 The final item of business today is a member's business debate on motion number 11995 in the name of Stuart Maxwell on Holocaust Memorial Day 2015. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put and I'd be grateful if those members who wish to speak could press the request to speak buttons now please. I call on Stuart Maxwell to open the debate around seven minutes please Mr Maxwell. Thank you very much Presiding Officer. On January 27, 1945, 70 years ago today, Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, a largest concentration and extermination camp established by the Nazi regime. As the Red Army approached, the Nazis began to evacuate the camp. They killed thousands and forced around another 60,000 prisoners to march out of the camps to move them further from the approaching Soviet forces. As many as 15,000 of those prisoners who were evacuated are estimated to have died as the result of the forced march and the privations that they suffered on route to other camps. As a result, there were only around 7,000 prisoners left in Auschwitz when the Red Army arrived and most of them were desperately ill or dying. As well as moving the prisoners, the guards ordered the crematory and gas chambers to be destroyed in order to obliterate the evidence of the crimes that had been committed there. They wanted to wipe out the past, they wanted to hide the truth. They did this not only at Auschwitz-Birkenau but at other extermination camps as well. As recently as September of last year, it was reported that archaeologists believe that they have found the site of the gas chambers destroyed to hide the truth of what happened at Sobibor. The Holocaust Memorial Trust has published a booklet for Holocaust Memorial Day this year that lists the path to genocide and there are eight steps. Step eight is denial. The perpetrators or later generations deny the existence of any crime. On January 20, 1942, the Vansi conference met to discuss the final solution, the plans to eliminate the Jews. One copy of the Vansi protocol, the minutes of the Vansi conference survived the war. Here is a portion of the translated minutes. Under proper guidance in the course of the final solution, the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labour in the east. Able-bodied Jews separated according to sex will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless, a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival. See the experience of history. That translation, from which I have just read, is the English text of the original German language Vansi protocol, based on the official US Government translation, prepared for evidence in trials at Nuremberg. There can be no doubt of the chilling meaning of the words that I have just quoted. The theme of this year's Holocaust Memorial Day is to keep the memory alive. That is very pertinent indeed, as those who survived the Holocaust are now very old. In a few years, the generation that suffered under the Nazi regime will have passed into history and there will be no one alive to say, I saw this, I was there, this really happened. It will be much easier to deny the Holocaust when there are no eyewitnesses left. A Spanish American called George Santayana said famously, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, so it is vital that we never forget the atrocities that took place in the heart of Europe during the 20th century. On this, the 70th anniversary of the very day on which Auschwitz Birkenau was liberated, I want to say that I believe that we should take George Santayana's warning very seriously indeed. I fear that we are in grave danger of forgetting the past. In Europe, I am sorry to say, anti-Semitism is on the rise again. We are all only too well aware of the horrific events in Paris earlier this month in which 17 people were murdered, 11 journalists, two police officers and four people shopping in a kosher supermarket. In July 2014, eight synagogues in France were attacked. Indeed, one in Sarcell was fire bombed by a mob said to be 400 strong and in Berlin, Molotov cocktails were thrown into the Berges synagogue in Wuppertal, which had previously been destroyed during Kristallnacht. In May 2014 in Brussels, four people were murdered at the Jewish Museum. In Toulouse in 2012, three children and a teacher were murdered at a Jewish school. A few days after the same gunman had murdered three French soldiers. Of course, those attacks were by murderous individuals and not organised campaigns by a Government. They were universally condemned across Europe. However, in November 2012, a member of the Hungarian Parliament, a Jovic MP, said that officials of Jewish origin should be listed because they might be a national security risk. He was, I am very glad to say, condemned roundly, but these are worrying times. Here in Scotland, thankfully, there have been no such terrible incidents as I have listed from the continent. However, there is room for no complacency either. In August 2013, the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, Scogiac, issued a report which they had produced with Scottish Government funding entitled Being Jewish in Scotland. This report found that the experience of Jewish people living in Scotland is largely positive, which is good news, but it also found that there is, however, some anti-semitism that continues to create a sense of insecurity. In answers to written questions that I table, the Scottish Government indicated that, in 2011-12, recorded religious hate crimes against Judaism were running at 2.2 charges per 1,000 members of the Jewish community. In 2012-13, recorded religious hate crimes against Judaism were, I am sorry to say, running at 4.19 charges per 1,000 members of the Jewish community—almost double. In the three months between August 2014 and the start of November 2014, more than 50 anti-semitic incidents