Former Tory MP to lead governance review of Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

Former Conservative MP Richard Harrington, now a cross-bench peer, has been commissioned to hold a review into the governance processes of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

The move follows a controversial public invitation issued by the Trust to the 2025 HMD national commemoration event in January. It read: “Eighty years on from the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, our mission is more vital than ever. We remain horrified by the barbaric attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023, including the ongoing plight of those taken as hostages, and the devastating violence against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”

The language brought an immediate outcry, not least from Holocaust survivors angered at the implied equivalence of their experience with that of Palestinians in Gaza.

The Trust “unreservedly apologised” for the wording of the invitation and said it should never have happened.

But now the chair and honorary officers have asked Lord Harrington, a former minister for refugees and a long-standing and widely respected supporter of Holocaust commemoration and education, to conduct a review.

He has been asked to make recommendations to the board of the HMDT, to ensure that any future major communications from the Trust “are issued only after full and proper discussion and agreement by its board of trustees”.

Lord Harrington, who has been asked to publish his review in the spring, is Jewish and was made a life peer in 2022.

Now the HMDT are focused on the significant commemorations in January 2025 to mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, saying they will “ensure that millions of people in the UK continue to learn the lessons from the unique, world-changing and unprecedented horrors of the Holocaust”.