Scottish Parliament debate on Remembering the Holocaust - Jan 24

I ask those who are leaving the public gallery to do so quietly.

The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S5M-15264, in the name of Richard Lyle, on remembering the Holocaust. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.

Motion debated, 

That the Parliament recognises that 27 January 2019 is Holocaust Memorial Day; believes that the day is an important opportunity to reflect on the tragedy of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed during the times of Nazi rule in Germany; remembers that approximately 17 million people lost their lives during this dark time with 6 million of those being Jews; considers that the pain, suffering and sorrow that was caused comes from views rooted in hatred and prejudice and perpetrated by those with dangerous thoughts of superiority; acknowledges that it has almost been 70 years since the Holocaust; reiterates its condemnation of the actions of those involved, and supports the victims of this and other genocides throughout recent history; commends all service personnel who fought in defence of liberty, freedom and justice, especially those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, and reiterates its commitment to condemning any antisemitic action or language present today and defending all ethnic groups that are oppressed and persecuted throughout the world.

A lot of members want to speak in the open debate, so I ask members not to go over their normal slot of four minutes.

I, too, thank Richard Lyle for lodging the motion for debate. 

From a very early age, I learned about what had happened to the Jews during the second world war, because my mum regularly talked about the war and what had happened. However, she was never able to explain to me how a group of human beings could murder other human beings on an industrial scale. I do not think that that has ever been explained.

I was in Auschwitz last Easter and it was a chilling visit that remains in my mind every day. I asked the excellent guide how the Holocaust could have happened. Her answer was similar to what Tom Arthur said—it was about how hate, antisemitism, racism and false news can spread so that people start to believe it. That is why it is right and proper that we always call out hate, racism and antisemitism, wherever they exist. Similarly, we must call out fake news.

The other point that the guide made that day was that when Hitler came to power he initially wanted to expel many of the Jews from Germany, but the problem was that other countries would not take them as refugees. That reminded me of the story of the MS St Louis, a German ocean liner that set off in 1939 with more than 900 Jews on board. It tried to dock in Cuba, then America and then Canada, but none of those nations would allow the refugees to enter their country. Historians estimate that a quarter of the people who were on board died in extermination camps once they had gone back to Europe.

The important point about Holocaust memorial day is that we should learn from history. We should not only learn about how such an awful, terrible thing could be done by human beings to other human beings; we should also learn from what happened. 

The theme of this year’s memorial day is “Torn from home”. It is estimated that 50 million people across the world have been displaced. We see people fleeing horrendous violence and the threat of death in Syria, yet they find it difficult to find countries to take them in. While we condemn the Holocaust, we must remember that, as Richard Lyle said, similar things are happening today across the world, in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. Let us not forget countries that are so poverty stricken that the people there are starving to death and are unable to flee, such as Yemen.

It is important to remember the horrors so that they can never happen again, but we must be aware that many such things continue to happen. It is important that we address that.

When I went on a tour of Kraków, the guide took me to the Jewish quarter. Tens of thousands of Jewish people were moved out of the quarter and into a ghetto. Most of them ended up in extermination camps and died. No one stood up for them. Why did that happen?

There are lessons to learn, but anyone who thinks that we do not have such threats today needs to think again. Let us remember that.

I conclude by congratulating the Scottish Government and local government on the fact that our schools are at the forefront of ensuring that our young people learn exactly what happened in the second world war. I hope that education will address the problem and prevent anything like that happening in the future.

Before I call Gillian Martin, I point out that there are still a number of members who wish to speak in the debate, so I am happy to accept a motion to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes.

Motion moved,

That, under Rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes.—[Richard Lyle]

Motion agreed to.

I understand that there is so much to say in this debate and I have been generous so far with timings. However, I am starting to get a bit concerned that we will overrun and that I will have to cut someone out. I really do not want to do that so I ask the remaining speakers to please be mindful of time. Thank you.

I thank Richard Lyle for securing this important debate. In the midst of inconceivable horror, when we could lose our faith in humanity as we listen to terrible accounts of human beings behaving in what are often described as inhuman ways, heroes and examples of the best in humanity can emerge.

This Tuesday, in the garden lobby of the Parliament, I sat transfixed, along with many others here, as I listened to the account of Holocaust survivor Janine Webber. That is the first time, to my knowledge, that I have been in the same room as someone who survived the Holocaust. Janine is now in her 80s and is still with us only because of the brave people who risked their lives to help the young Jewish girl in Poland that she was then. She is here because of the love that trumped hatred.

I want to use the rest of my time to tell the story of another person who exhibited the best of humanity when all around him people were contemplating and committing atrocities. His name was Dr Janusz Korczak and he was a paediatrician, journalist and children’s author.

After serving as a military doctor, he decided that the best use of his time was as an educator of children. Along with his fellow educator Stefa Wilczynska, he founded his orphanage in Warsaw for Jewish children, which was called Dom Sierot.

Dr Korczak was an educational pioneer whose philosophy of teaching was decades ahead of his time. There was a focus on making children independent and confident, learning outdoors and learning through discussion and dialogue, never by rote. He gave those children a chance to thrive. His orphanage even had its own children’s parliament, where the children were empowered to make decisions. They had their own newspaper, where they could express their views, and their own court, where they could exhibit and learn the value of justice and taking responsibility.

Then, as we know only too well, the Nazis came to Poland, and Korczak’s work became about the protection and survival of those children. The number of children he took in at the orphanage increased as children lost their parents at the hands of the Nazis. In 1940, as Warsaw’s Jews were forced into the ghetto, Korczak’s orphanage moved there, too. Korczak went with his children despite the Nazis repeatedly offering him the chance to stay on what they called “the Aryan side”.

