My Lords, it is with great respect and solemn reflection that I move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. As I rise today, I do so with a heavy heart and a deep sense of responsibility.
As noble Lords will be aware, gradually, as time moves on, we lose many of the first-hand survivors of the Holocaust who were so engaged in the education of our young people and the rest of us. With the permission of the House, I would like to read the names of some of those whom we have lost during this year. Eva Schloss, MBE, who died on 3 January 2026, was a co-founder and honorary president of the Anne Frank Trust UK and stepsister of Anne Frank. Manfred Goldberg, MBE, who died aged 95 on 6 November 2025, was a Holocaust survivor and educator. Manfred’s story is part of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s virtual reality Testimony 360 education programme. Harry Olmer, who died on 15 January 2026, was a Holocaust survivor and Holocaust educator. Vera Schaufeld died in January 2026, aged 95. Vera came to the UK on the Kindertransport and shared her story up and down the country, including with our staff at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Eve Kugler, BEM, was a Holocaust survivor who witnessed Kristallnacht and shared her story, again including with the staff in my department. Suzanne Rappaport Ripton died in June 2025. She was the founder member of the Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association, now Holocaust Centre North. Ruth Posner died in September 2025. She was an extraordinary woman who survived the Radom ghetto, slave labour and life in hiding under a false identity. By the end of the war, Ruth and her aunt were the only surviving members of their family. After a dazzling career in theatre and dance, Ruth decided to begin sharing her testimony as a response to rising levels of antisemitism in the UK. I thank all of those who share their testimony and help us remember, and who will continue to make their mark on our remembrance of the Holocaust and its victims.
Tomorrow’s Holocaust Memorial Day is not only a date in the diary for me; it is a moment I return to each year with humility and resolve: a day that makes me pause and reflect on the stories I grew up hearing, and the lessons my parents impressed on me about the horrors of hatred. Tomorrow, we remember the 6 million Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust, and the Roma and Sinti, disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gay men and political opponents who were also persecuted and killed. Each one had a name, each had a story and each was loved. Behind every number was a human being whose life was cut short by hatred and a machinery of persecution that sought to erase entire communities.
We also remember those who, against all the odds, survived. Many rebuilt their lives in the UK and dedicated themselves to sharing their testimony, ensuring that future generations understood both the horrors they endured and the hope they managed to hold on to. Many of us in this room have been privileged to hear these survivors speak with honesty, courage and an often extraordinary generosity of spirit.
My Lords, I draw attention to the fact that I am the co-chairman of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation. It is a great pleasure to follow the Minister. I thought reminding us of the survivors we have lost this year was a wonderful way to start a speech. Many of them were friends and people we knew, people we shared a joke or a meal with, and people we worked together with for Holocaust remembrance. I mourn them all, but I particularly mourn Manfred, who did such outstanding work. May all of their memories be a blessing.
Whatever the circumstances, we have a whole day’s debate here. I hope the Government will think long and hard next year and ensure that, if not in the precise circumstances under which this debate has occurred, we get a whole day’s debate. I agreed with the Minister’s sentiments and with her speech—as someone once said, I even agreed with the punctuation.
Holocaust Memorial Day challenges us to confront one of the darkest chapters in human history, but remembrance requires more than ritual. It is not enough simply to speak solemnly in Parliament, to stand in silence, or to light a candle once a year. Ceremony without action becomes ceremony without meaning. True remembrance demands leadership—moral, civic and institutional—that is willing to resist hatred in all its modern forms.
In 2025, Britain received a series of wake-up calls that showed how fragile our complacency had become: a violent attack on Jews in Manchester; the conviction of terrorists who planned the mass murder of Jewish people; the shocking murders at Bondi Beach; a pop star calling for the killing of Jews, broadcast on the nation’s media; and the disturbing failure of West Midlands Police, which chose ideology over evidence in describing an antisemitic attack. Each incident triggered brief outrage, followed by national amnesia—shock, condemnation, and then forgetting, and then the cycle begins again. But the danger has not passed. Britain, like much of the world, is sleepwalking into disaster.
My Lords, I thank the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for their impressive speeches. I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, that we must do more than light candles. I too look forward to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry.
I want to talk about the need, based on the experience of the Holocaust, for not only constant vigilance against antisemitism but the perception and courage to swim against a tide and stand up to the mob. That vigilance and resolve must, of course, extend to all prejudice and hate based on race, religion, ethnicity or any other characteristic. But there is something unique and specific about the 2,000-year history of demonisation of Jews and the depths of antisemitism which led to the Shoah, which must not be overlooked or forgotten.
How can we forget, in fact, when we are holding this debate not only two and a half years after the massacres of 7 October 2023 but shortly after the terrorist atrocities at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester and in Sydney, the dishonourable conduct of West Midlands Police towards Israeli football fans, and numerous antisemitic incidents?
I attended the event this morning to mark this year’s International Holocaust Memorial Day, hosted by the FCDO and the embassy of Israel, and I will come back to some of the words spoken at that event. I fell to wondering how many of those attending marches and demos supposedly in favour of Palestinians in Gaza and who chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free”, which implies the destruction of the State of Israel, and “Globalise the intifada”, which implies worldwide violence against Jews, actually felt uneasy about one or both of those chants but suppressed their doubts to be in the in-crowd.
I have watched three films about the Holocaust within the last 10 days. I belatedly caught “Nuremberg” at the cinema; “Schindler’s List” and “The Zone of Interest” have both been on the television, and I watched them again. In my speech on this day two years ago, I quoted Dov Forman, great-grandson of the late, great Holocaust survivor, Lily Ebert, and I do so again. He said that
My Lords, for some of us, every day is Holocaust remembrance day. It is a pain we carry within our bodies, like a physical pain. It would be alleviated if only my parents had lived to see me in the House of Lords at an event like today, marking the grievous effect that the Holocaust had on them and, of course, their relatives, parents and wider family. We are grateful for national efforts to commemorate the Holocaust, but we remain troubled by the way the story of our lost families and the destruction of much of central European Jewish life is often presented.