were reported to the Scottish police, exceeding the total for the previous three years. The Scottish Government has responded to this sudden rise in anti-semitic incidents in a most positive manner by funding a short-term survey to be entitled How Being Jewish in Scotland Has Changed, which will report at the end of March. Only last week in the chamber, the First Minister stated that tackling anti-semitism is a key priority for the Scottish Government. She also stated that the Jewish community in Scotland plays a massive role in this country and makes a massive contribution. We are proud of that, and we should all stand shoulder to shoulder with it at this time. I echo those words of the First Minister. It is vital that we in Scotland all stand together, that we do not isolate any member of our Scottish community, that we value the contribution that all of us make to Scotland and that we remember that we must all stand together, because for hatred to succeed, it must isolate the object of hatred and separate them from the rest of the community. We must always remember, but not just in a quiet way. We must state loudly and clearly that the Holocaust happened in order that we stop those who would attempt to wipe it from the record books. We must never ever forget the past, and I commend the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust for keeping the memory alive. Many thanks. Before we move on to the open debate, can I just advise the chamber that, due to number of members who have indicated that they would like to speak in this debate, I am meant to accept a motion under rule 8.14.3, to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes. I invite Stuart Maxwell to move such a motion. Many thanks. The question is then that members are agreed to extend the debate this evening. Are you so agreed? Members are. Thank you. Ken Macintosh, pleased to be followed by Kenneth Gibson. If members could try to keep to speeches of four minutes, I'd be grateful. I'd like to begin by thanking Stuart Maxwell for bringing forward today's motion and for giving the Parliament an opportunity to commemorate and reflect once more on the events of the Holocaust. It is a full 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, and yet each year the power of those events, the horror of our capacity for evil, interspersed with all two occasional glimpses of humanity, makes me think afresh. Holocaust Memorial Day each year fills me with questions and with hope and anxiety in equal measure as to whether we have learned our lessons. This year was no exception. When I heard again the stories of Bob Kutner and of Henry and Ingrid Wuga, Holocaust survivors who have made their home and brought up their families here in Scotland, listening to Bob talked to a group of senior pupils at one of his own local schools last week, I was struck this time not so much by the scars he must bear, the family he lost or the damage wrought on his own life when he was barely a teenager himself for that matter, but on his warmth, his hope and his lack of bitterness. In a similar vein, there was a fascinating documentary on television also last week, specifically on the scenes filmed following the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russians. This time, the contrast with the shocking brutality was a dated and frankly rather sexist commentary about powers of recovery. According to the voiceover, within three weeks of liberation, many of the women in the camp were rejuvenated to the point about worrying over their hairstyle and their choice of clothes. As I said, the commentary was very much of its time, but the point that really struck home was about the resilience of those survivors. Each year, when we mark the Holocaust, the story of those events gives me a fresh perspective and this year it seems to have been one of the hope that survives our despair. Yet another example of exactly that was the story of Jane Haining, the Scottish missionary who ended up dying in Auschwitz because she refused to leave her Jewish pupils in Budapest. I think that members here like me will have been able to see the documentary that was shown in East Renfrewshire last night, and it was a powerful and moving film. Jane's quiet and unassuming heroism provided a welcome counterbalance to the fatalism and the powerlessness that the Holocaust can often evoke. At a time when our own communities are under strain from growing inequality and continuing injustice, often expressed in terms of prejudice and hate, when we faced yet another rise in antisemitism accurately described by Stuart Maxwell, it has never been more important than it is now to continue to learn the lessons of the Holocaust. I am aware, as I am sure that we all are in this chamber, that soon there will be no survivors to share their memories directly with us. It is up to us, to the young Holocaust ambassadors who spoke eloquently at lunchtime today and addressed in the Parliament, to keep those memories alive. There is so much we have still to learn. I do not believe that we could pay a greater tribute to the sacrifice of so many than to show we remain willing learners. Many thanks. I now call Kenneth Gibson to be followed by Jackson Carlaw. