28th January 2010

Andrew Dismore, Labour Member of Parliament for Hendon, spoke today during the debate on Holocaust Memorial Day in the House of Commons (Hansard).

Mr Dismore had applied to the Leader of the House for Holocaust Memorial Day to be the topical debate for the week, and the Leader of the House of Commons had agreed to his request.

Mr Dismore said:

"I was very pleased to have the opportunity of speaking in this debate.

27th January saw the 10th Holocaust Memorial Day, which came about as a result of the initiative I took after a visit to Auschwitz with the Holocaust Education Trust in 1998.

It was a useful opportunity to consider the reasons why Holocaust Memorial Day was first proposed, and whether it has been a success.

It was also an opportunity to thank many people involved.

The speech gave me an opportunity to reflect on a number of personal experiences, visiting not just Auschwitz, but also Warsaw and Majdanek, and the research I have done to find out about Yitzhak Sciakis, whose memory I have agreed to commemorate, through the Yad Vashem "Guardian of the Memory" scheme.

Holocaust Memorial Day is now well established as part of the national calendar, but it is regrettable that anti-Semitism still remains, and genocides still occur. "