Hansard

Plato said that those who tell the stories rule society. That is why this day, when we ensure that the story of genocide—humanity’s capacity to descend into the evil of systematic mass murder—is ever told and never forgotten, is so important.

This is a special Holocaust memorial day, because it was exactly 75 years ago that Auschwitz, the camp that has come to symbolise the Holocaust above all others, was liberated. Over 1 million people had died at Auschwitz and nearby Birkenau, along with many millions more throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. Six million of them were Jews, but they also included Roma, LGBT people, disabled people and anti-fascists of every stripe.

The themes of Holocaust memorial day 2020 are “stand together” and “never again”. Yet the truth is that the 75 years since the Holocaust have been marked by our failure to live up to that promise of “never again”. Forty-five years ago, the Khmer Rouge began the mass murder of over 1 million people—mostly their own; 26 years ago, 1 million Tutsis were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbours in a matter of weeks in Rwanda; and, 25 years ago, genocide stalked Europe again in Srebrenica, in Bosnia. Since the Holocaust, we have not stood together against genocide.

Hannah Arendt, who, as Alex Cole-Hamilton told us, coined the phrase “the banality of evil”, also said:

“the sad truth is that most evil is done by those who never make up their minds to be good or evil”.

Too often, in living memory, we have made up our minds too late. As Kenny Gibson told us, in both Rwanda and Srebrenica, the United Nations forces that we created in the aftermath of world war two to stop mass murder prevailing were actually there, on the ground. In Rwanda, they were ordered to stand by and watch the murder of the Tutsis and were then withdrawn altogether, some of them burning their blue berets on the airport tarmac in shame. In Srebrenica, Dutch UN soldiers did not just stand by: they helped Bosnian Serb forces to separate Muslim men from their wives and mothers, and 8,000 of those men were taken away and murdered. Then the soldiers partied when they were allowed to leave.

One survivor of the Rwandan genocide said:

“It will take the love of the entire world to heal my homeland. And that’s as it should be, for what happened in Rwanda happened to us all—humanity was wounded by the genocide”.

Like Ruth Davidson, I have never been to Auschwitz, but I have seen Tuol Sleng in Phnomh Penh, where thousands were tortured and murdered. I was in Rwanda weeks after the genocide there, when the evil that was done still lingered in that strange and empty country. I have been to Srebrenica, to the factory where Bosniaks sought refuge with the UN and to the cemetery across the road, where over 7,000 of them are buried after that refuge was refused. To be in those places is to know that all humanity is wounded and that we cannot escape our complicity. Those stories are our stories, too.

Yesterday, I was honoured, with Daniel Johnson, to host Scotland’s national Holocaust memorial day event here, with the First Minister speaking for us all. We heard from Janine Webber, a Holocaust survivor, and Hasan Hasanovic, who survived the death march from Srebrenica but lost his father and twin brother. The burden of bearing witness that we ask of such people is a heavy one. They must remember so that we cannot forget. They must relive their pain so that we cannot plead ignorance. They are condemned to tell and retell their story to make us understand our part in it.

What is the beginning of that story? It is not the gas chambers, the machete gangs of Kigali or the blood-soaked meadows of Srebrenica. For German Jews, Rwandan Tutsis and Bosnian Muslims, it began with their neighbours, with their workmates, with those they thought were friends and even with their in-laws. It began with the language of us and them.

Their story did not end with the genocide, for what followed was denial such as that of the current mayor of Srebrenica, who claims that the genocide never happened and that the 7,000 graves in his town are faked, or that of the Austrian author and Srebrenica genocide denier who was shamefully awarded the Nobel prize just last month.

We must tell and retell the true stories of the Holocaust and other genocides so that the truth prevails, and we must call out the language of hate, division and denial in our own communities, our own parties and even our own families, if need be. Only thus do we choose to be good, not evil. Only thus do we earn the right to say that we “stand together”. Only thus do we earn the right to say “never again.”