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would first like to thank Stuart Maxwell for lodging this motion and securing debating time on this important day, the 70th anniversary of when Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz Birkenau and discovered a vast factor of death with all the horrors of mass extermination, slave labour and medical experimentation. Remembering man's inhumanity to man at its most extreme presents an opportunity for us to educate communities throughout Scotland about the tragedies that occurred in Occupied Europe, which saw 12 million men, women and children die at the hands of the Nazi regime, half of them Jewish, simply for being Jewish. In 1933, the Jewish population of Germany stood at 600,000, less than 1 per cent of the total population. However, the Jewish population around Europe numbered more than 10 million in countries later occupied in whole or in part by the Nazis. Once in power Hitler stage an economic boycott against Jewish-owned shops and businesses, Jews were removed from their employment and professions, making life increasingly unbearable. Many Jews tried to emigrate if they could find a country to take them. Few would. France, the Netherlands and Romania all set up camps to intern Jews fleeing Nazi rule. Even the kinder transport, which allowed Jewish children to come to Britain, left their parents to an unknown fate. Jews were targeted earlier in the war. German officials confiscated Jewish property and acquired Jews to wear identifying armbands. Local collaborators often assisted the Nazis by robbing and persecuting Jews, although one should remember the more than 25,000 righteous Gentiles who risked their lives to help Jewish friends, neighbours and even strangers. The final solution, a euphemistic term, was used to refer to the annihilation, the genocide of the Jewish people. In 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, mobile SS and police killing squads massacred Jewish communities either immediately or soon after deporting them to ghettos. Operation Reinhardt established killing centres in Poland at Chelnobelzek, Sobibor and Treblinka for the sole purpose of murdering Jews, men, women and children. In those centres of 1.7 million Jews who arrived, only 106 are known to have survived the war. Auschwitz Birkenau subsequently became the main centre of destroying the Jewish people. Around a million Jews of many nationalities were transported from across Europe to be either killed upon arrival, a certainty for the old, young and sick, or work to death on miniscule rations. Around 100,000 others were also killed, mostly Roma Poles or Soviet prisoners of war. Towards the final months of the war as the Red Army advanced, inmates were sent either by train or in food in death marches, forced to trek across the chaos of a collapsing Nazi regime to prevent their liberation. A few thousand left Auschwitz are to be murdered, but the rapid Soviet advance prompted the SS to flee to save their own skins. This year, as Stuart Maxwell and Ken Macintosh have pointed out, may be the last significant anniversary that will be marked by Holocaust survivors, given their rapidly advancing age and infirmity. In years to come, we must remember for them. Of course, the Jews were not the first people to face genocide in the 20th century. Who remembers the Armenians? Hitler said of the people murdered in 1915 in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. At least 1.3 million people, more than half the world's Armenian population at that time, were killed in modern independent Armenia, where many of the survivors fled to 10th of the size of historic Armenia. 1945 is a determination to prevent something as dreadfully unique as the industrialised slaughter of the Holocaust from ever happening again, yet there have been other genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia. In Islamic State, the Yazidi culture is threatened with extinction now. Perhaps we will never live in a world without such horrors, but whenever and wherever possible, we must fight against inhumanity and intolerance, so that the Holocaust remains as so much part of our human story. Holocaust Memorial Day makes it clear why we must do so. Presiding Officer, today, Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27, marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, in which 1.25 million souls from across Europe perished, young and old, male and female, due and gentle, murdered without compunction by a barbarous Nazi tyranny. Last Saturday evening, among many commemorative programmes on television and radio, Channel 4 broadcasts an extraordinary documentary, Holocaust Night Will Fall. It tells the story of the filmmakers who, in the immediate aftermath of the war, filmed the liberation of the various death camps. It was a film that was suppressed until now, because geopolitical tides shifted, and it was felt inappropriate and inconvenient for the film to be seen at the time. I learned fresh from it. I didn't know, for example, that much of the footage that we see of Auschwitz was refilmed sometime after the liberation, but not so the British liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Despite everything that I've seen over the years, I remain stupefied all over again to see stuff that I never thought possible and had never previously seen screen. That film is going to be released later this year in cinemas and DVD, and to touch on something Stuart Maxwell said, because the denial business was all ready well established at that point. The British contingent insisted that local people were filmed witnessing the events, so that they could not subsequently deny what had been seen. The Jewish community in East Renfrewshire, where I live and grew up, is of long standing. In his magnificent biographical trilogy, which commenced in 1986 with growing up in the Gorbils, Rav Glassor memorably traced the arrival and integration of Scotland's Jewish community in and around Glasgow over a century ago. As the community migrated south to Newton-Merns in the post-war years, members of it became my neighbours and friends. I learned very little from them about the horrors endured, although many of them had personally survived or personally lost family as the European genocide unfolded. What I did not know is that that was also true within families, not just between neighbours and friends. Within families they kept silent, in many cases because the horror of what they endured had been so