‘Where are the people who speak for dead Jews when it comes to protecting the living?’ asks Tory peer
Lord Wolfson delivered a powerful speech to peers in a debate on Holocaust Memorial Day
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Conservative peer Lord Wolfson has delivered a powerful speech on Holocaust commemoration, warning “there are too many people who are only too willing to attend and speak at events commemorating dead Jews but who are nowhere to be seen when it comes to protecting living Jews.”
The shadow attorney general wound up Thursday’s Lord debate noting Holocaust Memorial Day by making three points about annual commemoration, which took place last month.
“First, let us be clear about the unambiguous aim of the Holocaust,” he said. “It was the systematic and industrial murder of Jews with the aim that there would be no Jews left in the world.
“The Holocaust was put into effect by means of laws which explicitly referenced Jews and made special provision for them.
“The Nazis had no trouble using the word Jews. They knew who their victims were and, just as importantly, why they were the victims. The Jews were to be murdered simply and only because they were Jews. ”
The former justice minister continued:”Secondly, let us be clear about the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Just as we do not remember the victims by denying why they were victims, we do not commemorate the victims by lumping the Holocaust together with other genocides and tragedies. We must not globalise the Holocaust..”
Then using the recent speech by the President of Ireland at a national Holocaust commemoration event, who referred to the Shoah as an “attempted genocide”, Wolfson said:”Thirdly, we certainly do not remember the victims by denying that there was a genocide at all or by using the murdered Jews of the Holocaust in some perverted form of inverted history to attack living Jews. ”
Returning to the Irish president, and his reference to Israel and Gaza in his controversial speech the KC added:” I will not trouble the House with what he said, as it does not merit repetition in Hansard—or, frankly, anywhere else.
“His words were so incendiary that Irish Jews who protested the president’s use—or, I should say, misuse—of that sacred platform were forcibly removed from the venue.
“Jews being manhandled out of a Holocaust commemoration event; how could that happen? It happens because there are too many people who are only too willing to attend and speak at events commemorating dead Jews but who are nowhere to be seen when it comes to protecting living Jews.”
Thursday’s debate also saw Lord Katz, the newly ennobled Labour peer, deliver his maiden speech. Referencing the impact of the Holocaust on his family, and the families of all Jews, Katz noted how today,”Our truth is indeed under attack.”
He added:” This is our responsibility too. Debate is coarsened and conspiracies fed when senior politicians compare their opponents with Nazi collaborators or doubt their loyalty to this country.”
He added:”My family was one of the lucky ones.
“My dad’s father was the last of my forebears to come to Britain, making the perilous trip from Bialystok—then in Russia, now in Poland—to the East End of London in 1911. Sadly, we know little of what and who he left behind. We cannot be sure, but it seems highly likely that some of my family would have perished in the war, simply for the crime of being born a Jew.
“My grandfather was a tailor, as was my mum’s father, who insisted that putting down a deposit on the new houses being built in Edgware in the 1930s, the site foreman walked him to the school that was promised to be a few minutes’ away.
“He knew, as so many immigrant families do, of the power of education to transform your life chances.”
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