I begin by paying tribute to the more than 1,200 victims of the atrocities of 7 October and the more than 200 people who were taken hostage—the worst massacre of Jews since the Second World War. Those killings were carried out with genocidal intent. Hamas has pledged to repeat them, if able, and its charter explicitly calls for the killing of Jews, not merely Israelis. As with the Holocaust, there are those who deny that the killings of 7 October occurred, or who falsely attribute them to Israel. That denial can be countered, among other sources, by the meticulous report on each victim authored by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Belgravia.
I hope the national commemorations this week will include reference to 7 October. That is important because antisemitism is a continuum. It did not begin in Germany in the 1930s and it did not end in 1945. It has existed for at least two millennia and arguably longer. The Holocaust was not a historical aberration but an eruption of a hatred that had long been embedded across societies. Today, antisemitism is again re-emerging, using the Gaza war as a pretext. Those who blame Israel for rising antisemitism ignore the historical reality that mass killings, pogroms and expulsions occurred long before Israel existed and would persist even if it did not.
So what should we truly be remembering? Condemning the Nazi regime alone is both too narrow and too superficial. Research by University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education shows that Holocaust education, while essential, does not reliably reduce antisemitism. The UK has invested heavily in museums, memorials, archives, survivor testimony and learning centres, but these efforts have not demonstrably shifted attitudes.
My Lords, it is my privilege to make my maiden speech in this debate on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day. First, I express my gratitude for the kindness that I have received from your Lordships on entering this House, and especially for the support, patience and care of the staff across the departments since my appointment to Coventry.
Being of Jewish heritage myself, I cannot recall a time when I was not aware of the Holocaust. I am grateful that this was a part of our family history that was never kept from me but held as a marker of an inhumane world, from which I was charged to do all I could to make the world a better place. Since then, I have served in Yorkshire, Uganda, Surrey, Sussex, Durham and now Coventry. I have a deep love of singing, especially the high notes, and running, unimpressively, and a nice glass of Sauvignon. Coming to Christian faith through youth ministry, I think I am now qualified to say, at the risk of current cliché, that I am and have pretty much always been a faithful.
I will focus my contribution on the importance of educating our children and young people in their religious understanding of the world, as I was, having been among the first cohort of children to journey through the GCSE curriculum, with an outstanding religious studies teacher whose support remarkably continues to this day. He ensured our introduction as teenagers to Judaism, Christianity and Islam without prejudice or favour. From this firm foundation I was privileged to have the opportunity to study Judaism as part of my first degree, with a special interest in the literature generated by the Holocaust.
I am now honoured to serve the diocese of Coventry, covering Warwickshire and part of the West Midlands, with Coventry city at its heart—a city that has always welcomed the refugee and the stranger, and which has benefited greatly from the rich culture, skills and contributions they have brought. Coventry knows that we cannot take for granted the understanding which builds relationships between communities, the tolerance which enriches communities through diversity, and the peace which overcomes. We know that we have to act in order to make a difference. Coventry is a city of peace and reconciliation, with a strong multicultural community and interfaith network, supporting each other’s festivals, celebrations and challenges. This has a long history, including the welcome of 50 Kindertransport children on the eve of the Holocaust. In the decades before and after, Coventry has continued to welcome those who have faced genocide and destruction from countries around the world.
My Lords, it is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate, and I congratulate her on her excellent and poignant maiden speech. As we have heard, she joins us with a wealth of pastoral experience, both in her current role, since 2025, as the 10th Bishop of Coventry, and in a variety of positions before that, ranging from Burgess Hill to Bradford, and Guildford to Uganda.
As a severely disabled Member of the House, I particularly welcome the right reverend Prelate’s interest in and commitment to supporting disabled people, including by running the London marathon for Mencap in 2022. I cannot think of a better preparation for life in your Lordships’ House, where I am afraid she will find that the glacial speed with which any Government move makes having plenty of stamina a prerequisite for getting anything done. She may find that she has an advantage though because, as she will know, the Spirit can move far more quickly than us mere humans.
That reminds me, as someone who joined the Movement for the Ordination of Women when I was at university in the early 1990s, of a beautiful verse from chapter 9 of the Book of Wisdom, with which the right reverend Prelate may well be familiar. It is addressed to God, and it reads:
“With you is wisdom, who knows your works, and was present when you made the world, and who understands what is pleasing in your sight and what is right according to your commandments. Send her forth from the holy heavens and from the throne of your glory send her that she may be with me and toil … for she knows and understands all things, and she will guide me wisely in my actions”.
Quite apart from exposing the absurdity of viewing God purely as male, I cannot think of a more powerful affirmation of the multidimensional nature of God, embodying spiritually all that is beautiful in his creation of humanity, including she as much as he. I cannot promise the right reverend Prelate that your Lordships’ House will always do as she advises, but we look forward to benefiting from her wisdom.
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, and to have heard the brilliant speech from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry—I am pleased to welcome another sort-of West Midlander—and so many powerful speeches from all noble Lords. I look forward to listening to the rest of the debate and, if I may be allowed to say, particularly to my fellow West Midlander, the noble Lord, Lord Austin, whose father was my inspirational head teacher at secondary school.
My father, Jim Ramsey, was a soldier during the Second World War, in a flail tank in the Westminster Dragoons and he was part of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. Sadly, he died in 1990 but, while I was growing up, he told me what he had seen there. He was deeply shocked and appalled, and told us, his children, about it during the 1970s and 1980s because he wanted us to know, and for us to then tell others what he had told us, making a reality of Bridging Generations, the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day.
