotland that we mark Holocaust memorial day, but, in particular, I know how important it is to the Jewish community, the majority of whom live in East Renfrewshire—as I do and as Jackson Carlaw does. It really is an honour to represent them, along with Jackson Carlaw.
As we have heard, this year, we mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was the largest of the Nazi death camps, where murder was carried out on an industrial scale simply because people were different. Millions of Jewish people, Roma and Sinti people, LGBT people, disabled people and others were murdered. As we have also heard this evening, when you stand in the watchtower at Birkenau, it is hard not to be absolutely horrified by the sheer scale of a place that was designed by human beings for the systematic murder of other human beings.
Over many years, I have had the great honour of meeting people who are survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau and survivors of the Holocaust. As Jackson Carlaw alluded to, many of them came to Scotland after the horrors of the war ended and lived their lives just down the road from where I am sitting this evening. They went about their lives and made a huge contribution to post-war Britain. Many of them gave themselves in public service and helped to build up our communities. For a long time, many of them did not speak of their experiences in the Holocaust, but, later in life, many of them chose to do that. They chose to tell their story, as they have told me, so that future generations would know about the horrors and the inhumanity but also about the amazing stories of the resilience, the resistance and the righteousness of others.
I pay tribute to the many organisations that support and have supported survivors to keep those stories alive and to ensure that education continues. Those organisations include the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the Holocaust Educational Trust, Gathering the Voices, vision schools Scotland, the Anne Frank Trust and many others; I know that many colleagues will speak of their work this evening.
Tonight, we also remember the subsequent genocides that have occurred in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur and all those who give testimony and who support the commemoration of those genocides. Tonight, we reflect on the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia, and I want to pay particular tribute to Beyond Srebrenica, the organisation that does so much work to educate people about what happened in Bosnia, what happened in Srebrenica and how we learn from that and move forward.
As we have heard, and as I am sure that we will hear in further contributions from members this evening, all this work is vital, particularly as survivors of the Holocaust pass away and it falls to all of us to help to tell those stories. Antisemitism, Holocaust denial and the distortion of fact are on the rise. That has been brought into sharp focus recently by many research studies that show that too many young people in our country cannot name Auschwitz or any other death camp and do not have a grasp of what happened in the Holocaust.
The theme for this year’s Holocaust memorial day is “take action for a better future”. For me and for many others, that must be a future in which the horrors of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides are taught and are known by all, so that the words “never again” have a chance of having meaning. I agree with Jackson Carlaw about paying tribute to the work that is done across Parliaments and Governments to ensure that that happens.
The future must be guided by us but it must be in the hands of young people, so, in closing my speech, I will give space to words that I heard at the Glasgow reform synagogue on Saturday from a young man called Ben Bland, who I think summed up the challenge of the present age but also the hope for a better future. He said:
“The future nowadays seems bleak, the news and social media are playing an important part in this, creating division and sowing the seeds of hatred, directed at those least deserving of it whilst lauding praise to those who deserve it even less. So, here today, I want to make the effort to turn away from it, looking inward for my vision, my hope for the future. In it, I see barriers of prejudice built between themselves and taken down, with olive branches extended. Walls of prejudice like homophobia, racism, sectarianism, xenophobia should be cast aside. I see people in the future being more kind and understanding to each other, understanding of themselves and what they can do to help those around them. I want the people around me to have a better understanding of what it means to be open-minded. I hope that people can display more empathy and sympathy for each other. I hope that people can begin to understand that, with a little bit more consideration of others, we can start to make our collective experience of life a little bit easier and more pleasant.”
17:49
I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak this evening, so I thank Jackson Carlaw for securing the debate.
A memorial is an act of remembrance, and today we remember in two senses. We remember who it was who bore this unutterable pain—each individual and precious human being—those who are now lost to the world and those who remain with us. We remember them with love, with sorrow and with anger, reiterating the humanity that their oppressors tried so hard to deny.
We also remember how it happened. For us as politicians and parliamentarians, that is perhaps the harder memory. For the Holocaust was not an act of insurgency or a violation of domestic law and order. It came about not in spite of political processes, such as elections, legislation and policy implementation, but through and because of them.
