‘It’s becoming too easy to forget the Holocaust,’ Lord Dubs tells peers

Lord Alf Dubs this week warned parliamentarians that it was “becoming too easy to forget the Holocaust”, writes Adam Decker.

Addressing an evening reception in the House of Lords to mark the launch of the Wiener Library’s new travelling exhibition,  Dr Wiener’s Library, the Labour peer added that “our future depends on understanding the Holocaust to ensure we can live by its lessons”.

The refugee campaigner recalled: “I was six years old when I came on the Kindertransport in the summer of 1939.

“There are not many survivors left, so it is critical that we capture the memories and history of the direct witnesses who remain.”

The Wiener Holocaust Library – the world’s oldest and Britain’s largest collection of material on the Nazi era and the Holocaust – was established in 1939 by anti-Nazi campaigner  Dr Alfred Wiener.

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The new exhibition traces the history  of the library and its collections in the  context of the significant historical events that shaped them.

Curated by Dr Barbara Warnock, the library’s senior curator, the exhibition is displayed across several banners and aims to reach diverse communities across England.

Dubs added: “The Wiener Library is a very significant archive of Nazism and the history of the Holocaust. It’s great that the exhibition is being taken to other parts of the country –  if ever people needed to be aware of the horrors of the Holocaust, it is now.”

Political commentator Lord Daniel Finkelstein, who is the grandson of Dr Wiener, told the audience:  “My grandfather always had an eye on the political impact of the collections – it wasn’t merely an academic exercise.

“The library still very much operates in that tradition, ensuring its collections support  our understanding not just of the past, but the present too.”

•   See wienerholocaustlibrary.org