Survivors of the camps are now dwindling to tiny numbers and their stories must live on through their families and fantastic organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, to which I pay tribute. I share my father’s conviction of the importance of bearing witness by continuing to repeat accounts by the men and women who saw what had happened in the camps. This extract was kindly given to me by the Westminster Dragoons Regimental Association; it is taken from a report on the concentration camp at Belsen, Germany, by a fellow member of my father’s regiment:
“Belsen is a small village 11 miles from Celle, which is in the province of Hanover. About a mile south of Belsen there is a concentration camp … The conditions at Belsen camp were ghastly. Obviously it was used as a place where the prisoners could be exterminated slowly and with least trouble to the Reich. This extermination took place in the form of slow starvation; the rations were a bowl of swede or turnip soup per person every day and a loaf of rye bread between 12 persons every week. Thus the bare minimum was given; a minimum which would not allow anyone to die quickly of starvation, but which would make him or her gradually waste away into a living skeleton. When this happened death either followed by typhus or mere collapse. It was reckoned that at least 400 persons died every day.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath. I thank her for all the work that she has done to combat antisemitism. I also thank the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, for arranging this debate and for commemorating so kindly those who witnessed the events we speak of who passed away this year. I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry on her excellent maiden speech and thank her for her recognition of the multigenerational trauma experienced by those of us of Jewish heritage. That is a very significant thing, in my view.
Memorialising the Holocaust has never been more important. We know that this grotesque event was based on an ancient hatred, and yet the events since 7 October have produced a level of antisemitism in this country that few of us could really have imagined. Jews in the UK, as has been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and my noble friend Lord Shinkwin, can no longer attend school or synagogue without security protection. Israeli football fans have been banned from watching their team play. Members of the other House have been stopped from attending schools in their constituencies, and there have been deadly antisemitic terrorist attacks on our streets. The open statements about killing Jews and the demonisation and vilification of Israel have been normalised to a rather terrifying extent.
I will focus my brief remarks on the term “genocide”, which was the basis of the Holocaust and is now a term, as my noble friend Lord Pickles mentioned, that has been deliberately weaponised in some quarters to inflame a new version of hatred against Jews and Israel. For Jews to be falsely accused of this crime has been one of the most painful aspects of this war of words.
Let us look at the origins of the term “genocide”. It was invented by the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin during World War II and entered public discourse for the first time when it was included in the indictments against the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg.
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“this dark chapter in history wasn’t only about mass murder. It was the destruction of a rich Jewish culture and civilisation that had thrived for thousands of years. To remember the Holocaust is to acknowledge both the Jewish lives and the Jewish life that was lost”.
I noticed to my surprise that “Schindler’s List” was not only broadcast pretty late, finishing at nearly 2 am as it had to wait for the live snooker to finish, but classified 15, along with “Nuremberg”, by the British Board of Film Classification. The justification for a minimum age of 15 for “Nuremberg” included that it contained
“images of real dead bodies”,
while for “Schindler’s List” it was that
“based on a true story, younger viewers may find the film’s depictions of persecution and the Holocaust emotionally upsetting”.
Well, yes, that is the point of Holocaust education: to teach people what happened in terms of dead bodies and physical and emotional horror. If they are not, in consequence, upset, distressed, outraged, and despairing at what inhuman persecution, murder and destruction people are capable of perpetrating against their fellow human beings, the basis for action to stop indifference is not laid. I think at least all secondary school-age children should watch these films at school, as well as at home, as the basis for a discussion about the horror of the Holocaust and other genocides.
I was six years old when I watched a serial on the TV called “The Silver Sword” from 1958 about child refugees from the Nazis. This is the synopsis I found online:
“On a cold, dark night in Warsaw in 1942, the Balicki children watch in horror as Nazi stormtroopers arrest their mother. Now they are alone. With the war raging around them, food and shelter are hard to come by. They live in constant fear. Finally, they get word that their father is alive. He has made it to Switzerland. Edek and Ruth are determined to find him, though they know how dangerous the long trip from Warsaw will be. But they also know that if they don’t make it, they may never see their parents again”.
I do not remember much of the plot, with only snatches remaining imprinted on my memory; and, unlike so many histories of the period, this fictional story had a happy ending. Notwithstanding that, what has persisted with me is the sense of fear and desperation, or, in the words of one online comment:
“Just an image—an image of devastation and loss—and a knowledge that this was something powerful and important”.
This is, of course, nothing compared to the ghastly memories of those who endured the Holocaust or the real and terrible losses of those whose families perished in it, but it is important that those deep feelings of fear, devastation and desperation continue to strike a chord with people of all kinds, both within and beyond the Jewish community, if the pledge of “never again” is to have any meaning. Hence the essential need for Holocaust education. I am grieved and disappointed to hear that fewer schools are delivering that.
I have always believed that Nazism, fascism and their like, with the combination of obedience to authoritarian rule and callousness towards human suffering, are viruses that can be caught anywhere, in any country. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney last week quoted in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos from Václav Havel’s 1978 essay, The Power of the Powerless, which was about how the communist system sustained itself. He said:
“And his answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ He doesn’t believe it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists. Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false. Havel called this ‘living within a lie’. The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true”.
Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, apparently saw himself as
“a cog in the wheel of the great extermination machine created by the Third Reich”.
American military psychologist Gustave Gilbert wrote of his discussions with Hoess during the Nuremberg trials, at which Hoess testified, that:
“In all of the discussions, Höss is quite matter-of-fact and apathetic, shows some belated interest in the enormity of his crime, but gives the impression that it never would have occurred to him if somebody hadn’t asked him”.
In a remark this morning at the Holocaust Memorial Day event at the Foreign Office, Meg Davis, a Holocaust Educational Trust young ambassador, struck a similar note, when she talked of how “compliance is the enabler”.
To my mind, Holocaust education needs to encompass not only the terrible history of antisemitism and where it led but the importance of an instinct and resolve against compliance and conformity. People who refuse to go with the flow, who have the guts to say, “This is not right”, and who are difficult and even objectionable to some minds are essential grit in our pledge of “never again”.
The warning signs tend to come long before the atrocities. The grandfather of the present noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, was the second Lord Russell of Liverpool. He was a deputy Judge Advocate-General to the British Army of the Rhine and one of the chief legal advisers during the war crimes trials in Nuremberg, and he wrote a book, The Scourge of the Swastika, on his experiences.
