Sadly I am unable to attend all of this important debate in Parliament this afternoon, and Parliamentary courtesy dictates that you must be in the Chamber at the beginning and the end of the debate, therefore, I have had to sadly withdraw from the debate. I had prepared a speech in advance which I have posted below so that people may read my contribution.
I want to thank the Backbench Business Committee for securing time for this debate today, and at the outset I should draw the House’s attention to my register of members interests, following visits to Israel and Poland.
Madam Deputy Speaker, the theme for Holocaust Memorial day this year is ordinary people, and it poses an important question, by asking us to consider how ordinary people, such as ourselves, our staff and our constituents, can perhaps play a bigger part than we might imagine in challenging prejudice today.
This theme calls us to reflect on the millions of ordinary people who were killed during the Holocaust, and other genocides, and the courageous people who risked death in saving the lives of strangers and to confront the reality that thousands of ‘ordinary’ people living across Europe took part, actively or passively, in perpetrating the Holocaust. I feel this to be an important theme, providing us with yet another reason to remember the Holocaust while demonstrating our capability as humans to do good but also to do evil.
We should never forget the horrors of the Holocaust, the systematic targeting and murder of Jews, Homosexuals, the Romani and Sinti people alongside others, was a horrific period in the history of Europe.
The impact of the holocaust is remembered vividly by the gypsy population of Darlington, and I want to pay tribute to its leading member Billy Welch who regularly raises awareness of behalf of his community. Billy recently travelled to Poland to lay wreaths along with our local police inspector Chris Knox on the occasion of the DIKH He NA BISTER remembrance event which is Roma for “ Look and DONT forget”
Last year I had the immense privilege to take part in the March of the Living in Poland meeting Holocaust survivors. Hearing their personal testimonies of the horrors made the visit all the more real and emotional, particularly hearing those stories retold in the very place where they happened.
In 2019 I visited Yad Vashem along with a group of Conservative colleagues. It was a deeply moving experience for me, impressing upon me very powerfully that discrimination of all kinds has no place in our society, and that we must never become complacent in rooting out this evil wherever it arises.
Madam Deputy Speaker, we can dispel division when we deepen understanding, and we can embrace difference when we are educated. That to me is part of the purpose of Holocaust memorial day, it is not just about remembering the pains of the past.
Visiting Yad Vashem and Auschwitz helped me to deepen my understanding, and the memories of both of those visits will remain with me forever.
Madam Deputy Speaker, tomorrow, I will be attending a Holocaust Memorial Ceremony at St Aidan’s Academy in Darlington and I have been asked to read a poem called ‘the hill we climb’ by Amanda Gorman.
With your permission Madam Deputy Speaker I would like to conclude by sharing that poem with the house.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
