Sajid Javid speaks of ‘honour’ at being first Muslim MP to lead Commons HMD debate
Former cabinet minister tells MPs 'our responsibility is to spread the message of understanding and compassion between communities'
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Sajid Javid has spoken of the “honour” at becoming the first Muslim parliamentarian to lead the Holocaust Memorial Day debate in the House of Commons.
The former cabinet minister told MPs:”At a time when I worry about communities becoming increasingly insular, and when too many young men and women are drawn to divisive voices, our responsibility is to spread the message of understanding and compassion between communities. That responsibility has never been greater.”
He said on Thursday:”Tomorrow will mark the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—a place of evil, atrocity and inhumanity; a place where more than one million men, women and children arrived but never left.
“More than six million Jews and others lost their lives during the holocaust, and countless more would carry the burden of their persecution.
“Genocide is a dark stain on the conscience of humanity, and the hatred that drives it is a disease of the heart.
“After the holocaust, we vowed, ‘Never again,’ but the killing fields of Cambodia, the butchery of Rwanda, the deathly silence of Srebrenica and the suffering of Darfur show that the disease of hatred lives on.
“Although those dark stains can never be washed out, it is our duty to shine a light on them in this House.”
It was an incredible honour to lead the Holocaust Memorial Day debate in Parliament today.
Extremely thoughtful contributions from Members across the House in our united call to never forget the victims of persecution @HMD_UK 1/5 pic.twitter.com/N7N3E3OzuV
— Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) January 26, 2023
In a clear reference to the conduct of suspended MP Andrew Bridgen, Javid said:” In the UK, we have seen a rise in anti-vaccine protesters carrying signs reading ‘vaccine holocaust’ and wearing the star of David, and I must say that it angers me that any Member of this House would seek to connect the holocaust with UK public health policy. ”
A succession of moving speeches followed from MPs across all parties.
Labour’s Alex Sobel noted his great-grandfather David, who was in Lviv, Ukraine during the war.
The Leeds West MP said:”To survive, he needed a job, and to get a job, he needed a life number.
“He worked in a hairdresser’s, but he had to bribe the hairdresser and he did not have enough money to bribe them. His valuable belongings were hidden in a safe house and the person who owned the safe house would not give them up, so he could not afford the bribes.
“He lost his job, he lost his life number, and he was sent to Belzec extermination camp and killed. He was an ordinary person doing ordinary things, but betrayed by ordinary people.”
His colleague Christian Wakeford MP noted how fake news “is something we must stand shoulder to shoulder against with our Jewish brothers and sisters, from the rapid development of artificial intelligence, the digital doctoring of pictures and videos of the time, to the holocaust denial spreading like wildfire across social media.”
The MP Bob Stewart referenced his time working as a British United Nations commander in Bosnia.
He recalled:”The first people I met were Bosnian Muslim soldiers on the mountains. When I asked them to please stop fighting because a ceasefire was meant to be in place, they said, ‘No, no, in the village of Ahmići, women and children have been massacred.’
“I said, ‘No, that can’t be. People don’t do that in 1993.’ They said that it had happened.”
Stewart then told how he witnessed the truth himself. “We reckon that about 120 people were killed at Ahmići,”he said.
“I buried in a mass grave what we thought were about 104 people, mainly women and children—Bosnian Muslims, by the way. “The Holocaust is also about Bosnian Muslims.”
Chipping Barnet MP Theresa Villers spoke of how 92 year-old constituent and survivor Mala Tribich “told her story to a gathering in Woodside Park synagogue at the weekend, as she has in hundreds of other settings over many years.
“The MP added:”She told it with incredible poise, dignity, courage and resilience. The gathering was hosted by the shul in partnership with the Barnet Multi Faith Forum, and people of all faiths and backgrounds were there to remember the holocaust and its victims, and to pledge to root out anti-Jewish racism wherever it emerges.”
Charlotte Nichols,the MP for Warrington North also noted:” This Shabbat, Jews in synagogues around the world will be reading Parashat Bo, a Torah portion described by the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks of blessed memory, as ‘among the most revolutionary in the entire history of ideas’ and ‘one of the most counterintuitive passages in all of religious literature.'”
She noted the text of the Parashat adding:”What does ‘zachor’—to remember—mean?
“The Jewish concept of remembering is not passive, but active. We tell the Exodus story to our children
“We re-experience it and understand it through the elaborate rituals of the Pesach Seder. We reflect on it in our recitation of the central daily prayer, the Shema, in the laying of tefillin—a physical ritual with which to commemorate liberation from Egypt daily—and in the mezuzah, which we hammer to our door frames. To truly remember is to act. ”
Sir Peter Bottomley, told MPs the idea that the Holocaust “was the last major genocide we all know is wrong.”
But he also used his speech to challenge the need for a Holocaust memorial to located in Westminster.
He argued:”We should have a new competition for the memorial. It being adjacent to Parliament was not in the minds of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, the committee or the Government eight years ago.
“If it has to be there, we could consider Parliament Square, where the Buxton memorial fountain was first placed before it was moved to Victoria Tower Gardens.
‘I think that we could do it better, and that it would have more impact and be less of a threat if we did not have the learning centre and the place of gathering so close to the Palace of Westminster.”
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