With the kind agreement of the current noble Lord, I would like to quote some passages from that book. First, the author noted that, a few months before the outbreak of war, a
“menacing German Foreign Office circular must have clearly pointed out the course of future events to all but those who did not wish to see it”.
That circular read:
“‘It is certainly no coincidence that the fateful year of 1938 has brought nearer the solution of the Jewish question simultaneously with the realization of the idea of Greater Germany … The advance made by Jewish influence and the destructive Jewish spirit in politics, economy and culture; paralysed the power and the will of the German people to rise again. The healing of this sickness among the people was therefore certainly one of the most important requirements for exerting the force which, in the year 1938, resulted in the joining together of Greater Germany in defiance of the world’”.
We were warned. The second Lord Russell of Liverpool thus observed quite rightly that:
“Persecution of the Jews in the countries which the Nazis invaded and occupied”
between 1939 and 1945
“was indeed on a stupendous scale, but it cannot have taken by surprise anyone who had followed the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933 or their Party program. Point Four of that programne declared: ‘Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race’”.
That was six years before the outbreak of the war.
These reflections strike a deep chord in me after the period since 7 October intensified the fears about how an attitude explained as anti-Zionism and opposition to Israel—the blood libel of our times—transforms so easily into raw antisemitism and the dehumanisation of Jews. An interview in today’s Telegraph with Professor Sir Simon Schama notes that his TV programme about the Holocaust, “The Road to Auschwitz”, was rigorous in its examination of how the Nazis found willing accomplices in mass murder while others looked away. The journalist notes how Marian Turski, one of the last survivors of Auschwitz, said:
“Auschwitz did not fall from the sky. Evil comes step by step”.
Professor Sir Simon Schama says:
“There has been a qualitative shift towards the sense that the Jews are kind of enemies among us. I think there’s been a shift from the fury about what Israel’s said to have done in Gaza, to essentially dehumanising Jews generally”.
Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich told us this morning of her experience at Ravensbrück:
“We were stripped of our identifiers and totally dehumanised”.
Let us react this time before we know precisely how bad it can get.
One reason is that Holocaust education often treats the subject as distant history. Students learn about it as a unique past atrocity with little connection to their own world. Antisemitism is framed as a Nazi phenomenon rather than a persistent, long-standing prejudice that still operates today. This fosters the mistaken belief that the problem ended in 1945. Students frequently come away believing that Hitler alone or a small group of Nazi leaders were responsible. This obscures the widespread collaboration across Europe from officials to ordinary citizens and the deep-rooted antisemitism that existed for centuries in many countries. Many students also believe that German soldiers would have been executed had they refused to participate, reinforcing the false idea that ordinary people had no moral agency.
At the same time, young people increasingly encounter Holocaust misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media platforms, such as YouTube and TikTok, often with more impact on them than their formal schooling. Some are influenced by historically misleading fictional portrayals such as “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”. More historically grounded films such as those the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, mentioned, such as “Survivor”, “The Commandant’s Shadow” and “1945”, would provide far better educational value.
Crucially, many students learn about the Holocaust without learning about antisemitism itself. They do not understand its history, its ideological roots or the social and religious narratives that sustain it. They do no learn that antisemitism is rising sharply today, especially since 7 October. Nor do they grasp how far-right extremism, far-left hostility and Islamist ideology—perhaps I should have said theology—increasingly intersect. Young people who march calling for Israel’s elimination, who persecute Jewish students or who call for violence against Zionists have often already received Holocaust education, yet they frequently refuse to distinguish between Israel and Jews. The fact that similar hostility is not directed at, for example, Chinese, Iranian or Russian students for their Governments’ actions exposes the underlying antisemitism.
The recent report on antisemitism by the noble Lord, Lord Mann, and Penny Mordaunt, to whom we should be grateful, also warns that some religious teaching in schools may perpetuate anti-Jewish beliefs. Initiatives such as the Winchester diocese’s work with Jewish communities to eliminate medieval stereotypes from religious education are welcome, and it would be encouraging to see similar programmes expanded nationwide. It is fortunate for us that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry will make her maiden speech today. We look forward to her many contributions to come, but today’s will be especially pertinent.
Another flaw in Holocaust remembrance is that it has become overwhelmingly a narrative of Jewish death rather than Jewish life. Jews are presented primarily as victims with little attention to the vibrant culture, traditions, faith and resilience that sustained Jewish communities for thousands of years up to today. Even more problematic is the failure to link Holocaust remembrance to contemporary antisemitism. If “never again” is to have meaning, students must be taught how antisemitic tropes persist today in activism, conspiracy theories and some religious or political discourse. They must understand how the term Zionism is often used as a proxy for hostility towards Jews. As the late Lord Sacks observed, antisemitism has evolved from religious prejudice to racial ideology to hostility towards the only Jewish state and the right of Jews to self-determination. This is politically uncomfortable, but it lies at the heart of the modern problem.
Nevertheless, many Holocaust remembrance events avoid mentioning Israel or 7 October altogether. Some councils and politicians even avoid using the word “Jew” when discussing Holocaust victims. This erasure weakens historical accuracy and undermines the credibility of remembrance.
Another difficulty lies in the insistence, by successive Governments over many years, that Holocaust remembrance must always be merged with other genocides. Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur were appalling tragedies and deserve their own memorialisation. However, collapsing them all into a single narrative prevents meaningful understanding of why Jews were targeted, how antisemitism developed and how it persists. It also risks relativising genocide and enabling distorted claims, including those weaponised today against Jews themselves, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Pickles.
Students are supposed to learn lessons from Holocaust education, but lessons have become overly moralised and insufficiently historical. In an effort to put the education to use, students are taught general lessons about tolerance and being bystanders but are not given the historical knowledge or intellectual tools needed to recognise and challenge antisemitism in its modern forms. As survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist of Auschwitz, observed when giving evidence to the Commons Select Committee, a new learning centre here would not achieve anything that has not already been learned in the 80 years since the Holocaust. Lasker-Wallfisch labelled the plan to build it next to Parliament “a completely idiotic idea” and “dangerous”. She said:
“A Jew, unlike a Rwandan, is not safe anywhere now”.