There were some bystanders who knew exactly what was going on. There were others who knew nothing. In between, across Europe and beyond, was a wide spectrum of simultaneous knowledge and ignorance, of eyes that were closed, and faces that were turned away. There was reassurance that rhetoric was just that, and only that, that genocidal intent was the expression of legitimate concern, that there was no need to open doors or hearts, and that reality was still represented by the diplomacy of gentlemen, while the bodies of children lay uncovered.
We have learned the story of this deep, deep horror, but have we learned to recognise its narrative when it comes again, with different clothes, different names and different labels? When the richest man in the world salutes the most powerful man in the world with a gesture that specifically recalls that older story, do we shrug and move on? When the most powerful man uses the language of cleaning when talking about the dispossession of already dispossessed people who are already bereft of their children, do we pretend not to have heard?
Hannah Arendt wrote in the context of the Holocaust about the banality of evil. Evil can be banal, can be ridiculous, can come with buffoonery and bluster, without subtlety or nuance, but when it announces itself, we would do well to listen.
We can also listen to the voices of those with experience and for whom that experience illuminates the realities of today. Suzanne Berliner Weiss writes:
“I am a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust, and understand the system of hate first hand. Hitler’s war against the Jews aimed to eradicate our history and the Jewish people. Nazism Is hatred of the other—it is racism.”
She continues:
“Judaism, the religion and its traditions, does not stand for racism.
Conflating Zionism and Judaism is an unforgivable crime against the Jewish people, a crime against the Palestinians, and a crime to humanity.
I was saved from Hitler by world solidarity. I was among the thousands of Jewish children in France who were saved by the solidarity of the Jewish resistance, communities of Christians in Southern France, and the peoples of the world united against Nazism.
To be against Israel’s policies is not anti-Jewish. It is not anti-Semitic. We claim the Palestinians as our sisters and brothers. We are all humanity. We say: ‘Not in our name!’”
For the victims of the Holocaust, the world closed its eyes, its hearts and its doors until it was too late. Today we remember and honour them with respect, with love and with bitter regret. Let us not close our eyes, our hearts and our doors in the face of the genocide and oppression that is happening today in Palestine. Let us not make the same mistakes again.
17:54
As others have, and as is customary, I congratulate Jackson Carlaw on and thank him for securing the debate. More than that, I thank him for the dignified, passionate and powerful way in which he articulated the sentiments that I think we all share. He set the scene well for this now annual debate.
The debate provides yet another invaluable opportunity to renew our Holocaust remembrance, and although the debate itself is never likely to be one of great controversy, the context in which it is taking place—with antisemitism, racism and extremism on the rise here, in Europe and around the globe—serves as a timely reminder of the importance of redoubling our commitment to bearing witness to the horrors of the Holocaust. As others have said, on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—the most notorious of the Nazi death camps, which institutionalised the murder of Jews and other minorities during a murderous persecution that claimed the lives of more than 9 million people—bearing witness and remembering are the very least that we can do.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust memorial day is “For a better future”, but such a future is possible only if we confront head on the depth of inhumanity that allowed the Holocaust to occur, and acknowledge with honesty and clear sightedness that the Holocaust was allowed to happen, as others have observed, only because thousands, if not millions, of ordinary people chose to look the other way in the face of persecution and discrimination. A failure to confront, acknowledge and accept those truths sees us running the risk of allowing the horrors of the Holocaust to happen again, as unimaginable as we might think that to be.
The Holocaust Educational Trust, to which I offer my genuine thanks, has this year shared the work of Professor Gregory Stanton, who has developed an academic model for the 10 stages of genocide. Genocide never happens in a vacuum. The Holocaust did not begin with death camps, gas chambers and forced ghettoisation; before we get to steps 8, 9 and 10—persecution, extermination and denial—there are steps 1, 2 and 3, which are classification, discrimination and polarisation.
If we want to safeguard a better future, we must be willing to challenge racism, bigotry and attempts to other those who might be different, who are in a minority or who are simply vulnerable. Of course, this might well be the last year that the Holocaust remains within living memory. As first-hand testimony fades, and as antisemitic, extremist and exclusionary rhetoric gains traction here and around the world, it is more important than ever that we commit to reflecting on the circumstances that normalised such widespread, murderous persecution of Jews and other minorities, simply for being themselves.
