A serious country does not build Holocaust remembrance on comfort, but on truth

The first exhibition previewing content planned for the UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre focuses on hard and essential questions: what did Britain know about the Holocaust, and what was done with that knowledge?

For too long, a comforting myth has endured: that Britain only truly learned about the Holocaust when British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. It is not true. From 1933, the British public could read about Nazi antisemitic laws, intimidation and violence. Kristallnacht was widely reported. By late 1942, newspapers across the country were describing the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews.

The information came through many routes: the press, the BBC, eyewitness accounts, diplomats and, with extraordinary courage, the Polish government-in-exile and couriers such as Jan Karski. The Prime Minister Winston Churchill in a minute to the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in July 1944 described the Holocaust as “probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world”. The crime was recognised. The question is whether recognition was enough.

For us, the UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre is not just another project. It comes from the heart. We have been involved with it since the beginning, and have seen at close hand the care, commitment and determination so many people have brought to it over many years.

For us, the Memorial and Learning Centre has always been about more than remembrance. It is about responsibility. We have heard Holocaust survivors and refugees speak with urgency about memory, truth and the danger of indifference. Their voices have shaped this work, and their trust places a profound obligation on all of us.

As the number of first-hand witnesses dwindles, that obligation becomes more urgent. We must remember not only what happened to them, but also the lives they rebuilt, the families they raised, the communities they strengthened, and the contribution they made to the Britain we know today.

That legacy has been brought home to us again by the family of Sir Ben Helfgott MBE, whose life was an extraordinary testament to courage, resilience and service. A member of the original Holocaust Memorial Commission, Sir Ben spent his life advocating for Holocaust remembrance, education and the need to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten. His family’s support for the Memorial and Learning Centre is deeply moving, and a powerful reminder that this work is not abstract. It is about people, families, memory and responsibility.

The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jewish people by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, including one and a half million Jewish children. It was driven by antisemitism, enabled by hatred, bureaucracy and dehumanisation, and made worse when the world failed to act with sufficient urgency.

That is why the planned Memorial and Learning Centre will stand beside Parliament. Its location matters: a Memorial and Learning Centre beside the Palace of Westminster is a statement of the commitment of our democratic institutions, and of the British people, to remembrance, education and the defence of the values that hatred seeks to destroy.

This exhibition focuses on one aspect of the wider story: what Britain knew. Future exhibitions will ask what Britain did with that knowledge. These are difficult questions. They should be. A serious country does not build remembrance on comfort. It builds it on truth. It is fitting that the exhibition begins in Westminster, but it must not stay there. As it travels to other Parliaments and legislatures, it will help share this national project with audiences across the United Kingdom.

Today, Holocaust distortion, antisemitism and conspiracy theories are rising again. They feed on denial, evasion and forgetfulness. A national Memorial and Learning Centre must therefore do more than honour the dead. It must carry forward the legacy of survivors and refugees, preserve the historical record, work with leading Holocaust remembrance and educational institutions around the world, strengthening a global network dedicated to defending historical truth, and ensure future generations are equipped to challenge antisemitism, hatred and intolerance wherever they appear.

Britain knew. Now Britain must remember — honestly, courageously and without excuse.

Ed Balls and Lord Pickles serve as the cross-party co-chairs of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, leading the long-running project to build a new national Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre next to Parliament in Victoria Tower Gardens