What is needed is serious historical education and a clear understanding of antisemitism across time.
Young people, and society more broadly, should also learn about contemporary Jewish communities—their culture, contributions and place in national life. Jews should not be portrayed only as historical victims but as the active participants in civic, intellectual and cultural life that we are. This is why Holocaust education requires a fundamental overhaul. Teaching a narrow, Nazi-centric narrative of historical murder has not succeeded in changing attitudes or countering modern antisemitism. That is also why plans for yet another Holocaust memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens represent a missed opportunity. Its proposed learning centre appears to literally set in concrete many of the shortcomings already identified. It does not meaningfully address contemporary antisemitism nor the central role of Israel in Jewish identity. If it presents a primarily British perspective on the Holocaust, it risks appearing evasive.
Britain itself has a complex history in relation to its Jewish community. The massacre of 1190, the expulsion of 1290, the slow and relatively recent restoration of full civil rights, the restrictive refugee policies of the 1930s and 1940s, Britain’s failure to admit large numbers of Jewish refugees, its restrictions on immigration to Mandatory Palestine and its post-war treatment of displaced persons remain difficult chapters. Even the Kindertransport and the Winton rescues were privately, not nationally, funded, and the children admitted were separated from their parents because they were more readily assimilable and not a threat to job seekers. If only Israel had existed in 1938, courtesy of Britain, rather than in 1948, how many thousands or millions of lives might have been saved?
Against that backdrop, many in the Jewish community feel that contemporary antisemitism has been allowed to grow. Hate marches, biased policing, hostility on campuses, conspiracy theories spread by doctors, lecturers, teachers and students, vandalism and open calls for violence are increasingly common. Anti-Zionism has become a socially acceptable mask for antisemitism, even as Israel’s role in Jewish safety and continuity becomes ever clearer.
The Jewish community sees Governments tolerating extremist rhetoric, hesitating to challenge hate preachers, imposing restrictions on Israel’s self-defence, cutting themselves off from security and defence exchanges, and giving credence to Hamas-derived narratives. It is therefore unsurprising that some Jews feel sceptical about official declarations of “never again” and announcements of yet another Holocaust memorial while present-day antisemitism goes insufficiently challenged. It looks like an attempt to deflect justified criticism.
We expect more than platitudes. Will the Government call upon Christian and Muslim leaders to take responsibility for addressing religious teachings that perpetuate anti-Jewish ideas? Will they act decisively against extremist preaching? Will they commit to a serious reform of Holocaust education, one that drops vague moral messaging and treats the Holocaust as a uniquely Jewish genocide, and equips students to recognise antisemitism in all its historical and modern forms? The task of remembering has been accomplished, with the recording of testimonies, the collection of data, many memorials and 21 learning centres already existing in the UK, including the National Holocaust Centre in Newark and the Imperial War Museum galleries, but nobody has ever looked into what effect, if any, they have on those who visit, or into who does not visit. It is just assumed that they combat antisemitism. Finally, if Holocaust remembrance is to mean anything, it must affirm not only the memory of those murdered but the legitimacy, dignity and security of Jewish life today, including the central role of the State of Israel as a symbol of Jewish continuity and self-determination.
The Jewish community of Coventry was founded by immigrant watchmaking families, who produced the best watches in the world and contributed so much to the life and well-being of the city. They had faced hardship, persecution, oppression and pogroms, only then to face antisemitism in their adopted land while serving the city. The German-born Jewish mayor, Siegfried Bettmann, faced not only antisemitism but extreme xenophobic, nationalist, anti-German sentiment, forcing him to retire from office and public life as World War I approached, despite his devotion to his adopted country.
In this debate, we recognise that the families of every member of the Jewish community are impacted for generations by the horrors and carry the burden of antisemitism today, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has rightly reminded us. As a bishop, while recognising the deep sensitivities of the present moment, I was proud to discover that there are Anglican clergy who are taking some responsibility for addressing this impact in their communities, rather than remaining silent.
Tomorrow, in the town of Bedworth, Nuneaton, renowned for its pride in holding the longest-held Armistice Day event, unbroken since 1921 and attracting up to 10,000 people, in which schoolchildren line the streets, All Saints Bedworth is holding a special event to mark Holocaust Memorial Day for the first time. Though many schools across the nation have chosen not to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in recent years, as the noble Lord reminded us, recognising the deep sensitivities around the terrible and humane suffering of the people of Palestine in Gaza, Reverend Dave Poultney has taken the decision to offer a space in his community to remember the Holocaust, to educate the children of the three schools in his parish, and to lament, as the Psalms encourage us, but to remember, so that they are invited to build a world in which this will not and cannot ever happen again. This is especially important, as the Minister reminded us, at a time when survivors of the Holocaust who can testify as eyewitnesses reach the end of their lives, and in a culture where truth is contested and must be defended.
I pay tribute to those among the Jewish community here in the UK and other parts of the world who have faced dreadful persecution and attacks that can never be justified. It is a source of sorrow to my soul that the antisemitism that caused such fear in our family continues, such that communities are having to be on constant alert, afraid for their children and for themselves. This cannot be right.
As this House will know, Coventry Cathedral has a worldwide ministry of peace and reconciliation, founded the very day after the destruction of the old cathedral in World War II. These relationships continue and are deeply precious to us. Just last month, we stood side by side with the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, who laid a wreath for peace in the ruins of Coventry’s old cathedral. Representatives of all walks of life, including the Armed Forces, and of all ages, shared together in gathering to mark our mutual challenges in peacebuilding and social cohesion to inspire a new generation to work together for peace in each of our countries.
Every day at noon, the cathedral prays the Coventry litany. This is used across the world by the Cross of Nails community that flows out of the cathedral and stands to heal the wounds of history, live well with difference and celebrate diversity, and work for communities of justice and peace. The litany begins:
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”.
It goes on to pray for:
“The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class”,
inviting the response,
“Father, forgive”.