On 5 August 1942, Dr Korczak, Stefa and the 12 remaining orphanage staff boarded the train to Treblinka with their 200 children. We all know that no one ever came back from Treblinka. Korczak was with the children to the end, comforting them and protecting them until he could not.

I encourage everyone to seek out the film “Korczak”, which was directed by the incredible Polish director Andrzej Wajda, because there is so much more to the story that I do not have time to tell here.

Alongside the accounts of horrors and hatred, which we must tell forever as a warning from history—I pay particular tribute to Alex Rowley who talked about that warning from history and said that we have a responsibility to never, ever turn away anyone who needs our help—there are the Janusz Korczaks and the Stefa Wilczynskas, whose stories of courage and love we must never forget. There are the stories told by Janine Webber of her aunt, who saved her life, and of the Pole who harboured 14 Jews in Warsaw when all around them, people were being put into wagons and taken to Treblinka. Alongside those horrors, there are stories of love that we must never forget. In the midst of hatred, the stories of love shine through.

Like my colleagues, I am grateful for this annual opportunity to mark Holocaust memorial day in Parliament, and I am grateful to Richard Lyle for having ensured that we have that opportunity again this year.

In the year since we last held this debate, we have seen yet more events that throw into question whether Europe and the wider world has learned from history’s worst atrocity. Antisemitism might be a more visible issue today than it was a few years ago, but that is not because it is being rooted out. Whether we are talking about the actions of Governments such as in Hungary and Poland or individuals and hate groups—including those in the UK and Scotland—we cannot underestimate the very real threat that hatred still poses to all of us, but which disproportionately threatens already-oppressed communities such as our Jewish friends and family.

In the past week, The Ferret—the blog of Scotland’s investigation collective—has found that an extremist antisemitic and fascist organisation plans to infiltrate our community councils. The group is modelled on Oswald Mosley’s pro-Nazi fascist organisation from a few decades ago.

MI5 has now taken on the role of leading the fight against extremist far-right groups in the UK because the threat that they pose has grown significantly in a short space of time. Many of those groups and individuals might appear ridiculous and utterly marginalised. However, they are only marginalised until they are not, exactly as the Nazi party was: in a very short space of time it went from being a political party that could barely muster 1 per cent of the vote to taking absolute control of its country.

We should not for a second treat Holocaust memorial day as an opportunity only to remember. It is an opportunity to remind ourselves of the horrors that were allowed to happen on our continent within living memory, and to recommit ourselves to stopping them from happening again.

Like Gillian Martin and a number of other members, I have had the privilege of meeting and talking to survivors of the Holocaust. I was acutely aware that, in the future, very few people will be able to say that. We are one of the last generations that will be able to say that, within living memory, we have been able to connect with the people who survived that atrocity.

I will focus on one particular anniversary this afternoon. In the year since our most recent Holocaust memorial event, the world marked—all too quietly—the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. By the spring of 1943, some 400,000 Jewish Warsaw residents had been forced into a ghetto of 3.5km². Thirty per cent of the city’s population was forced into 2.5 per cent of its area, with not nearly enough food, thousands of people dying from starvation, and more than seven people to every room.

From October 1941, the occupying Germans issued a decree that any Jew caught outside the ghetto should be executed. At around the same time, stories of the mass execution of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators reached the ghetto, and a number of young people began to organise for its defence. From the summer of 1942, the Nazis started the extermination of Warsaw’s Jews. Every day, 6,000 people were to be sent to the extermination camps. The first group was sent to die on 22 July 1942, the eve of the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of Jewish history. By mid-September, 300,000 of the ghetto’s 400,000 residents had been murdered. In that same month, the Jewish resistance managed to secure a small number of arms and explosives from the Polish home army, which the resistance supplemented with home-made grenades. However, like many Jewish resistance groups across the continent, it was not supported by other anti-Nazi resistance groups. To the eternal shame of most of Europe’s resistance movements, their own antisemitism cost the lives of many Jews.

In January 1943, the Nazis resumed the liquidation of the ghetto, and the resistance started. Its first action was to attack German troops that were moving a group of Jews to the extermination camps. Most of the dozen fighters who were involved died, but many of the people who had been set to be murdered in Treblinka were able to escape. The commander of that operation and the overall leader of the uprising was 24-year-old Mordechai Anielewicz. Anielewicz’s resistance leadership then began preparing for the inevitable all-out assault on the ghetto. The 1,000 fighters of the ghetto—men, women and children—had no expectation that they would win. They were entirely surrounded, they had limited weapons and equipment, and there was no prospect of rescue. In their own words, their resistance was, “for the honour of the Jewish people”, to inspire Jews across occupied Europe to resist and to protest the world’s silence at their extermination.

Their uprising began on 19 April 1943, when 850 Nazi soldiers and a tank entered the ghetto to burn it down block by block. They were driven back by the Jewish fighters. In a symbolic moment, stories of which spread across Europe, two boys raised Polish and Jewish flags from the roof of a building, causing Himmler to bellow at his Warsaw commander that he must bring them down.

Instead of fighting the entrenched and fearless defenders, the Nazis used artillery, flame-throwers and poison gas to burn them out. Anielewicz and his commanders died in their bunker with some 300 others. Resistance lasted for weeks, with fighters disappearing and reappearing from the sewers and their tunnel network. Eventually, the ghetto was levelled. A small number of fighters and civilians made it out to continue their resistance, a handful of whom are still alive today.

