Extract from Wales Assembly: Questions to the First Minister - Jan 29
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Paul Davies AM (Leader of the Opposition): Diolch, Llywydd. First
Minister, a recent survey by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
brought to light the disturbing fact that one in 20 people in the
UK do not believe that the Holocaust really happened. In light of
this, what is the Welsh Government doing to ensure that this denial
and the prevalence of anti-semitism are addressed, and
that we work to keep the...Request free
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Paul
Davies AM (Leader of the Opposition):
Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, a recent survey by the
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust brought to light the
disturbing fact that one in 20 people in the UK do not
believe that the Holocaust really happened. In light of
this, what is the Welsh Government doing to ensure that
this denial and the prevalence of anti-semitism are addressed, and
that we work to keep the devastating memory of the
Holocaust relevant so that future generations can learn
from history?
Mark Drakeford AM (First
Minister of Wales): Llywydd, can I begin by
agreeing with what the Member has said? It is shocking to
read that figure, and very hard indeed to credit how it
can be true that that number of people would have been
captured by that sense of denial of one of the most awful
occurrences of the whole of the twentieth century. The
job of addressing it falls partly to Government, of
course, and this Government will want to do everything we
can. I was very pleased to be able to join other Members
of this Assembly at the Holocaust memorial service here
in Cardiff at the end of last week—an immensely dignified
occasion where we heard directly from some people who are
still alive who were caught up in those shocking events.
We will want to do what we can, but the problem, as I'm sure the leader of the opposition would acknowledge, is wider than Government; it is a cultural issue more broadly in our society. There is a need to mobilise a whole range of different actions that can be taken to make sure that we never—we never—accept that people who were the victims of those dreadful events are either forgotten or, at the worst, are blamed themselves for what took place.
Paul
Davies AM: I agree with you,
First Minister; we all have a responsibility. Now, the
figures released by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
demonstrate just how far we need to go to ensure that, as
a society, we have a solid understanding of what happened
during the Holocaust. We are all bound by responsibility
to ensure that happens. Research from the Antisemitism
Policy Trust found that online searches looking for
information on the Holocaust being a hoax rise about 30
per cent every year on Holocaust Memorial Day, and
anti-Semitic searches in Wales are higher than in any
other part of the United Kingdom. We've also seen the
number of racially motivated hate crimes increase here in
Wales as well. I'm sure you'll agree with me that
awareness and education are the best means of addressing
this. Therefore, are you confident that learning about
the Holocaust and the consequences of religious or ethnic
genocide are given enough emphasis in Wales's new
curriculum?
Mark Drakeford
AM: I do believe that those
points are well understood amongst those people who are
responsible for designing the new curriculum. In that
service held in Cardiff City Hall on Friday, amongst the
most moving parts of a moving service were the two young
people from Wales who had visited Auschwitz as part of a
programme run by the Welsh Government and who came back
to reflect to the rest of us the lessons that they felt
that they had learnt, and to say to us as well how they
were using those lessons to talk to other young people in
their own age range and in their own institutions about
the effect that that experience had had on them.
There'll be other people, I know, around the Chamber, who've made the same visit; I did myself some years ago. It was an overwhelming experience in many ways; it was very hard just to take in the nature of what you saw in front of you and to try to make sense of what you were seeing and to think of what lessons we all need to draw from it. Making sure that we have young people in Wales who continue to do that and to help the rest of us to draw those lessons, I think, is a demonstration of the way that these things are taken seriously in the education system in Wales and of our determination that they will continue to be so.
Paul
Davies AM: Of course, with few
remaining survivors of the Holocaust alive today, it is
our duty to continue to educate our younger generations
to have even the most basic understanding of those events
and to support the commemorations taking place across
Wales to promote awareness. And as politicians, we have a
responsibility to show leadership on this issue, we must
ensure that anti-Semitic rhetoric is not normalised in
society and we must do what we can to end Holocaust
revisionism. We must also collectively consider the
context of how we discuss anti-semitism in order to avoid
further exacerbating this issue, and I'm sure you agree
with these sentiments, First Minister. Can you therefore
outline what work the Welsh Government is doing to
support commemorations taking place across Wales now and
in the future and commit to ensure that appropriate
resources will be available in order for these to
continue to take place?
Mark Drakeford
AM: Well, Llywydd, can I thank
the leader of the opposition for choosing to use his
questions this afternoon for this really important matter
and to do so just at the point where those commemorations
across Wales have happened over this last weekend? We do
have resources that the Welsh Government devotes to
assist in that. We will certainly want to go on doing so
into the future. I'll think carefully about the points
that he's made in his final contribution in this part of
our proceedings this afternoon, and some of the things
that Paul
Davies has said are echoes of the contribution we
heard on Friday from a survivor of that Holocaust
experience, when she challenged everybody who was in that
service to do the things that individuals need to do to
make sure that those memories are kept alive, that the
ceremonies that we have put in place do continue and that
we are able to return year on year, explaining to those
who were directly affected by these things how we go on
bearing witness to their suffering.
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