Interestingly, it does not say, “Father, forgive them”, for in 1940, the then provost Dick Howard recognised that the hatred that had caused the destruction of his cathedral church lay not simply out there among the perceived enemy, but within us all.
It is of great concern that, despite all the deeply significant efforts towards peacemaking and reconciliation, our times are more divided, not less, in these days. We know that the study of human behaviour which led to the evil of the Holocaust begins by using words—words that separate us through the language of othering, words intent on harming rather than healing. Words are our currency in this House, as they are in the wider world. Our words matter, and we can use words towards hostility or towards peace.
May this House and His Majesty’s Government stand for justice and kindness for all, so that every community of this nation may meet in understanding and respect, united by love of goodness, keeping far from violence and strife. May our children and the generations that follow be educated to live in peace, and may this nation find its honour and greatness in the work of peacebuilding and reconciliation today and for all our days to come.
There is something else that strikes me as absurd, and which I find completely counterintuitive: our implicit construction, as a society, of a hierarchy of racism. Hitler could not have been clearer: his fanatical hatred of the Jews informed the 1935 Nuremberg laws, which classified Jews as
“enemies of the race-based state”.
That racist hatred, in turn, informed the genocidal logic of the Shoah, or Holocaust. In other words, everything revolved around race. Yet, here we are, 81 years on from the Soviet Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, still mouthing with sincerity the mantra of “Never again”, but not calling out the attack of 7 October 2023, the banning of the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, the attack on Heaton Park synagogue, the Bondi Beach shooting or the prevention of Damien Egan, in the other place, from addressing pupils of a school in his own constituency as racist. We are not calling out these events for what they are: racist.
If Hitler knew what it was about—and as my noble friend Lord Pickles reminded us, it was about race—why do we not? After all, within 20 years of the liberation of Auschwitz, your Lordships’ House had passed the Race Relations Act 1965, which, as noble Lords will know, made the promotion of hatred on the grounds of race, colour, and ethnic or national origins an offence. The toxic abuse and now murderous violence being visited on our Jewish communities, such as in Manchester, clearly violates the Act. Unless we are saying that the Act applies only to skin colour—which would be factually incorrect—this is racism, pure and simple, so why does society seem to pretend that it is not?
What sort of message are we sending to our beloved Holocaust survivors when, instead of the theory of “Never again”, they see only the beginnings of “Yet again”? What about impressionable young people who get most of their news, as we heard earlier, from social media? The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is bridging generations. What sort of bridge are we building when we fail to call out racism and our police imply, as happened on camera, “Well, it depends on the context”. Really? So it is okay to be racist if it is not about skin colour, or it involves abusing Jewish people or Israel.
I fear we are in danger of legitimising racist prejudice by default. As the Minister said in her powerful opening remarks, the Holocaust had its roots in prejudice that began with words. Deborah Lipstadt tells us:
“Anyone who thinks this only impacts Jews is ignoring reality. This is an attack on Western liberalism, democracy, and international security and stability”.
We can be sure that, even as we speak in this debate, there are those who are determined that the answer to the question posed by the Daily Telegraph, “Should Jews feel safe in Britain?”, should be a resounding “No”. These racists must not be allowed to achieve their goal, for the cost of surrendering to such a racist creed is far greater than the millions spent on policing the demonstrations that have paralysed our capital city weekend after weekend.
In conclusion, my childhood Jewish refugee surgeon, Hanuš Weisl, fled for his life as a teenager from racism: a racism that would kill all the relatives who came to see him depart on the last train out of Prague before the Nazis closed the border. Surely, we owe it to him today to take stronger action to ensure that racism, in all its forms, is confronted with the full force of the law, so that “Never again” never becomes “Yet again”.
When the camp was first entered by British troops, they were met by a sight which we in England would think impossible of a ‘civilised’ nation such as Germany. All over the grounds of the camp lay the bodies of what had once … been men and women. It was impossible to miss seeing bodies. Two over there—nine in front of the barbed wire, a large pile of 40 outside one of the huts—it was hard to walk without stepping on them as they lay on the ground. They were there because to begin with the prisoners were too weak to move their comrades away to bury them, and secondly because the SS guards were either too lazy to move them or because there were too many to move, and as they were buried more died. In one part of the camp there was a large pit. It was 80 feet deep, and in the bottom there was a mass of corpses, half buried with earth. It was said that the pit had been 20 feet deeper, but that the last consignment of bodies had filled up that 20 feet. At this moment Hungarian guards are digging another pit for those prisoners whom our doctors know will die shortly from typhus.
Today is the 25th of April 1945. The British have been at the camp for almost a week. They buried 1,200 people yesterday and 1,700 the day before, and there will be more to bury tomorrow. But things will gradually become better as the food we are giving them builds them up.
It is quite probable that many of the people in England who read accounts of this concentration camp, despite the fact that there are photographs to prove it, will think that the whole thing is vastly exaggerated and that it is just a move in the effort to foster the feeling of hate against the Germans—a feeling which admittedly the average Englishman does not like to show. He believes in sport and fair play … and anyhow, how in the world could another country do such terrible things when we don’t do them? Also we haven’t seen with our own eyes so we don’t believe, and it’s better forgotten anyhow”.
I have read only extracts from the report; I apologise to Members for how upsetting it is, but, bearing in mind the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, it seems appropriate to read them today. The final line written by that solider is:
“Do you think it’s better forgotten?”
I do not know who he was addressing that to, but I think he agreed with my father.
That anxiety that the testimony of returning soldiers would either not be believed or not be passed on to future generations was shared by my father, as well as the utter horror of what he had witnessed. How dismaying it was therefore to learn, from the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s October 2020 report, that the Labour Party had been dealing so inadequately with antisemitism under its previous leadership, and that complaints of individual members sharing Holocaust denial on social media had not even been investigated.