In total, some 400,000 ghetto residents were murdered by May 1943, but those 1,000 fighters, who were largely young people led by someone who was the same age that I am today, made the Nazis pay for what they were trying to do. Their story is one that many people have nothing more than passing knowledge of; many more have never heard of it at all. It is a story of people in the most desperate circumstances who, facing certain death, chose to resist the evil surrounding them until their final moments. I think that it is a story worth remembering.

I am very pleased to have been called to speak in this year’s debate to mark Holocaust memorial day, and I, too, congratulate my colleague Richard Lyle on securing the debate. The importance that members across the chamber attach to it is evident from the number of members who wish to make speeches.

On the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, it is vital that we continue to bear witness to the 6 million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. We must do so not only in memory of those who were murdered, but to ensure that we are always vigilant and that such state-sanctioned, clinical, calculated mass extermination never happens again. Sadly, the world has seen genocide since the end of the second world war, but our efforts to promote mutual respect and understanding must not falter; rather, they must be redoubled.

I, too, have visited Auschwitz. My visit was in the summer of 1982, when I was a young postgraduate student studying international relations at the Johns Hopkins University’s Bologna centre, which had an exchange programme with the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. As part of our visit to Kraków, we had the opportunity to go to Auschwitz.

I remember my visit as if it were yesterday—as is the case for other members, it is etched on my memory. I remember walking up to the gates of what had been the labour camp at Auschwitz, which beckoned people with the words “Arbeit macht frei”. I remember, too, the smiling faces of the young twins in photographs that covered an entire wall—photographs that broke your heart—which were taken before the grotesque experiments of the butcher Josef Mengele. I remember the shoes and the industrial-scale ovens in Birkenau. I also remember the train tracks that came right into the death camp. I remember asking myself how it was possible that ordinary people—people like you and me, Presiding Officer—could be in Paris or Amsterdam one day and then be taken like cattle on trains from the centre of those grand, civilised European cities to end up in Auschwitz-Birkenau. I also remember asking myself how it could be that Europe had descended into such obscenity.

However, in the midst of such obscenities, as we have heard, there were many heroes. One such heroine I would like to pay tribute to today is lrena Sendler. Irena Sendler was a young Polish social worker who had a permit that gave her access to the Warsaw ghetto. What she saw there led her to smuggle food, medicine and supplies into the ghetto and to smuggle children out of it. In fact, over a period of some four years, she saved 2,500 children. I will repeat that: 2,500 children were saved by Irena Sendler. In 1943, she was finally caught by the Gestapo. Although she was brutally tortured, she did not give up the whereabouts of a single child. She was sentenced to death but, miraculously, she managed to escape. She later said of that time:

“Heroes do extraordinary things. What I did was not an extraordinary thing. It was normal.”

How the world could have done with many more Irena Sendlers, for she was, indeed, a real heroine who did exceptionally extraordinary things. I bear witness.

It is a privilege to take part in today’s Holocaust memorial day debate, and I join other members in thanking Richard Lyle for lodging the motion.

There have been some exceptional speeches this afternoon. I found it extremely difficult to decide what to say, because, although there is a whole lot that can be said, in some senses there is not a lot to say. When I speak on this topic, I am conscious of the deafening silence from the millions upon millions of voices and souls who are not here to tell us their story and whose offspring are not here to contribute to our society and our world.

In that context, it is hard to understand the hatred in the minds of others. Nevertheless, we can never forget the cost of division and discrimination or, ultimately, the attempted annihilation of a people, their culture and their values—and, of course, those individual lives. Most of all, the Holocaust is a reminder that we cannot let our common humanity be challenged or divided, because it is indivisible. It reminds us that, despite living in a fractious world that, all too often, focuses on the narrowness of difference, we are all human beings of equal worth and value, and it is incumbent on each and every one of us to do what we can to make the world a better place and make room for others.

This year, I remember in particular George Brady, the brother of Hana Brady, who was himself a Holocaust survivor. I feel exceptionally lucky and privileged to have met George here, in Edinburgh, at the international film festival during a showing of “Inside Hana’s Suitcase”—a film that I thoroughly recommend to other members and anyone who wants to understand both the tragic and, at times, the very random nature of Nazi death camps. I still remember how remarkable George was when he spoke with a very philosophical view of life and a great appreciation of the time that he had had with his family. I also remember, though, his real anger, his struggle to comprehend what had happened to his sister and parents, and the complete disconnect that he felt with his early life.

What was perhaps most surprising was that, in that anger, there was no bitterness or hatred; instead, there was a real determination to ensure that life was valued, respected and cherished—and, above all else, that that message was passed on to the next generation. George was determined to ensure that the memories of those who were lost live on in our hearts and minds.

George died this month, on 11 January. It was a sad loss to the survivor community and another reminder to all of us of the passage of time. As other members have said, rather than making these debates and the commemorations less important, the loss of those who bore first-hand witness to the horrors of the Holocaust makes them all the more important. It is our solemn duty to remember, and I am pleased that the Parliament and the country continue to do so.

I will close by highlighting a point that a Jewish friend of mine who teaches in London often makes to the five-year-olds in her class. It is important because it gets right to the heart of these issues. She says that discrimination, intolerance, bullying and antisemitism always start with one. If we remember that fact and ensure that we are not the one who starts such behaviour by targeting another and, importantly, not the one who stands by and allows such behaviour to go unchallenged, we can each play our part in making sure that those terrible acts do not happen on our watch.

Together we have a huge responsibility, and together we must create the world that we want to see.