great, but also horribly out of shame that they had survived and were unable to come to terms with that fact or of discussing it. It is also true, unfortunately, in those post-war years in Britain, antisemitism persisted in ignorance. It was two landmark television programmes in 1973, which together transformed public understanding, and certainly mine. Jeremy Isaacs' 26-part world at war and The Outstanding Ascent of Man, presented by Dr Jacob Bronofsky. I can vividly remember Dr Bronofsky's testimony as he stood ankle deep in water and, in his mind, water mingled with the ashes of his people in the ruins of Auschwitz, Birkenau, intensely moved and speaking directly to the camera. That footage is readily available on YouTube, and I watched it again recently. It is still as powerful as it was 40 years ago. If you have not seen it, please look at it, or the remarkable interview that he gave just before he died to Michael Parkinson. Like others, I visited Auschwitz, Birkenau, and I did so privately a few years ago. It is a desolate place, and I visited it at the bleakest time of year. My guide was the grandson of a local Aswysium family. He was full of compassion, and to be a guide in that site you would have to be as a father to see the photographs of small children skipping with joy and relief after the confines of a long train journey and what father has not been in that position, but to know that they were skipping, holding hands and smiling along a short path to their execution is as chilling and moving an image as any. It is an uncomfortable truth, simply not omitted to enough, that much of occupied Europe was complicit in sending the Jews to their deaths. Any cursory study demonstrates that the defence of ignorance is shallow, but it suits precious sensibilities that this fiction be maintained. Far too many people in occupied or access Europe knew exactly what was going on and far too few raised any hand to stop it. In this country, we were never called upon by an invading Nazi machine to be complicit. We resisted invasion and helped to win the war, but I believe that all our island character and history would have seen individuals and communities stand and resist. In the event, only two Britons in the occupied Channel Islands were shipped under cover of darkness and transported by sea and train across a continent to Auschwitz to be murdered at their journey's end. What madness was that? Yet 70 years later, as evidenced horribly in Paris a fortnight ago, antisemitism is finding a voice again. It must be confronted, challenged and defeated. 70 years ago Auschwitz was liberated. 50 years ago Churchill died. Let me end with a quote from him. Never given. Never given. Never, never, never. In nothing great or small, larger petty. Never given and accept the convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. Presiding Officer, 70 years ago Britain did not yield. 70 years on, Scotland will not. Thank you Presiding Officer. Can I begin by congratulating Stuart Maxwell on securing this opportunity to reflect upon the Holocaust? I apologise at owing to the extension of the debate. I may have to weave the chamber before it concludes. The liberation of Auschwitz working out 70 years ago today and 1946, the year in which genocide was deemed to be a crime under international law, are a very, very long time ago. In a world that is ever changing and evolving, nature of which at times is breathtaking, it is somehow reassuring that the Holocaust still resonates today, particularly amongst two, perhaps even three generations that weren't even born then. It is so important that we remember the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, not only those involving the 6 million Jews who were murdered but the 5 million others, gay people, gypsies, priests, people with physical or mental disabilities, communists, trade unionists, resistance fighters, Jehovah's Witnesses, anarchists, Poles and other Slavic people were all sent to the concentration camps and estimated 1.5 million Romany gypsies perished under the Paragymus. Whilst the atrocities perpetrated in the Jews were acknowledged quite quickly at the end of World War 2, it took into the 1970s for the West German Parliament to acknowledge that this particular persecution had been racially motivated. Since World War 2, other acts of genocide, not on the same scale of course but nevertheless utterly horrific, have unfortunately been committed across the world in Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur and Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge slogan was to spare you as no prophet, to destroy you as no loss. That attitude towards life, some 30 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, mirrored the horrors of the Nazi regime under whom, as the Holocaust Memorial Day trust's website recalls, it was possible to be shot for knowing a foreign language, for wearing glasses, laughing or crying. Who would have escaped these criteria in Nazi Germany or indeed Cambodia? It is important that we focus on the Holocaust and the persecution of Jewish people, especially in light of recent events in France. Reflected upon the horrors of the Holocaust, we should also consider the incredible acts of life-saving bravery on the part of individuals who felt compelled to intervene. I want to, if I may, present an officer to highlight briefly the story of Dr Feng Shan Ho, a Chinese diplomat in Vienna at the time of the Anschluss. So, if Paul was he by what he was witnessing, Dr Ho issued visas to any Jews who wanted him for anywhere so that he had the means to flee the Nazis. His superior, the Chinese ambassador in Berlin, tried to stop the practice as he did not want China's diplomatic relations with Germany to put at risk, but Dr Ho stood firm. We do not know precisely how many visas he issued, but it is estimated that it was in the