When Keir Starmer became leader, he was determined to root out antisemitism in the party. As part of this vital endeavour, I was asked to lead the work needed to address the recommendations made in the commission’s damning report. It was terrible that such work was necessary, but what a fitting opportunity it was for me to honour my father. The EHRC had identified political interference in the handling of antisemitism complaints, so I had the task of developing an independent complaints system from scratch. I also established a proper process to engage with Jewish community stakeholders, and I oversaw the devising and delivery of a programme of antisemitism awareness training for use across the party for all staff and parliamentarians.
I worked closely with the Jewish Labour Movement, which was led so effectively at that time by my now noble friends Lord Katz and Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, as well as Dame Louise Ellman, Rebecca Filer, Peter Mason and Adam Langleben. I worked with Danny Stone of the Antisemitism Policy Trust and Adrian Cohen of the Jewish Leadership Council, as well as Marie van der Zyl, the then president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and her successor, Phil Rosenberg. I also came to hugely respect Dave Rich and all those at the Community Security Trust; obviously, that work is ongoing, for reasons that other noble Lords have mentioned today.
Under Keir’s leadership, and with the support and challenge of all those wonderful people, the Labour Party succeeded in turning things round. The EHRC lifted its legal enforcement action against the party, and no longer did the Chief Rabbi find himself needing to intervene publicly in the general election, as he had done in 2019. But, of course, antisemitism is still very much with us today, as we all saw last October with the horrific attack on worshippers at the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur. Therefore, Holocaust Memorial Day retains its vital role in ensuring that we all remember and—more than this—that we all do whatever we can to tackle antisemitism wherever we see it.
What is genocide? Lemkin’s definition was that it was the extermination of racial and religious groups in order to destroy particular races and classes of people. The genocide convention of 1948 defines the term more broadly, but the key is the intent to destroy a racial or religious group. As we know, the Nazis devised their final solution in 1942 in a state-sponsored, institutionalised programme to exterminate the entire Jewish population of occupied Europe, which totalled 9 million people at that time. They managed to kill 6 million of them.
Let us contrast this with the alleged genocide in Gaza, which was a war of self-defence—Israel’s sovereign right—following the atrocity of 7 October and the kidnapping of 251 hostages, the worst pogrom since World War II, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. Whether you agree or disagree with Israel’s conduct of the war, there was never an intent to exterminate or eliminate any group or race. Israel’s war is against a terrorist group pledged to destroy it. It has nothing to do with the idea of genocide. Furthermore, Hamas bears responsibility for casualties in Gaza by refusing to release hostages and embedding itself and its weaponry within the civilian infrastructure. It is therefore vital that the Holocaust is remembered for its unique evil. The public need to be reminded of what constitutes a genocide. Understanding the term might prevent its misuse for political ends.
We are in dangerous waters now in terms of Holocaust denial and distortion, as opponents of Israel seek to undermine the unprecedented character of this event with false equivalence. This must begin in schools. As we lose living witnesses to this darkest history, we cannot afford a growing vacuum of knowledge in schools about the Holocaust, or, worse still, for it to be replaced with an ideology that questions it. So I urge the Minister to devote even more resource to ensure that the public understand the Holocaust, what constitutes a genocide, and how fragile societies can become in the face of antisemitism and racism. By doing so, we can make sure that it never happens again.
My own family roots are in the East End of London, once home to a vibrant and close-knit Jewish community. Even those of us whose families were not directly targeted felt the shock waves as news of the camps emerged. In homes such as my parents’ and grandparents’, the stories of what had happened were spoken about with a kind of hushed reverence: an understanding that something beyond comprehension had taken place. They taught us that, while we could never fully feel that depth of pain, we had an absolute duty to learn about it, remember it and pass the lessons on.
This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day theme, Bridging Generations, feels especially poignant as we move into a time when survivors’ voices are fading. Many have now fallen silent. Yet it is our responsibility to ensure that their legacy does not fade with them. Bridging generations is not an abstract concept: it is the quiet question from a child trying to understand why people were hated for who they were. It is the moment in a school assembly when a survivor’s words change the entire mood of the room. It is the recognition that truth, when spoken plainly, has the power to transform hearts.
The Holocaust did not begin with camps and crematoria. It began with words: with prejudice that became normalised, then embedded in policy and then allowed to flourish unchecked. It moved from insult to exclusion, from exclusion to persecution, and from persecution to genocide.
Memory is our safeguard. Forgetting is the first step towards repeating history. I feel a profound personal responsibility to ensure that these stories are never lost. That is why I am proud that, in 2024, the Prime Minister pledged that every student in the country should have the opportunity to hear recorded survivor testimony. By enabling every young person to access first-person accounts, we build resilience against distortion and denial.
The Holocaust Educational Trust’s Testimony360 programme will allow students to virtually meet survivors and explore historical sites using virtual reality. Long after survivors can no longer be with us, young people will still be able to hear their voices, ask questions and engage with history in a way that feels deeply personal and immediate.
The Holocaust Testimony portal, created by the Association of Jewish Refugees and supported by the Government, is another vital initiative. The portal brings together thousands of interviews with survivors, refugees, rescuers and liberators, providing user-friendly access to decades of testimony. Generations to come will be able to learn from those accounts. Initiatives such as Generation 2 Generation ensure that descendants of survivors continue sharing family histories, preserving the human threads that connect past and present.
When I was a council leader, I set up a Holocaust memorial event in Stevenage—it was over 15 years ago—and I have been privileged to listen to family and first-hand testimony at that event each year. A couple of years ago, I listened to Anita Peleg speak about her mother, the sculptor Naomi Blake. I remember the hush in the room as Anita played a recording of her mother’s own words. It was the kind of silence that falls when truth settles on the heart: heavy yet somehow illuminating. Naomi Blake, who survived Auschwitz and went on to create art filled with hope and renewal, embodied the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit. Hearing her voice reminded me that testimony is not merely information: it is a gift—of courage, of memory and of humanity.
Lord Lieutenant Robert Voss, whose parents escaped Nazi Germany, came to our meeting and gave an account of his paternal grandparents, who were murdered in the gas chambers of Sobibor in June 1942. That moment touched me deeply, and strengthened my resolve to ensure that these stories are never allowed to fade.