I thank Richard Lyle for bringing this important debate to the chamber and commend members for all the powerful speeches that we have heard so far. Holocaust memorial day, which is on 27 January, provides, as the motion states,

“an important opportunity to reflect on the tragedy of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed”.

It is extremely important that young people have the opportunity to visit the sites of the concentration camps and experience for themselves what, for me, was reflected only in school history books. I therefore recognise the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust and its continued commitment to supporting our young people’s education. Last year, I heard directly from two students from Maxwelltown high school in Lochside, Dumfries, about their profound memory-evoking experience of their visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. My nephew is preparing for his own school trip, and he and I will be having a wee discussion about what he expects to see.

The conversations with these young folks made me remember how, when I lived and worked in Los Angeles, I visited the Museum of Tolerance, which is a multimedia museum designed to examine racism and prejudice around the world, with a specific focus on the history of the Holocaust. This thought-provoking place is visited by residents, students and tourists alike, and, when I checked its visitor numbers ahead of the debate, I found them to be in the millions. The message that is being taught there is, as Adam Tomkins and Tom Arthur powerfully highlighted, a message against hate.

I will share with members an experience that gave me a physical connection with the Holocaust. I was a recent arrival—an economic migrant—in Los Angeles and, one day, I was in the operating room, about to assist a surgeon with taking the gall bladder out of a 76-year-old patient. The woman, who was of German origin, had been resident in LA for 50 years. She was very frightened of her surgery and of being put under anaesthesia, and I reassured her that we would look after her and keep her safe. I held her hand, and, when I looked down, I saw her outstretched forearm on the surgical arm-board. On it was scrieved—or written—a pale grey set of numbers: 162 753. I do not know whether those are the exact numbers, but I definitely remember that they made me feel shock, anger and compassion all at once in a quick flood of emotion—and they still do today. What are burned in my memory are that pale grey tattoo, the significance of those numbers and the rush of emotions that overwhelmed me.

I was 26 years old when I looked after that lady, and I thought about how, when she was 26, she was there—and she was a survivor. The numbers that had been rudely forced on to her pale skin had made a permanent lifelong mark, but, more important, she had survived the horrors and nightmares of Auschwitz. That insensitive—indeed, inhuman—imprint on that woman has been part of my own memories for 25 years.

The visits that the weans are making and my memories of that survivor have contributed to my continuing to care for other victims of oppression across this planet. Tolerance, respect and a’ that are what are needed. As we recite and remember the words of Robert Burns tomorrow, two days ahead of Holocaust memorial day, we must remember

“That Man to Man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers”—

and sisters—

“be for a’ that.”

I thank Richard Lyle for his striking speech, and I thank my colleagues Adam Tomkins, Tom Arthur and Emma Harper, from whom we have just heard, for their own exceptionally striking speeches.

What I have to say is nothing particularly new that has not been covered, but I would like to say it anyway. It is to my shame that it has taken me until this stage in my life to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Poland, but I did so on the very last day of 2018. I have read what most people have read about the Holocaust and the death camps, but, as Annabelle Ewing, Alex Rowley and others have said, it does not prepare anyone for the sheer scale of Auschwitz.

When people arrive, the guide will ask them not to take photographs in certain areas. One such area is where they will see the personal effects of those who perished—heaps of their shoes, cases and personal belongings. Those are very sharp and pointed messages that each of those women, children and men was an individual with their own story of how they got to that dreadful place.

Accounts from brave survivors who escaped to tell the world their stories are everything to us because, without them, we could not begin to get our heads around the horror of what happened. How it could happen at all is the imperative question for any person who is interested in truly ensuring that it could never happen again. That is why the Holocaust Memorial Trust is a vital organisation. Its purpose is to remind us not only of the 6 million Jews who were brutally murdered but of how that could have been allowed to happen in the first place.

The world will mark this day: the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, where well over 1 million people were murdered. The Holocaust, undoubtedly the world’s darkest moment, began in 1941 and lasted to the end of the war, in 1945. It was genocide motivated by antisemitism—the demonisation of a race—and pure, unadulterated evil. The Holocaust is a human story of what was perpetrated by human beings while other human tolerated it. It is about the worst of mankind.

Around 6 million Jews—about a third of the world’s Jewish population—were murdered in the Holocaust. There were other victims, too: Roma, ethnic Serbs, Poles and gay people were among those who were also murdered. It is clear that even democracy itself is not enough to prevent such evil if it is not resisted and people do not question what they hear, allowing their minds instead to be swayed by demonisation, prejudice and hatred of others. Sometimes the sin of doing nothing is the deadliest sin of all. John Stuart Mill, the British philosopher and political theorist, said:

“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

The Holocaust Memorial Trust’s theme this year is “Torn from home”, which is appropriate in 2019. Conflict in some areas of the world is man made. The United Nations recorded that, in a period of just over three months from April 1994, more than 800,000 people were brutally slaughtered by their fellow citizens in Rwanda. Former United States President Bill Clinton has called Rwanda one of the greatest regrets of his presidency. He believes that, had the US intervened earlier, around 300,000 people might have been saved.

It is particularly alarming to see a new political trend sweeping through Europe: the rise of far-right and populist-right parties. We must consider the impact on people who are torn from their homes because of conflict. Their way of life is unimaginable to us, as we have not been through it, but we should consider it for one minute.

I think that all members of the Parliament would agree that refugees are welcome here. As politicians, we must remember the Holocaust. We must do our duty and speak up against injustice, evil, racism and antisemitism wherever they arise. We must hope that never again will mankind allow to prevail any such conditions that any people must endure as their fate. May we be blessed with the memories of the Jewish survivors as we remember the Holocaust and as we try to do all that we can to ensure that such an event will never happen again anywhere in the world.