thousands. The support that he had given to Jewish people during the Holocaust only became known after Dr Ho's death in 1997, when Wad Yasham awarded him the title of righteous among nations for his humanitarian courage. As we mark the 70th anniversary of the ending of the Holocaust, it is, as I touched upon earlier in my contribution, important that young people, they had also tomorrow, learn about it and the lessons that should be derived from what occurred. I am therefore pleased that all five high schools in my constituency are undertaking work to commemorate the Holocaust, including having survivors speak to pupils and pupils and staff who have visited Auschwitz addressing assemblies, as well as reaching out to feeder primaries to share that experience. Presiding Officer, can I conclude by noting the importance of the lessons from the Holocaust programme? By ensuring that two people from every school and college can visit Auschwitz, we can respond to the trust concern that hearing is not seeing. I want to close with remarks from one such pupil, Rona Llyngard, from Webster's High School in Kerrymure, who visited Auschwitz in September. Rona said that we need to make sure that that does not happen again. We cannot just remember what happened, we need to learn from it and teach others about it. I think that that sums things up rather appropriately. Many thanks. I now call Liam McArthur, to be followed by Anne McTaggart. Like others, I congratulate Stuart Maxwell on securing this debate on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. He has brought similar debates to the chamber now on a number of occasions and, once again, I believe that he has set the scene and the tone absolutely perfectly. A couple of years ago, I took part in the equivalent debate to Mark Holocaust Memorial Day. I recall being moved by the contributions made by a number of members, as indeed I have been again this evening. Many had, unlike myself, visited Auschwitz, Beltson, Dachau or one of the other camps and were able to draw on that experience and the way it made them feel. Interestingly, most spoke of their sense of surprise at how they responded to their first visit to one of those camps. Strange perhaps, given that so much of the detail and the enormity of the Holocaust are matters of now long-established record. However, it reflects the capacity of the Holocaust and the unimaginable brutality involved to reach down through the years and affect us in ways that we find surprising and unsettling. We heard that again today at time for reflection from Lucy Patterson and Ciaran Smith. How could anyone act in this way towards their fellow man? Why did nobody speak up more loudly at the time, and how should we judge those who knew but did not act, even if they did not know the full extent of what was happening? All legitimate questions, but we should not delude ourselves into thinking of this as solely an act of historical remembrance, important though that is. There are sadly numerous more recent examples that suggest that the lessons of history have not been learned, even if these do not match the scale of what happened during the Holocaust. This year, for example, marks the 20th anniversary of the atrocities that took place in Srebrenica in 1995, a genocide of over 8,000 Bosnians, mainly men and boys, that represents the largest mass killing of European soil since the Second World War. While people did speak out, people did resolve to take action and efforts have been made to hold accountable those responsible. Nevertheless, half a century on from the liberation of Auschwitz, it was a sobering reminder of the fact that such barbaric acts are not consigned to history, nor, indeed, was the international response at the time above criticism. Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfewd and Syria, as Graham Day alluded to, all stand as poignant reminders that, as Robert Burns would have observed, the capacity of man in humanity to man remains undiminished. I think that the Holocaust educational trust is to be warmly commended for their efforts in trying to reinforce this message with successive generations and with no little success. The trust also does great work in translating what to many is unimaginable horror on a truly mass scale and reminds us that it is made up of many millions of individual tragedies that demand to be remembered and acknowledged for what they are. Last time I participated in this debate, the theme for Memorial Day drawing on Martin Nimoller's powerfully evocative poem first they came was about speaking up and speaking out. It stressed how important it is for all of us to use our voice to challenge what we see and know to be wrong, whether that be anti-Semitism, bigotry, racism or intolerance. The theme for the major anniversary this year is memory, and I was delighted to hear that pupils and staff at Cutwell Grammar School in myotany constituency once again have been heavily involved in commemorative events. This week there will be the customary candle lighting ceremony at KGS taking place in a room that has been transformed by S2 and three pupils to include a black remembrance window wall. This is covered with stars of David containing messages of remembrance and, as Ken Macintosh suggested, of hope. Yellow stars have also been hung in the main foyer of the school as a poignant reminder of the Holocaust representing the stars worn by Jews in concentration camps. Of course it was not simply Jews who were singled out. Red stars were worn by political prisoners including trade unionists. Purple by Jehovah's Witnesses and members of small religious minorities. Homosexuals were singled out with pink badges while black was reserved for those who didn't fit in, including the mentally ill, alcoholics, the homeless and pacifists around identified the Roma people. Many would argue that some