This year, I was struck by the story of David Graber, one of three young Jewish men responsible for burying the Oneg Shabbat archives during the mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka in 1942. Graber and his peers collated testimonies, photographs and artefacts from the ghetto to ensure that the atrocities and reality of life under Nazi rule were a matter of record. At just 19, David buried the archive, knowing that he would not live to see its discovery, and included in it his last will and testament, in which he stated:
“For me, it is enough if future generations remember our times and if our sufferings and pain are mentioned ... May the treasure fall into good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened and was passed out in the twentieth century.”
Now, here, in the 21st century, we owe it to David Graber and the millions who lost their lives in the Holocaust to be the “good hands” that, even in these better times, attest to the horrors of their suffering and never cease working to ensure that such horrors never happen again.
We cannot afford complacency. Indeed, this year also marks the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, which claimed the lives of 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men on the basis of their identity. More recently, the barbaric 7 October Hamas attacks saw the most violent and intensive attack on the Jewish population since the Holocaust, killing more than 1,200 Israelis. That has been followed in Gaza by unconscionable levels of indiscriminate violence. A ceasefire, although welcome, appears fragile, and on this Holocaust memorial day, it is more important than ever to restate the case for a lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
It is incumbent on us to assert the truth of the Holocaust and the history of its victims—their pain and suffering, but also bravery, in the face of present-day polarisation, discrimination and persecution. A better future is possible, but only when we commit ourselves to never forgetting the darkness of the past.
Before I call the next speaker, I advise members that, due to the number of members still wishing to speak in the debate, I am minded to accept a motion without notice, under rule 8.14.3, to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes. I invite Jackson Carlaw to move the motion.
Motion moved,
That, under Rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes.—[Jackson Carlaw]
Motion agreed to.
18:00
I thank Jackson Carlaw for bringing the debate and note that 44 members had supported his motion by lunchtime today.
Jackson Carlaw’s motion mentions genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur and there has also been mention of the Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932-33, when some 4 million to 5 million people—roughly 10 per cent of the population—died. There was also the Armenian genocide under the Ottomans in 1915 to 1917, when around 1 million people died.
However, there is something especially horrendous about the Holocaust and the systematic killing of two thirds of European Jews. I have spoken before about how I felt when I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, particularly when I saw a railway that had been built for no other purpose than the killing of Jews and other minority groups.
I do not think that we can mention the Holocaust without referring also to the state of Israel and its foundation. Since my expulsion from the Scottish National Party for stating that what Israel had been doing in Gaza was not genocide, a position that I stand by, I have received many encouraging messages from Jewish people in this and other countries.
One author, Lyn Julius, sent me a copy of her book “Uprooted: How 3000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight”, which has been a fascinating read. I had not realised how Jews had been persecuted for so long in the Arab world as well as in Europe. We sometimes think that Israel exists mainly because of European Jews arriving after world war two when, in fact, some 650,000 Jews arrived because they had been expelled from, or because their lives had been made virtually impossible in, Arab nations. I had not realised that the leaders of Iraq had been close to Hitler and the Nazis during the war and that they had encouraged anti-Jewish sentiment in a way that was similar to what happened in Germany.
Another lesson that I have learned from reading books, watching films and visiting sites associated with the Holocaust is that it started with small things and gradually built up, as Liam McArthur has reminded us. Boycotts of Jewish shops, barring Jews from ice rinks and closing Jewish schools might have seemed like fairly small individual issues at the time, but, in looking back, we see that anti-Jewish sentiment built up slowly and surely over a number of years to become open discrimination, hatred and, finally, persecution and attempted annihilation.
That is one of the things that I think worries Jews in Scotland and around the world today. Is criticism of the current Israeli Government’s actions, some of which is definitely valid, spilling over into a lack of tolerance of Jewish people around the world? Not all Jews support Israel and not everyone in Israel is Jewish, but the reality is that it is the only Jewish state in the world and very many Jews identify closely with it, having friends and family there.
My main holiday in the past year was in the Baltic states, and I visited the excellent Jewish museums in Riga and Vilnius, where much of the focus was on the Holocaust. Vilnius was called the “Jerusalem of the north” by Napoleon in 1812, and in 1939, there were more than 260,000 Jews and more than 100 synagogues in the city. Now, there are perhaps only 2,000 Jewish people there and only one active synagogue.