I congratulate my colleague Richard Lyle on securing this important annual debate. I also thank the Holocaust Memorial Trust for its extremely powerful and thought-provoking event in the Parliament on Tuesday evening, to which other members have already referred. Listening to Janine Webber was a privilege but also a stark reminder of man’s inhumanity to man, woman and child.

Our annual debates on Holocaust memorial day are absolutely necessary, and I have spoken in a few of them in the past. I did not do so last year but wanted to add my voice again this year. Colleagues from across the chamber have already spoken eloquently and powerfully about how important the debate is, and about their various experiences. I visited Auschwitz in 1999, when I was doing an InterRail trip around Europe.

Walking in under the “Arbeit macht frei” gates was daunting, but what really struck me was that, when I had been there for only a second or two, the first language that I heard was German, from visiting German schoolchildren. I was slightly unnerved for an instant but then realised that that was the right thing to see and hear. Education is so important to learn the lessons from the past.

The Holocaust memorial day website includes the wording

“learning from genocide for a better future”. 

It is such a simple message, but it is so important. I mentioned Janine Webber a few moments ago. Janine Webber was a genuine inspiration with her love for life and her thanks to the people who helped her in the past. Anytime she spoke about how a Nazi guard came to where she was staying and shot her seven-year-old brother but left her to live, you could tell that she would never get over that.

At the Holocaust memorial day event on Tuesday evening, we also heard from the Very Reverend Dr Lorna Hood from Remembering Srebrenica Scotland. Dr Hood reminded everyone of the quote from the American philosopher George Santayana:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We have heard today from colleagues about what is going on in society today and about the people they have spoken to who are seeking asylum, who are refugees and who are fleeing persecution and trying to get a better life. We have to stand up to help. As a society and as a country, we have to be prepared to help those who need that help.

Political developments around the world certainly indicate that there is a growing sense in many countries of blaming the outsider for many of the things that are taking place. That is not a new notion but, unfortunately, that history has repeated itself time and again, only with a different outsider. In the past in Scotland, it would have been Irish Catholics or Italians. Now, people are blaming others because their skin colour is different or they are fleeing somewhere to get a better life here. Scots have done the same thing for centuries—they have left to get a better life somewhere else. 

I will close because I am conscious of time. On 12 June last year, I was privileged to listen to two of my constituents, Megan Quinn and Rhys Lambert, deliver time for reflection—12 June is the date of Anne Frank’s birthday. Megan and Rhys are students at St Columba’s high school in Gourock who were doing a project with the Anne Frank Trust. Working with the trust has shown their dedication and the dedication of the school to learn and to teach others about the absolute misery and man’s inhumanity to man that the Holocaust delivered.

I ask Aileen Campbell to respond to the debate.

How long do I have?

Just like everyone else, take as long as you like, cabinet secretary.

Like other members across the chamber, I thank Richard Lyle for lodging the motion, for speaking so movingly to it and for highlighting the significance of Holocaust memorial day. 

I think that everyone would agree that it has been a powerful, moving and emotional debate, and I thank all who have contributed. Even if members did not think that they had something different to offer, everyone’s voices have added and contributed hugely and immensely to the debate. 

International Holocaust memorial day provides an important moment for us all to gather and to reflect collectively on the terrible events of the Holocaust, and the millions of people who were murdered. It is also an opportunity to remember the courage and bravery shown by all of those who fought for liberty, freedom and justice, some of whom, sadly, paid with their lives. 

I highlight, in particular, Annabelle Ewing’s speech about Irena Sendler, who was clearly a remarkable, inspiring and brave woman, and I am glad that Annabelle Ewing had the opportunity to pay tribute to what Irena Sendler did and to her legacy.

As well as the unspeakable persecution by the Nazis of the Jewish community, we must remember their persecution of gay people, disabled people and anybody else who was viewed as different. As others have said, it is estimated that as many as 1 million Gypsies and Roma people were also murdered by the Nazi regime.

We must never forget the horrors of the Holocaust and of other genocides around the world, which are a stark reminder of the inhumanity and violence that bigotry and intolerance can cause if they are left unchallenged. On that, Adam Tomkins is absolutely right. He powerfully expressed the idea that the Holocaust was calculated, systematic and motivated by hate. Adam Tomkins, Richard Lyle, Tom Arthur and others were correct that there is room in politics for passion and anger but there must never be any room for hatred. As we remember and reflect on that, action and leadership are required by all politicians so that we lead by example in our discourse and conduct. I think that we are all united on all those issues.

Sadly, the Holocaust and the remembrance that followed have not spelled the end of hatred. As others have mentioned, this year marks the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and the 40th anniversary of the end of the genocide in Cambodia. Last year marked the 25th anniversary of the start of the atrocities in northern Bosnia.

Atrocious human rights violations are still happening in the world right now. In Darfur, in Sudan, millions of people are being forced to flee their homes because they face the threat of horrific violence and persecution. Last year, the dreadful attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh saw an ordinary day of worship turned into a day of fear that was felt around the world.

The debate has coalesced around a strong, united—and, in many ways, simple—message: we must not be complacent in the face of discrimination, racism and hatred. We must take action to tackle hatred and intolerance and to promote the positive vision of the society that we aspire to be. The message about never being complacent was delivered strongly by Ross Greer.

