S4M-08600 Holocaust Memorial Day 2014

The Deputy Presiding Officer (John Scott): The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-08600, in the name of Stewart Maxwell, on Holocaust memorial day 2014. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament notes that 27 January 2014 marks Holocaust Memorial Day, the 69th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and an opportunity for schools, colleges, faith groups and communities across Scotland to remember the six million men, women and children murdered by the Nazi regime in occupied Europe; further notes that the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day 2014 is “journeys”; values the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz Project, which gives two post-16 students from every school and college in Scotland the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau; applauds Ruth Laird and William Seaborne, two students from Queen Anne High School in Dunfermline, who took part in the project and who will deliver the Parliament’s Time for Reflection message on 21 January 2014; celebrates the Holocaust survivors who have enriched Scotland as a nation, and recommits to ensuring that racism, sectarianism and bigotry are never allowed to go unchallenged in Scotland.

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Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):

I also congratulate Stewart Maxwell on securing the debate. I join others in recognising Holocaust memorial day and the 69th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

My family, of course, was fortunate enough not to experience the trauma of the Holocaust, and I am grateful for that. However, it is at this time that we honour and remember the 6 million men, women and children who were less fortunate than ourselves and paid the price of Nazi oppression.

Ken Gibson mentioned some people affected beyond the Jews—the Gypsies and the disabled—but there were also mentally ill or mentally disabled people, and gays. A wide range of people in that last 10 per cent suffered the ultimate fate of the hatred that the Nazis had for them.

The Holocaust has touched Scotland in many ways, and it continues to have a lasting impact on our young people. Last week, Ruth Laird and William Seaborne spoke to Parliament, and that was an appropriate thing for them to do. They come from Queen Anne high school, where my mother taught 80-plus years ago. I am sure that she would have very much admired the spirit in which they spoke to Parliament. They tried to put themselves in others’ shoes and to live some of the experience of people in the concentration camp. William spoke of his great uncle, who was a survivor. He had never met him, but that is an important link to the past for youngsters today.

I read my first political book, a biography of Lloyd George, when I was seven. On the back of that and having watched “The Brains Trust” on the BBC on a Sunday afternoon—Jakob Bronowski used to refer, in that forum, to his family’s experience at Auschwitz—I thought that I should try and read some of the political books that had affected the 20th century. I started with “Das Kapital”—in English, I hasten to add—which I found it very difficult to read. I got “Mein Kampf” from the library and managed to read three chapters, before my utter disgust at its content—it got worse as it went on—made it unreadable for me. My sensibilities found it intolerable.

Jakob Bronowski was a very intellectual man, and covered a wide range of different subjects. He came to these islands in the 1920s and was not personally involved in the Holocaust, but many of his relatives were. When he recorded “The Ascent of Man”, a great history of the human race from its origins to its present situation, he visited Auschwitz. One of the most moving things that I have ever seen on television was Jakob Bronowski at the camp, speaking off the cuff. He did not use a script in the series at all, and wrote the book afterwards, based on what he had said. He looked at the camera, and said nothing. He stooped down, put his hand in a puddle and lifted up some mud. He looked at the mud in his hand and said, “This is my family.” That is the most moving thing that I have ever seen on television. It resonates with me to this day.

Something else that means something to me involves a survivor of the concentration camps—a Russian Jew who left Russia at the time of the revolution because he had criticised the new regime. He came to Germany for safety, ironically, and then criticised the Nazis and got put in a concentration camp. That was Jakow Trachtenberg. To keep himself sane, he used his time in the concentration camp to develop new mathematical algorithms for training young people how to do arithmetic—some good has come.

We must protect the memory of the evil that happened in the Holocaust. The end of the motion before us talks about

“the Holocaust survivors who have enriched Scotland as a nation”,

and recommitting the Parliament

“to ensuring that racism, sectarianism and bigotry are never allowed to go unchallenged in Scotland.”

I look forward to hearing what the minister has to say—I am sure that it will be of interest.

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