Perhaps I can end on a slightly more positive note. My final destination in Lithuania was Kaunas. I spent less than a day there, but I did have time to visit Sugihara house and to learn something of the story of Japanese vice-consul Chiune Sugihara who, in 1939-40 and together with the acting Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk, saved some 6,000 people, most of them Jews who had already fled Poland, by issuing visas for them to escape through Russia to Japan. When the Soviet Union came into Lithuania in 1940, the consulates were due to be closed, but Sugihara held on and issued up to 300 visas a day for 29 days, in defiance of orders from Tokyo.
Even in the darkest days of the Holocaust, there were such flickers of light. It is important that we look back and learn from awful things, such as the Holocaust, that happened in the past, but we should also be challenged and encouraged by people such as Sugihara, who went against the tide and stood up for those who were despised and oppressed.
18:04
I remind members that I was born and raised in Golders Green, and I thank Jackson Carlaw for securing tonight’s debate.
Tonight, we mark Holocaust memorial day, which is a solemn occasion to honour the 6 million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered by the Nazis, alongside the millions of others who perished under the same brutal Nazi regime. We stand together in remembrance, not only to mourn but to reaffirm our unwavering commitment: never again.
Holocaust memorial day falls on 27 January each year and marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp. This year, we commemorate the 80th anniversary of that liberation and reflect on the theme “For a better future”. That theme compels us not only to remember the horrors of the past but to act in the present to challenge hatred, confront prejudice and build a world in which atrocities can never happen again.
I recall visiting southern Poland as an 18-year-old. After exploring the vibrant city of Kraków, with its bustling market square and rich history, I travelled westwards to Auschwitz. Joy and warmth seemed to vanish. Walking past razor-wire fences and grey brick buildings, I was confronted with a reality too horrific to comprehend. Above me, the sign read, “Arbeit macht frei”—“Work sets you free”—but, in the 1940s, there was no freedom there; there was only death and suffering. What struck me most, and what still haunts me, was the eerie silence. Hours before, I had heard birds singing and people laughing, yet, in Auschwitz, even nature seemed to recoil from the horror. The air itself carried the weight of those who had suffered.
It shocks me that a third of young adults in the United Kingdom cannot name Auschwitz or any other concentration camp. It is a sobering reminder that it is our duty to educate, to remember and to challenge denial. The need for that has never been more urgent. Holocaust denial and distortion are rising, fuelled by misinformation and the dark corners of social media. Studies show that 23 per cent of people in the UK have encountered Holocaust denial online and that a significant proportion of young people—our future leaders—do not know that 6 million Jews were murdered. Some believe the number to be far lower. Those statistics are deeply troubling, and they demand action.
As representatives of Scotland, we must ensure that Holocaust education is not just an academic exercise but a national priority. Institutions such as the Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre and the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre play a vital role in that respect. In my Glasgow region, Garnethill synagogue stands as a beacon of history and remembrance, and its heritage centre offers profound insights into Jewish life in Scotland and the Holocaust. I have been privileged to engage with those institutions, to commend their work in Parliament and to support new educational initiatives, such as the Holocaust heritage walking trail in Glasgow.
Those efforts must continue, and we must do more to ensure that every young person in Scotland learns about the Holocaust, not just as history but as a warning of what happens when hatred goes unchallenged. The Holocaust was not an accident. It was the result of antisemitism, propaganda and the systemic erosion of human rights. Although we say, “Never again”, we must also ask where “Never again” was in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia or Darfur. Where is it today, as antisemitism rises once more?
We cannot be bystanders. We must challenge prejudice, confront denial and educate future generations. The theme “For a better future” reminds us that remembrance alone is not enough. We must act. We must make Holocaust education a national priority and ensure that the lessons of history shape the future that we strive to build. It happened; it must never happen again; and it is our duty to ensure that “Never again” finally means what it says—never again.
18:09
Holocaust memorial day is without parallel in importance. I commend Jackson Carlaw for his leadership in that regard. Through his eloquent speeches—not only today, but every time I have heard him—he has been very important and influential. The work that he has done on Holocaust remembrance is to be commended.