Other projects, such as Ordinary Objects, Extraordinary Journeys, a collaboration between the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the National Holocaust Centre and Museum, and the Jewish Museum of Greece, show how even everyday belongings can bear witness. A pair of glasses, a letter, a suitcase: these objects speak when words fall short. They provide a tangible link to lives interrupted and remind us of the profound human cost of antisemitism and hatred.
Restoring names to victims is another sacred responsibility. Yad Vashem’s project to identify the 6 million murdered Jews is a monumental effort grounded in the belief that every person deserves to be remembered. A name is the most personal thing we have: chosen with love and often carried through generations. For the Nazis, names became tools of persecution. For us, restoring them is an act of dignity, remembrance and defiance of those who sought to erase an entire people.
Yet today, all too sadly, Holocaust denial and distortion persist. We still see antisemitic slogans and graffiti on our streets and the trivialisation of the Holocaust in public discourse, online spaces and even protests. Antisemitism is not new to Britain; we know that it stretches back to medieval times and, tragically, that it has never disappeared. The Community Security Trust recorded more than 1,500 antisemitic incidents in just the first half of 2025. This rise demands a clear and courageous response. I pay tribute to the CST for all the work it does in supporting our Jewish community.
Education remains our strongest defence. Young people are bombarded daily with information, some unreliable and some deliberately misleading. We must ensure they have the tools to distinguish truth from manipulation and history from distortion. Teaching about the Holocaust is not simply about understanding the past; it is about shaping a future where hatred cannot take root so easily. That is why I believe that having the national Holocaust memorial and learning centre at the heart of our capital, beside Parliament, matters so deeply. It will stand as a daily reminder to decision-makers, visitors and future generations that this country takes its responsibility to remember seriously. There are differing views, and it is right that Parliament has debated them so fully, but I feel the duty my parents and grandparents felt to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are carried forward with honesty and integrity.
We cannot change the history behind us but we can shape the history ahead, and so I make this commitment: I will listen, I will learn, I will speak, and I will help those who come after us to do the same. I look forward to the debate ahead of us this afternoon.
We hear the word “genocide” thrown around casually, stripped of its precise and grave legal meaning. This trivialisation obscures the real genocidal ideologies—including those openly embraced by Hamas, whose intent is clear from both its words and its actions. Jew hatred has returned: violently in Israel, genteelly on British streets, and through silence in response to atrocities against Jews elsewhere.
The events of 7 October marked a turning point. The massacre that day was driven by a murderous ideology with deep historical roots. It reveals itself in acts of brutality that defy language: murder, mutilation, rape, and the kidnapping of children and the elderly. Yet almost immediately, the world saw denial, distortion, and the inversion of victims and perpetrators. Those are ancient patterns. Together with modern disinformation, they threaten not only Jewish communities but the principles of liberal democracy.
That is why we must confront the reality of antisemitism today: measurable, documented and rising. The data speaks with clarity. More than 1,500 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the first half of 2025, as the Minister said—the second-highest total ever for that period. There are more than 200 incidents every month. We saw sharp spikes following high-profile provocations, including the chants at Glastonbury, proving how cultural platforms can amplify extremism. University campuses show a slight reduction from the recorded highs of 2024, but a drop from crisis levels is still not normal. A campus where Jewish students hide their identity, avoid events, or face intimidation is not a safe campus, and it does not respect academic freedoms. Antisemitism is not a metropolitan phenomenon. The numbers in Manchester have been described as sickening, but incidents occur in cities, towns and rural communities across the country. This is a national problem.
Institutional responses remain inconsistent: policing varies dramatically from place to place; public bodies hesitate; cultural institutions falter under political pressures; and inconsistency creates space in which extremism grows. We can legislate against crime but we cannot legislate away hatred. The long-term defence is education, yet this is where new challenges have emerged. The number of schools marking Holocaust Memorial Day has fallen sharply, from 2,000 in 2023 to 1,200 in 2024, and only 850 in 2025. Teachers express uncertainty about discussing modern conflicts. Some refuse to mark Holocaust Memorial Day unless it is reframed. This is not just a moment to reflect; it is a warning, and there is a duty to deal with it. We are at a crossroads and we must address this. We need to ensure that leadership is there. We cannot educate children about the Holocaust unless those children are prepared to be in classrooms. We must recognise that this will affect all of us.
I conclude by dealing with a question that we have grappled with before. We have been worried about the nature of the Holocaust, whether it will be diluted by subsequent holocausts and whether we are going to do “Holocaust-lite”. The debate that we had the other day made it clear that this is not our intention. However, we must not forget the Roma genocide.
It was Danny Danon who reminded me most forcefully that the characteristics of the Holocaust applied also—almost exclusively—to the Roma genocide. People were selected not on the basis of who they were, what they did or where they lived but on the basis of the Nazis’ views on race. He reminded me that Adolf Eichmann, at his trial in Israel in the 1960s, faced charges against him for the Roma genocide. I sincerely hope that the Roma can commemorate their genocide at the new national memorial when it is built. I am pleased to announce that the USC Shoah Foundation in the United States is in negotiations to ensure that we host one of the main servers of that institution’s enormous records of Holocaust testimony. This will ensure that the United Kingdom can bring with it many of its methods of remembrance of the Holocaust.
There are many photographs that bring the Holocaust to mind, but for me two main photographs always bring it back to me. The first I suspect will be familiar to Members around the House: the young boy at the Warsaw uprising who has been arrested, with his hands in the air, surrendering to large German soldiers. I am pleased to say that there is good evidence that the young man survived. The second is of a frightened young girl in a scarf peering out of a cattle truck. She is Roma, she is on the way to Auschwitz and she will not survive. Those two young people show what we lost. They show the possibilities that we did not have. We must confront. We must do more than light candles. We must ensure that our children, our grandchildren and those who survive in a multicultural Britain remember the Holocaust and remember what happens when government goes bad. We will ensure that their memory will always be kept.