North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has called for action to ensure that children and young people in Wales understand the horrors of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides “to ensure that these dreadful things never happen again”.
Responding to a Statement by the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip on ‘Holocaust Memorial Day’ (January 27th), Mr Isherwood said that while marking days of remembrance is a good thing, a more forceful approach is needed to “lead global understanding and action on this agenda that goes beyond those critical remembrance and commemoration events on specific dates each year and, hopefully, becomes more cultural”.
He said: “Those who lived through the Second World War; those who grew up during those years have lived with that memory, but now we have generations, as you know, for whom this appears to be ancient history.
“Last Friday, I spoke at the Holocaust Memorial Day Event in Wrexham. It was great to see so many people there, particularly young people - young people from the local colleges and some from local schools, who did want to understand, to engage and to ensure that these dreadful things never happen again.
Mr Isherwood referred to the fact that most of his children, who attended Castell Alun High School in Flintshire, benefitted from a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau with the school.
He added: “The impression made on them was profound, providing a vital lesson that will remain with them all their lives. They happen to be one of those schools that have recognised how important it is that this is given attention, but there are many others, perhaps, that don't. How can we ensure that this becomes embedded on a more mainstream basis, not just in those schools that are at the forefront of this sort of issue, but those that, perhaps, need to be helped further along the way?”
Mr Isherwood also spoke of the need to educate people about the other groups targeted by the Nazis because of their perceived inferiority, including children - Roma and Sinti Gypsies, disabled Germans, LGBT people, and certain Slavic peoples, particularly Poles and Russians.
He said: “No wartime document produced by the Nazis spells out how many people were actually killed, but the US Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates 6 million Jews and 11 million others, taking that to 17 million, including - conservatively estimated - 0.5 million European Roma and Sinti Gypsies. In fact, the community itself identifies as many as 1.5 million.
“How would you respond to the e-mail I've received today from Gypsy/Travellers I know living near Conwy, who say, 'We love Jews as God loves them, but as we watch the tv, we don't see anything about the Gypsy people exterminated by the Nazis and their allies. Please, people, remember this. Please remember 26 November 1935, when the Nuremburg laws were updated to include the detention of Gypsy people, who were made enemies of the state'?
Mr Isherwood concluded: “. At the core of all that is how we move from this being an annual event or something that we periodically talk about, and embed this across our society and lead globally in so doing, so that future generations don't make the same mistakes that generations today are still making and generations of the past did themselves”.