In part, that is why each year we work in partnership with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and Interfaith Scotland to deliver Scotland’s national Holocaust memorial day event. This year, I have the privilege of speaking at an event in East Renfrewshire. A variety of events are taking place across Scotland next week, and I hope that members will take the opportunity to participate, which will again show that, across our communities, local government and the Scottish Government, Scotland is united in the stance that lessons of the past must guide our future.

Like Alex Rowley, I will say a little about this year’s theme, “Torn from home”. Many of us take home for granted; it is our physical place of residence, our community or our country. Such places should offer a sense of safety and security that is important to our everyday lives and to our sense of wellbeing. I cannot imagine how I would feel if any of those places were taken away from me or my family, or if we were forced to leave those places behind—places around which we have built our lives, places to which we attach such strong feelings of belonging and connectedness and places in which we feel safe.

As Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Local Government, I have had the privilege of meeting refugees and people who are seeking asylum, and of listening to people who have been forced to leave their homes and livelihoods behind, who have been separated from their friends and family and who have faced the very frightening uncertainty of an unknown future. That unknown future is often more appealing than remaining at home and facing the consequences of hate and prejudice. The reality is that no one chooses to be torn from home yet, despite years of remembering the horrors of the Holocaust, that remains an experience for far too many people around the world. Alex Rowley reminded us of the 50 million people around the world who have been displaced.

Although I am proud that Scotland has a long history of welcoming people of all nationalities and faiths, and I am proud that we are committed to supporting their integration into our communities, it is vital that we continue to send the message that Scotland is a welcoming place for all those who have chosen to make this country their home, and that we do so with a vigilance that never permits the creep of complacency. Although Scotland is an open and inclusive nation, we are not immune from hateful behaviour or prejudicial attitudes.

In June 2017, we published an ambitious programme of work to tackle hate crime and build community cohesion. I chair an action group with key stakeholders to take that work forward. One area that I want to particularly emphasise is our approach to tackling antisemitism. We know from our regular engagement with Jewish organisations and community leaders that Jewish people continue to experience antisemitism and discrimination. I heard that message at our most recent interfaith summit; I struggled to listen to it because of the impact that antisemitism has on the Jewish community. Antisemitism is absolutely unacceptable. There is no place in Scotland for any form of antisemitism or religious hatred that makes our communities feel insecure or threatened in their daily lives. Scotland’s diversity is our strength and we value and appreciate our relationships with our Jewish communities. That is why we formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism in June 2017. 

We must never forget what prejudice, including antisemitism, can lead to and, therefore, why education about tolerance, compassion and respect is so important. We are committed to providing opportunities for Scotland’s children and young people to learn about the Holocaust as part of their education. For that reason, the Scottish Government continues to support the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, whose lessons from Auschwitz project is an incredibly powerful way for young people to gain insight into the horrors of the Holocaust and, just as importantly, to learn about why it happened.

To date, more than 4,000 Scottish students have participated in the project and more than 550 Scottish teachers. Last year, the First Minister visited Auschwitz as part of the programme, with 89 pupils from Scottish schools. I have truly appreciated the contributions today from members who have visited Auschwitz and their moving accounts of what they saw and how their experiences impacted on them. While the living memories and testimonies of the Holocaust survivors fade, it is even more crucial for the next and future generations to continue to learn about the Holocaust as part of their education, in order to emerge into their adulthood as responsible, compassionate citizens of the future. 

Holocaust memorial day in Scotland provides us with an opportunity to learn from the past and encourages us to work together to tackle hatred and prejudice, so that we can create a stronger and more inclusive future for everyone. Our commitment to promoting and supporting Holocaust memorial day demonstrates our collective resolve to stand in solidarity with victims of genocide and other human rights abuses and atrocities around the world. We must keep alive the memory of such genocides and never forget the consequences of bigotry and intolerance.

This is about more than memory and not forgetting. It is about action, vigilance and commitment: commitment to tackle all forms of oppression, hate and discrimination; vigilance to never let it go when we hear hate or witness prejudice and to never tolerate attempts to create an otherness of anyone who may be different; and action to work collectively to create a Scotland and a world that are tolerant, kind and compassionate and which celebrate diversity. 

I believe that another world free from hatred is possible, if we decide to make it happen, but it will take more than reflection. That is why I am proud that in this Parliament this afternoon, regardless of political party, we are absolutely united— unlike many Parliaments and chambers around the world—and we should draw power and pride from that. We should use this Parliament’s united message from each and every one of our elected representatives to make change and to make progress on tolerance, not just in Scotland but furth of our shores. One way to ensure that Holocaust memorial day and Holocaust memories do not become only for reflection is to strive to create a better future here and now and for future generations .

I pay tribute to Richard Lyle and every member who took part in the debate for their moving and powerful articulation of why the Holocaust continues to be remembered and commemorated in this Parliament.

That concludes our very important debate today.

Every party in this Parliament, as well as the independent member, has supported this motion on the Holocaust. I thank the vast number of members who signed my motion, enabling the debate to take place, and every member who will speak in it, for their support. It is appreciated. 

Today, we commemorate a tragedy of the past, but I believe that the topic is completely relevant to the issues that we face in our world today. The date 30 January 1933 is one that the world should and will never forget. It was the day on which Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. On his very first day in office, he began his terrible machinations. Eventually, he would have the means to perpetrate the terrible genocide that is known as the Holocaust. Through various stages of persecution, Jews were oppressed by the laws of the countries that they lived in, separated from their loved ones, placed in various types of camps and prisons, and ultimately killed in their millions by horrific and inhumane methods.