The theme of Holocaust remembrance day is dignity, human rights and the importance of collective action to prevent the spread of hatred and of denial of the Holocaust. In his opening speech, Jackson Carlaw talked about other genocides, including in Bosnia. That gives me the opportunity, as others have done, to mention my visit to Srebrenica at the tail end of last year.
In Bosnia, Serb nationalism of the past remains omnipresent. The genocide against the Muslim Bosniaks happened in the 1990s. I spoke to mothers whose sons and brothers had been murdered, and I was alarmed when they described how, today, the denial of that genocide still exists. The Sarajevo hills are, for those who are old enough to remember, better known for the winter Olympics and Torvill and Dean. Eyes were closed when Serbs put Bosniak neighbours into concentration camps—and that was not that long ago.
The motion notes the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It will be appreciated that there were many other concentration camps, as members have mentioned, including Treblinka in Poland, where around 800,000 people died, and Belzec, where 600,000 died. While waiting to be sent to their death, many people starved, died of disease or were worked to death. It is unbelievable that those horrific events took place a relatively short time ago.
Across German-occupied Europe, 6 million Jews were murdered for being Jewish, by an ideology that was based on hatred and which began its journey in a democratic country. It is difficult to read and learn about humanity’s worst period in history and the evil that humankind is capable of, but it is important that we remember it.
I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau on the very last day of 2018. No amount of reading prepares a person for the sheer scale and horror of the camp, but it is something that I think everyone should do and face. When people arrive there they are asked by the guide not to take photographs in certain areas: one such area has people’s personal effects there, including shoes and suitcases. Visitors are asked not to photograph them because those are people’s personal belongings, with their personal stories of how they arrived in that dreadful place. That part of it all should remain personal.
Camp commandant Rudolf Höss expanded Auschwitz to construct a second camp at Birkenau for industrial murder. As others have said, if you have seen the memorial to those who died at Birkenau, you will notice that behind the camp there are houses, which were there at the time, in the 1940s. Unfortunately, people knew, and they looked on as the concentration camps murdered Jewish people and others.
The testimonies of survivors who escaped is vital, because without them we would not begin to get our heads around the horror of what happened. How could it happen at all? That is the vital question for any person who is interested in ensuring that it will never happen again. We must educate every child about the sad facts—no generation must be left out. They remind us that we must have robust policies for tackling hatred and prejudice against any group in society. Antisemitism, as the survivors have said, is far from having disappeared.
There are fewer Holocaust survivors each year when we mark this anniversary: soon, there will be none. The generations who live on and who know, and politicians like us, must ensure that it is never forgotten.
Andy Maciver was on the trip with me, and he wrote a great article headed “Moderates must rise to the challenges of populist nationalism”. It was something that only Andy Maciver could write, and it is a brilliant article.
We cannot be bystanders where we see the hatred of others. I will not stand by when I see what is happening to the Palestinians in Gaza. In my opinion there is a genocide taking place there, but let the courts and the law decide whether it is or is not. Whether it is about Gaza, Bosnia or Cambodia—it is really important that Jackson Carlaw mentioned it—as human beings and as politicians, we cannot be bystanders. We need to call out what we see, without prejudice.
I am proud to be part of the debate, and I again thank Jackson Carlaw for securing it.
18:14
I wish to express my gratitude to Jackson Carlaw for today’s motion, and I sincerely thank everybody who has kindly taken the opportunity to commemorate Holocaust memorial day for their very powerful contributions. This is the second year in which I have responded to the debate, and I have to say that it is one of the most powerful, emotive, thought-provoking and grounding debates, because it highlights our vulnerability as humanity in what appears to be a volatile and sometimes very busy world.
Everybody’s contribution tonight has been very valuable, but I want to give a minute to Jackson Carlaw, who always makes very powerful contributions. I know about his on-going commitment to highlighting the atrocities of the Holocaust. As he mentioned at the end of his speech, its few and frail survivors are disturbed by fears for the future. Colleagues, that is why it is vital that we ensure that it never happens again.
Another powerful contribution came from Ben Bland, the young person whom Paul O’Kane heard from in his constituency. In the darkness of today’s world, as it must appear to a lot of our youngsters, he has a really positive and hopeful view, which I found very inspirational and powerful to hear about.
