Commons Speaker tells Westminster HMD event ‘We must call out hatred wherever it exists’
Sir Lindsay Hoyle led a special candle-lighting ceremony in Parliament to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
The Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle has led a special candle-lighting ceremony in Parliament to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
MPs and staff gathered on Tuesday to hear moving testimonies from genocide survivors, who reflected on this year’s theme of the ‘fragility of freedom’.
The MPs Margaret Hodge and Andrew Percy both read out poems, while Olivia Marks-Woldman OBE, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Trust, read a Statement of Commitment which expressed “solidarity with people today who face prejudice.
“There is nothing more powerful than hearing directly from those who survived these terrible atrocities,” Hoyle told those in attendance, as ahead of the reading of harrowing accounts of genocide.
“It is why I wanted to instigate the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony. Genocide does not always start big; it is a steady process. It begins with discrimination, racism, religious persecution and of course, hatred.”
Hoyle said “we must call out hatred wherever it exists and promote peace wherever we can. ”
He said organisations like the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust are “so important in raising awareness and understanding.”
Holocaust survivor Peter Lantos was among those to share his story at the event, inside Portcullis House.
“As a child of five, I was prisoner 8,431 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp,” he recalled.
“I was deported there from a small provincial town in Hungary during the summer of 1944. My father died of starvation; my mother and I survived.”
Sophie Musabe also spoke about her experience of surviving the Rwandan genocide, adding that Holocaust Memorial Day is a “powerful reminder” of past injustices, and an impetus for “growth and change”.
After the ceremony, white roses were laid to remember each genocide.
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