I grew up reading of the Jewish people’s suffering in “Purnell’s History of the Second World War”, along with other publications that detailed the tragic history that they have endured. Perhaps no other group has survived more hate and violence than the Jewish people. 

Last year, as a member of the cross-party group on building bridges with Israel, I and other members visited Yad Vashem, the world Holocaust remembrance centre, set on the slopes of the Mount of Remembrance on the edge of Jerusalem. Yad Vashem is a solemn place, with its nine chilling galleries of interactive historical displays that detail the Holocaust, using a range of multimedia, including photographs, films, documents, letters, works of art and personal items found in the camps and ghettos. The museum leads into an eerie space that contains more than 3 million names of Holocaust victims. There is a hall of remembrance, where the ashes of the dead are buried, and the avenue of the righteous among the nations, with more than 2,000 trees that were planted in honour of non-Jews who endangered their lives in order to rescue Jews from the Nazis. Although not an emotionally easy museum, Yad Vashem is worth a visit, in order to understand the true scale and impact of the Holocaust. The photographs and displays, and the walk round the gardens, were very emotional, especially when we came upon a railway car that had been used to transport people to their death. I will always remember what I saw on that visit.

I have not yet visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, but I intend to remedy that as soon as I can.

Colleagues, we all know of the atrocities committed during the second world war, when Nazi Germany executed a calculated plan to exterminate the Jews on a scale that one could not imagine in one’s darkest dreams. Yet those nightmares became a reality and 6 million Jews and countless millions of other people died simply because they were deemed to be inferior or a problem that needed a solution. To Hitler that indefensible final solution was death.

On January 27 1945, roughly 12 years after Hitler came to power, Auschwitz-Birkenau was freed by the allied forces. What the rescuers saw when they entered the concentration death camp was a horror beyond describing.

What goes through someone’s mind to make them desire to exterminate millions of people who are entirely undeserving? As we look back, collectively, we must ask the burning question that is in all our hearts: how could this happen? How could something so evil take place in a civilised, modern society?

I want to emphasise the sorrow and grief that we all share at the tremendous loss of life and at the intense suffering that so many endured. I do not want that to be forgotten in my speech. I also want to speak to humanity as a whole. More than anything, the Holocaust represents a tragedy that is a reminder of humanity and its struggles. On a day such as today, when we mourn the atrocities of Nazi Germany, it is easy to point fingers and cast blame—and it is deserved blame—but to forget that Hitler was human and that Nazis were people is a mistake that none of us can afford to make. To do so would be to lower our guard at a time when we must be constantly vigilant.

World war two ended and those who were involved in carrying out the Holocaust all faced justice—be it in this life or the next. Let us not be blinded, because although we achieved victory against Nazi Germany, we have not defeated human evil. To this day, dangerous people still seek to spread death and destruction. Tragically, only a few months ago, a shooting at a synagogue in Philadelphia resulted in the deaths of 11 people.

Countless atrocities are being committed against a multitude of people and groups. Oppressed peoples suffer persecution, torture, displacement and murder in places around the world. Since the Holocaust, there has been genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

Persecution and discrimination have no place in our communities, because they defy everything that a free and democratic society stands for. We have the power to live productive and moral lives and to oppose those who choose to do the opposite. We have the power to give charitably to those in need across the world. We must stand together and say “Welcome” to those who are discriminated against and persecuted. We should learn to live with one another in peace—what a happy day that would be.

Members of this Parliament cannot stand idly by and watch the vulnerable suffer. We must all recognise that it does not matter what religion we follow, what country we live in, where our parents were born or what language we speak. A crime against humanity affects us all. Unity among the human race on common decency and respect is a necessity in our modern era.

I thank all the members who will speak in the debate today. Their words will mean a lot to many people. I reiterate that we must all recognise that we have the power to choose how we live and how we respond to other lifestyles and decisions.

On a day such as today, we clearly see that mistakes that were made by so many people resulted in millions of lives being lost. The past is sometimes a place of regret and sorrow, but it can also be a teacher unlike any other. The failures and triumphs of the past are a fantastic guidebook for us on how we should live our lives.

Today is meant to honour those who suffered and died in the Holocaust. I commend all those who fought to end the Holocaust. We must continue to combat antisemitism and discrimination in all its forms, on each and every occasion.

I thank Richard Lyle for bringing this debate to the Parliament. I also thank Kezia Dugdale for hosting the beautiful and moving memorial to the Holocaust that was in the garden lobby earlier this week.

“With the absurd precision to which we later had to accustom ourselves, the Germans held the roll-call. At the end the officer asked ‘Wieviel Stück?’ ... The corporal saluted smartly and replied that there were six hundred and fifty ‘pieces’ and that all was in order. They then loaded us on to the buses and took us to the station ... Here the train was waiting for us ... Here we received the first blows: and it was so new and senseless that we felt no pain, neither in body nor in spirit. Only a profound amazement: how can one hit a man without anger?

There were twelve goods wagons for six hundred and fifty men; in mine we were only forty-five, but it was a small wagon. Here then, before our very eyes, under our very feet, was one of those notorious transport trains, those which never return, and of which, shuddering and always a little incredulous, we had so often heard speak. Exactly like this, detail for detail: goods wagons closed from the outside, with men, women and children pressed together without pity, like cheap merchandise, for a journey towards nothingness, a journey down there, towards the bottom. This time it is us who are inside.”

Those words are from the opening chapter of Primo Levi’s autobiographical account of the Holocaust, “If This Is A Man”. In the middle of that passage Primo Levi asks a hauntingly simple question: 

“how can one hit a man without anger?” 