of those persecuted by the Nazis continue to suffer prejudice and discrimination now. So while it is right that we should remember, we should also redouble our commitment to speak out loudly and act decisively. It is not always easy or comfortable. Recent events in Paris highlight the tensions that exist. Many Muslims who utterly condemn the brutal killings at Charlie Hebdo nevertheless feel aggrieved at what they see as the freedom to lampoon the Prophet Muhammad with strict laws on anti-Semitism and denying the Holocaust. This presents a real challenge to those of us who passionately defend the right of free speech but the only way of charting a path through these troubled times is by committing to tolerance, education and debate and never losing sight of the lessons from our past. In that regard, can I again commend the Holocaust Memorial Trust on the contribution they have and continue to make? I thank Stuart Maxwell once again for allowing this Parliament an opportunity to debate and to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. Thank you very much. I now call Anne McTarget to be followed by Margaret Mitchell. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Like others, I would like to begin and firstly like to congratulate Stuart Maxwell for securing this important members' debate and bringing it to the chamber tonight. Today is the day for everyone to pause and to remember the 6 million Jewish men, women and children murdered by the Nazi regime in occupied Europe. However, it was not just Jewish people who were killed. The site was also a death place for many Poles, Russians, Socialists, Communists, Christians, homosexuals, mentally and physically disabled people and people from the Roma community. All were the direct victims of the hate and sectarianisms by the Nazi. Today's survivors will lay wreaths and light candles at the so-called death wall at block 11 on January 27 to mark 70 years since the camps liberation and memory of those who never left. We need to recognise that genocide does not just take place on its own. It has a steady process that can begin if discrimination, racism and hatred are not checked, tackled and prevented. Events are taking place across the UK to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. In my constituency Glasgow, there will be a memorial meeting tonight in the S2C building in Glasgow. The main aim of those meetings is not only to remember the victims of the Holocaust and why it happened but also to draw attention to the modern day threat of fascism and racism that is on the rise across Europe and Britain. Holocaust Memorial Day is always an important event in the area as Glasgow is a home to a large Jewish community. At the meeting tonight, there will be two of the Glasgow girls, Amal Azudin and Rosa Saleh—I hope that I pronounced them properly—along with community activist Pinard Askew. All three were part of a trade union-sponsored delegation on a recent United Against Fascism Holocaust Memorial trip to Auschwitz concentration camp. They will be giving a report of their experiences of visiting the camps. I regret that I am not able to be at the S2C tonight to hear the personal reflections of those young people and how their trip affected them, but I will aim to catch up with them as soon as I can to hear about their experience. Earlier on today, we heard from students Lucy Patterson and Kieran Smith, two pupils from St Andrew's RC secondary school in Glasgow who delivered an excellent and moving contribution at a time for reflection. As my colleague Ken Macintosh illustrated their journeys and experiences earlier, we have come a long way since the liberation of Auschwitz 70 years ago. We would think that, after the revelation of such dreadful crimes, those who voiced the same views as the Nazis could never gain votes or any credibility again. However, sadly, the spectre of fascism haunts Europe once more. People with fascist views are being selected and elected in parts of Europe. After recent events in Germany and France, more than ever across Europe, we must learn the lessons of history. All those who believe in freedom and democracy and who oppose racism and fascism must stand together united in order to ensure that the horrors of Auschwitz never happen again. Keep the memory alive and never forget. Enable and support our young ambassadors of the Holocaust Educational Trust Auschwitz project who aim to keep their memory alive of the visits. Enable and support them to keep the memory alive and never forget. I begin by thanking Stuart Maxwell for bringing this debate to the chamber today, which is appropriately not only Holocaust Memorial Day 2015 but, as other colleagues have acknowledged, marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, concentration camp, where over 1 million Jews were exterminated. In November last year, Yad Vasham World Centre for Holocaust Research documented education and communication in Israel in partnership with the Council of Christians and Jews embarked on a pilot programme consisting of a visit for politicians to Israel to the centre. The politicians were drawn from different parties, representing approximately every tier of government across the United Kingdom. I had the privilege of being invited and taking part in this pilot programme, which included a three-day varied programme with seminars, discussions on the tour of Yad Vasham and its features. Interestingly, the programme also included a visit to Ramallah in Palestine. The Yad Vasham Centre has an impressive and compelling air of tranquility, situated as it is on a hillside with a panoramic vista of Bethlehem. The centre itself and throughout the campus contains poignant memorials, as well as providing opportunities for interactive engagement and analytical discussions. It is therefore very much a living and working centre. Amongst its