I echo the heartfelt words that have been offered by my fellow members in paying tribute to the 6 million Jewish people who were systematically murdered during the Holocaust, and the countless others who were killed by the Nazi regime, and the untold numbers of people whose lives were callously taken from them in the genocides that took place in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
The horrors of the Holocaust are a stark reminder of the devastating consequences if prejudicial attitudes are not challenged and confronted, as my colleague Pauline McNeill eloquently set out. Despite all our political differences, it is deeply moving to witness members in the chamber being united in honouring peoples among whom lives were decimated by such terrible persecutions.
This year’s commemoration is a seminal moment, as we mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia. Following the Nazis’ ascent to power in 1933, they ramped up the antisemitic rhetoric prior to passing laws that gradually stripped Jewish citizens of their most basic human rights, including forcing them to wear yellow stars and singling them out for ever-worsening persecution. That slow but precise process of dehumanisation would later culminate in one of the most heinous acts in human history, as the regime attempted to exterminate all Jewish people in Europe.
The beginning of the Bosnian war in 1992 presented a chilling parallel, as non-Serbian citizens were first compelled to wear white armbands, setting in motion the infamous practice that would later come to be known as ethnic cleansing. The most monstrous example of such brutality was to occur in 1995, when the town of Srebrenica witnessed the genocidal massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces in one of the largest incidents of mass murder in Europe since world war two.
In reflecting on the sheer inhumanity of those atrocities, we are reminded of this year’s theme, which encourages us to strive collectively for a better future, while challenging those who attempt to deny or trivialise the Holocaust or any genocide. The Scottish Government must lead by example and remain ever vigilant, so that the grave consequences of the past can never be repeated.
In that spirit, I was proud to support the commencement of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 in April last year. Alongside our hate crime strategy, that will ensure that we take the robust measures that are the necessary response to criminality that is rooted in prejudice, and that we provide confidence that all incidents will be treated with the utmost seriousness.
Last year, we were privileged to assist with the United Kingdom’s presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in a series of engagements, including at the Kelvingrove art gallery and museum in Glasgow, where the First Minister spoke about the importance of working together to tackle the growing threat of antisemitism.
In recognition of the deep-seated nature of prejudicial attitudes, we are working in close collaboration with partners to prevent such behaviours from taking hold and undermining our commitment to community cohesiveness.
Let me be clear that discrimination, including antisemitism, must be challenged through educating our children about all cultures, faiths and belief systems, and ensuring that they learn tolerance and respect. The Scottish Government’s aspiration is that our children and young people feel equipped to go out into the world as citizens of the tolerant and inclusive Scotland that we all want to be part of.
Tomorrow, I will have the honour of participating alongside the First Minister at the Scottish ceremony for Holocaust memorial day, which has been expertly organised by our friends at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. It is deeply saddening that the ceremony will be without Henry Wuga, who, as Jackson Carlaw said, tragically passed away last year. The loss of his devotion in support of Holocaust memorial day will be immeasurable. However, I am humbled that I will have the opportunity to share a platform with a number of truly inspiring individuals, including Holocaust survivor Alfred Garwood MBE, and Smajo Bëso, who escaped the Bosnian genocide. The remarkable courage of all survivors in the face of such dire circumstances and their unwavering sacrifice in sharing their testimonies is a display of selflessness for which all of us should be forever indebted. I sincerely hope that as many members as possible can join us tomorrow night at the commemoration.
The responsibility of building a better future is incumbent on all members and on everyone in our diverse communities. I have been particularly struck in my conversations with Jewish and Muslim communities about how antisemitism and Islamophobia continue to impact on their daily lives. To them, I say, “Scotland is, and always will be, your home.”
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said:
“To forget would not only be dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time”.
We must always honour those words as part of our duty to remember the Holocaust and other genocides, while also aspiring to a better future, in which nobody need live in fear simply because of who they are and the group to which they belong.
Therefore, it is paramount that we support one another while resisting any and all voices that seek to divide us, and that we instead work in harmony for a caring and inclusive world that provides opportunities for all to flourish.
Meeting closed at 18:23.Air ais
Decision Time