As I said in last year’s debate on Holocaust memorial day, the Holocaust happened because, not very long ago, in the heart of Europe, it was the policy of the Government of a leading European country to eliminate the Jewish people from the face of the earth. Yet the Nazis were not angry with the Jews: the brutality, the beatings, the mass murder and the killing on an industrial scale did not happen because anyone had cause to be angry; they happened because of cold, calculated hatred.

Every year, reflecting on the Holocaust and its legacy, I find myself coming back to the same phrases and even to the same basic thoughts. On the one hand, the Holocaust was unique. Yes, there have been other genocides, but there has been only one Holocaust—only one programme of systematic death so comprehensive in its scale and so audacious in its evil ambition that a whole new country had to be found to give a dispersed and fractured people a home. On the other hand, what strikes one about the Holocaust is also what Hannah Arendt infamously called its “banality”. They were just trains—just ordinary goods wagons, with the goods counted on and counted off, and taken on a journey. To think of it, one shudders, but is always a little incredulous.

That is what hatred can do. Hatred does not create monsters. Monsters are extraordinary and instantly stand out from the crowd. We can see them a mile off and they are very rare. Hatred does not create monsters, but it does allow ordinary men and women to commit terrible acts as if they were the most mundane, quotidian of tasks: just loading goods on to a train.

Arendt coined her notorious phrase “the banality of evil” in her report of Eichmann’s trial for The New Yorker. The great Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen captured her meaning in his poem “All there is to know about Adolf Eichmann”, which I will read—it is very short. 

“EYES: Medium
HAIR: Medium
WEIGHT: Medium
HEIGHT: Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: None
NUMBER OF FINGERS: Ten
NUMBER OF TOES: Ten
INTELLIGENCE: Medium

What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?”

The Holocaust was not mad; it was calculated. It was committed not in a frenzy of anger and emotion but in a climate of cold-headed hatred. There is plenty of room in politics for emotion, for frenzy and even for anger, but not for hatred. Yes, we here disagree on many matters, and those disagreements may make us angry from time to time, but let there be no room here or anywhere else in political life for hatred. Let that, for us, be the lesson of the Holocaust.

I thank my colleague Richard Lyle for securing the debate and for an excellent speech. I also put on record my deep appreciation for the remarks that Adam Tomkins made in what I thought was an absolutely superb speech—one of the finest that I have heard since my election to the Parliament.

The points that both Richard Lyle and Adam Tomkins have touched on get to the central question that we still ask ourselves. How? How could it happen?

The diagnosis of “banality” that was made by Hannah Arendt as she covered the Eichmann trial during the early 1960s—which was effectively summarised by Leonard Cohen in his poem “All there is to know about Adolf Eichmann”—remains the most pertinent. Similarly pertinent is the quote from Primo Levi, “Wieviel Stück?”, that word “Stück” meaning “piece”. 

Hatred is perhaps not positive; it is an absence of empathy. One of the most chilling facts about the Holocaust was the decision to use carbon monoxide and Zyklon B gas in the extermination. During the early phase of the killings in the occupied territories of the east, as the Wehrmacht advanced, SS Einsatzgruppen would follow up behind, killing, shooting and massacring, such as happened at Babi Yar in Ukraine. However, it was determined that using gas would be more humane—not for the victims, but for the perpetrators. Using gas, of course, became possible and the methodology was seized on. Before its systematic attempt to eliminate the Jewish population of Europe, the German Government had been using gas—carbon monoxide—to eliminate the disabled and the infirm. 

At the start of his speech, Richard Lyle made the point that all this started on 30 January 1933. I am currently reading one of the great pieces of literature to have emerged from the Holocaust—the diaries of Victor Klemperer, who was a professor of philology and romance languages in Dresden. Among observations on his own life and on many of the prosaic goings-on that characterised the life of any middle-class German professor, he meticulously noted the slow strangulation and asphyxiation of liberty, civil rights and status—the marginalisation—that took place. 

Although we rightly focus our attention on the events that took place towards the end in the extermination camps—those events are rightfully pre-eminent in our memories—a process of psychological torture preceded that. It is difficult for anyone to try to contemplate what it must have been like for somebody to say that they were a German, only to be told that they were not.

We have spoken so far about the lesson that allowing hate to be tolerated, acceptable or seen as something that can be permitted in moderation is a great folly. As both Richard Lyle and Adam Tomkins said, the greatest mistake that we can make is to look on the Nazis and the crimes that they committed as the acts of monsters. They were cool, clinical and rational. The most chilling story that I have ever heard—it is very difficult to speak about—comes from the extermination of the Hungarian Jews. The Nazis were carrying out murders on such a scale that the crematoria at Auschwitz could not cope, so cremation pits were dug. The testimony of a surviving Sonderkommando member—one of the Jews who were forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria—tells of two Hungarian sisters and their friend. They knew what was going to happen. They said to an SS guard that they would like to die together and asked him to shoot them together. Laughing and chuckling and saying that he would be happy to oblige, the SS guard lined the three of them up and shot. The bullet went through one, two—and the three of them collapsed. The bodies were then thrown into a cremation pit and the screaming began, because one of them had not been shot—and the SS guard laughed; he thought that that was hilarious. 

To know that that happened in living memory, in one of the most advanced civilisations in the world, is a lesson for us all. That is what human beings are capable of. It was not some aberration; it was the end of a cold, clinical and—for them—logical process. We must remember that. 

I agree with Adam Tomkins that, whatever our political differences in the Scottish Parliament, while we can say yes to anger and passion, we must never—ever—say yes to hate.