features there are the Holocaust History Museum and the heart-wrenching hall of names containing the names and personal details of millions of victims recorded on pages of testimony filled out by survivors and many of their loved ones. The Museum of Holocaust Art exhibits the world's largest collection of art created in the ghettos, camps, hide-outs and other places where artistic endeavour was well now impossible, and here the tenacity and bravery of the human spirit is clear for all to see. Meanwhile, the visitor centre enables groups like our party or individuals to look at documentaries, films and survivor testimonies on screen. In particular, I find the learning centre both challenging and enlightening, presenting as it does the opportunity to explore historic, thematic and moral dilemmas related to the Holocaust. For example, I understood how important family was to the Jewish community and how this in turn often meant that they could not take flight even when they knew that danger was imminent because it would mean leaving grandparents or other members of their family behind, and they quite simply weren't prepared to do this. The group was also privileged to go behind the scenes and see how the centre gathers and forensically analyses historical artefacts using state-of-the-art technologies to decipher even miniscule and damaged material. Consequently, items that may seem to the casual observer as meaningless scrap are recognised for the potential value that they have in connecting an individual who perished in the Holocaust with their family who still may not even have any concrete proof of what happened to their loved one. I recommend this programme to anyone in the Parliament who has the opportunity to take part, for it is imperative that we never forget the extensive atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. I therefore commend the work of the Holocaust educational trust and its commitment to ensuring that we remember the horror and learn from the Holocaust. The 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Birkenau death camps, I cannot think of a more appropriate day to commemorate the Holocaust memorial day. The attempted wiping out in Europe of not just Jews but other such as Sinti and Roma Gypsies has proved to be some of the most shameful acts in modern times, if not in the history of mankind. Add the crimes against humanity in Cambodia, Srebrenica and Rwanda. It's almost like the world hasn't listened to the warnings of the early part of the 20th century and I fully commend the support and work being carried out by the Holocaust memorial trust and the Holocaust education trust. It's vital that younger generations are taught about the vile actions of the Nazis and their followers from the 1930s until 1945. The education of our younger people, I would like to think, will enable them to identify the type of laws that can only lead to persecution of smaller groups and the Nazi Nuremberg laws are a good case in point. I was born 14 years after the end of the Second World War and growing up here in Scotland through the 60s when we only had either two or three TV channels. It meant that we had no shortage of war films on BBC One, Two and I TV. That was my childhood view of war, but it was only later in my teens in the 70s that I really found out about the atrocities in the concentration camps and death camps organised by the Nazis, but there was a limit to what you knew or really understood and perhaps I got a bit more knowledgeable when I was doing my hires, but again these atrocities were way before my time. The full impact of what happened hit me fairly recently in fact. Over the past five years since I began visiting friends in Berlin, I initially came across places accidentally which would hold a great deal of fear to any Jews in the area all those years ago. Trafling on Berlin's S-band, we stopped at Grunewald station on the west of the city. I was looking around and seeing some tiled buildings which were obviously seen themselves through the war and had been kept and I was quite impressed by the sense of history in the architecture given that 80 per cent of the city had been destroyed. I pointed this out to my friend who then looked at me and pointed and said, this is where the Berlin Jews were told to report to what they thought was going to be a new life in the east. It's at this point that the penny really dropped with me and I can genuinely say that my heart sank. This was no grainy black and white TV documentary or even a new colour film on the history channel, this was living history. The sense of being on the site with the cattle trucks, the massive people being directed by SS guards and the knowledge that most of these human beings would never return had a profound effect. I found myself on subsequent visits to the city having similar feelings when seeing the inauspicious building used by Adolf Eichmann that he used when planning the journeys of these poor souls, the victims for the final solution. Why had I known about this period of history but not really felt or understood it? Living history is about visiting, talking about what happened and really understanding why it happened. Attending a Bruce Springsteen concert back in the mid 80s he said in a preamble to a song that blind faith in your leaders will get you killed. Well perhaps the Jews, Sinti and Roma peoples didn't sign up to Nazism but many others did and millions paid the price. 