Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 25 January 2024.
I offer my apologies to my colleagues: I was not scheduled to speak today, because I have been off sick with a chest infection. However, I have made it to the chamber because how could I not speak in today’s debate? In a Parliament of 128 MSPs who are eligible to speak, this debate, given its importance, should have been oversubscribed. I will not take up too much of members’ time, but I will make two additional points over and above the eloquent and moving speeches that we have already heard today. One point will cast our eyes back in history, but the other point, I hope, will cast our eyes towards the world that we live in today.
The first point is that, in addition to the 6 million Jews who were exterminated—and that is the word that we should use—the events of world war two led to the victimisation, persecution, torture and death of some 9 million non-Jews as well. It is often described as the era of Holocaust because it extended far beyond the systematic targeting of Jews. Catholics, disabled people, Roma people, gay people, communists and freemasons. I am not Jewish, but I would not have stood a chance. Indeed, to this day, the forget-me-not badge is worn on the lapels of many a mason across the world in remembrance of those who suffered. Those three simple words, “forget me not”, could not be more apt to today’s debate.
Of course, the Nazis saw many people as threats for religious, cultural, ethnic, social, racial, political or sexual reasons, or saw them simply as a burden on society because they failed to sign up to Hitler’s growing fascism and violent nationalism. Many of those people were sent to camps and wore inverted red triangles. I know that because, on a recent visit to Brussels just a few weeks ago, I went to the museum of military history and I stood face to face—through a glass cage—with a pair of those striped pyjamas that we often see in Hollywood films. Those red triangle badges were on the pyjamas—they were real, not a prop. Someone had lived in and worn that item of clothing.
The second and perhaps more pertinent point that I want to make today has already been made—the Holocaust did not happen overnight. “Forget me not” means as much today as it did then, because Tess White is absolutely right—it was a creeping hatred and a series of events that led to mass murder. Of course, Kristallnacht, which Jackson Carlaw referred to, kicked off overt mass violence against Jewish people and their businesses, but that was the culmination of many months, if not years, of systematically targeting them. The boycott of their businesses was almost discreet when it started—the gossip columns of newspapers, the caricatures of Jews in satirical cartoons, the verbal abuse in the street and blaming them for things that happened in bygone years or, indeed, faraway places. Then the political rhetoric crept in.
Let us not forget that the Nazis were voted in democratically by their people. Germany was an unsettled country that had a nostalgia and an appetite for its former strength and glory. Opportunistic politicians promised that restoration of glory, which, of course, gave way to Hitler, who promised leadership and restoration of economic success and glory once again.
Oh, friends, how history repeats itself. The stab-in-the-back myth that is often referred to blamed Germany’s losses in world war one on betrayal, not on the battlefield. The communists, socialists and Jews were supposedly to blame for that almighty fall from power. Radicalisation of thought crept in. It started with boycotts, protests and placard waving, perhaps driven by political ideology or perhaps even well-meaning expressions of disapproval. It starts with blaming everyday people for the actions of Governments and army chiefs in faraway lands.
Looking at the polls across the European Union, we see the balance swinging and shifting in a dangerous direction. The parallels are true. Antisemitism is as creeping and dangerous today as it was in 1930s Germany, less than a century ago. Underneath it all, whether it be age-old, medieval, true antisemitism, antisemitism cloaked in modern outrage over other horrific events of war and conflict or simply a wider hatred and othering of those on the margins of society, the sentiment, causes and complacency are the same.
It is a dangerous assertion to believe for just a moment that the Holocaust was a thing of the past. A Holocaust, in some shape or form, could happen again. Forget it not.