70 years ago and it's not that long ago and genocide has happened since. Evil hasn't gone away but the world must do what it can to identify and do something about it and I support and commend this motion. Many thanks, that concludes the open debate and I now invite Dr Alice Sturallan to respond to the debate. Dr Allan, around seven minutes please. I thank Stuart Maxwell for again bringing a motion on Holocaust Memorial Day to be discussed at this member's debate and also thank the many members who have taken part. From Shetland to the border schools, colleges, universities, faith groups and communities are, as we speak, remembering this particularly significant Holocaust Memorial Day, with candlelighting ceremonies, memorial events, music, drama and poetry. I thank the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and Interfaith Scotland for their partnership in organising the commemorative programme of events this week. I also thank the Holocaust Educational Trust for placing the book of commitment in the Parliament this week and for the outstanding work that they do. In October 2011, I had the privilege to take part in a schools visit to Auschwitz organised by the lessons from Auschwitz project, which is funded by the Scottish Government and run by the Holocaust Educational Trust. It is an experience that I will not readily forget and neither will the many young people who were with me that day forget it. It has often been said that the only appropriate thing to say upon visiting Auschwitz is to say nothing at all. Anything that we might offer to say would be inadequate. Indeed, different people are taken aback by different things. For some people, the most shocking thing about seeing Auschwitz Birkenau is its sheer scale. It is the size of a small town. For some, it is trying to work out how the camp commandant apparently cheerfully had his wife and children living in a comfortable house on site. For others, it is the photographs of lost families or left house keys or the piles of shoes and hair. All of that rehumanises what happened and makes sense if that is possible of vast numbers by focusing on individual victims. The Scottish Government is pleased to have been able to fund those opportunities for senior pupils from Scottish schools for some six years now, since 2009. As a result, well over 2,000 school pupils have had the experience of visiting Auschwitz Birkenau. It is not only that experience that is so powerful. The lessons from Auschwitz programme supports young people to go on to become ambassadors for the project. As today's motion mentions, two of those ambassadors, Lucy Patterson and Kieran Smith, from St Andrew's secondary in Glasgow, led, I understand, a very moving and eloquent time for reflection at the start of our session today. Those ambassadors can teach us about the vital importance of understanding and respecting different religions and beliefs, the importance of understanding those who are of a different race or of a different sexual orientation, because the Holocaust teaches us very disturbingly about where intolerance of all kinds and, of course, specifically, as Ken Macintosh and others have pointed out, where specifically antisemitism leads us all. As we have heard, the theme of this year's Holocaust memorial day is to keep the memory alive. Ella Weisberger, a Holocaust survivor, and Hassan Hasanovicius, Srebrenicius survivor, are travelling throughout this week, sharing their testimonies with young people, community groups and others. Across Scotland, people young and old will be pledging to keep their memory alive, giving a voice to those whose voices were brutally silenced in genocides. Tonight in air, the First Minister will join survivors, students, local and national politicians, communities and faith groups, including the Jewish community at the National Holocaust Memorial Day event. Tomorrow in Glasgow, around 400 primary 7 to 60-year secondary pupils from across the city will be involved in their own pupil-led Holocaust memorial day event. Schools, colleges and universities will involve students, lecturers and communities in a variety of events, including sharing stories and reflections. University of Highlands and Islands candlelighting ceremony will take place through a live link-up across universities' campuses, including those on the islands of Benbecula and Barra in my constituency. All divisions of Police Scotland are marking Holocaust memorial day. This morning, Falkirk Council hosted an event that included a mix of song, film and poetry by local community groups, telling the stories of the Gypsy and Roma religious, political, lesbian and gay communities experiences of the Holocaust. Parliament on Thursday is hosting a reception for survivors and their families, including those who came to Glasgow as part of the Kinder transport. The reception will commemorate Holocaust memorial day and will also celebrate the enormous contribution that migrant communities have made over successive generations to make Scotland the successful and diverse country that it is today—a point made in a very thoughtful contribution from Jackson Carlaw. Keeping the memory alive means, of course, not only learning about the Holocaust but learning from the Holocaust. It means learning the lessons of our past to do that. We need to fully understand where intolerance and prejudice take us. We must never be complacent about intolerance and hatred. We must challenge and eradicate all forms of discrimination and prejudice wherever we can. As many have observed tonight, the recent and tragic events in Paris should remind us all of the need for vigilance. Thank you again for the opportunity to contribute to this member's debate. Members have reflected their personal commitment to education and commemoration of the Holocaust and of other genocides. As Mr Maxwell and Mr Gibson mentioned, there will come a time when there will be no living witnesses to testify to those crimes, so we all have a responsibility to keep the memory alive and to continue to support the important, heartfelt, meaningful activities that we have seen throughout our country today. Thank you very much, minister. That concludes Stuart Maxwell's debate on Holocaust Memorial Day 2015, and I now close this meeting of Parliament.