Keir Starmer pledges to build Holocaust memorial and expand Holocaust education across UK schools
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers remarks at the Holocaust Educational Trust’s annual appeal dinner, Sep. 16, 2024. (Screenshot via YouTube)
(JTA) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a new initiative to expand Holocaust education across British schools, and said the government would build a long-promised Holocaust memorial next to Parliament.
Starmer made the pledges Monday at an event with 500 guests, including British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, hosted by the United Kingdom’s Holocaust Educational Trust. Starmer cited declining participation in Holocaust Memorial Day events as well as a rise in antisemitism following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war last year.
According to the Community Security Trust, which monitors antisemitism, antisemitic incidents in the country more than doubled in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2023.
“You know, every year we say never again,” said Starmer. “Yet on Oct. 7, over a thousand people were massacred by Hamas for the very same reason: because they were Jewish. We say never again, and yet in the last year we’ve seen record levels of antisemitism right here in Britain. Hatred marching on our streets, the pulse of fear beating in this community.”
Starmer became prime minister in July, winning a landslide victory for his Labour Party after 14 years of Conservative rule. He took over Labour from former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who faced repeated accusations of antisemitism. Starmer, whose wife Victoria Alexander is Jewish, worked to rid the party of antisemitism when he took its helm.
“We will fight this with everything that we have got,” he said. “Just as I fought to bring my party back from the abyss of antisemitism, I promise you I will do the same in leading the country.”
Efforts to establish a British national Holocaust memorial have been underway for a decade. But the plans have been met with objections ranging from concerns about landscaping issues to concerns about overplaying Britain’s role in the rescue of Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust.
“We will build that national Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre and build it next to Parliament, boldly, proudly, unapologetically,” Starmer said. “Not as a Jewish community initiative, but as a national initiative — a national statement of the truth of the Holocaust and its place in our national consciousness, and a permanent reminder of where hatred and prejudice can lead.”
Starmer said that Holocaust education would stay in Britain’s national curriculum, and that the government would mandate it across schools.
“First, the Holocaust will remain on the curriculum come what may,” Starmer said. “And second, even schools who do not currently have to follow the national curriculum will have to teach the Holocaust when the new curriculum comes in. For the first time, studying the Holocaust will become a critical, vital part of every single student’s identity. And not just studying it — learning from it too.”
As part of the new initiative, students “should have the opportunity to hear a recorded survivor testimony,” Starmer said in his remarks Monday.
In addition to pledging to build the Holocaust memorial, Starmer said his government would continue funding the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz program, which sends students to Poland to visit the concentration camp, to the tune of nearly $3 million next year.
He also pledged to encourage students to meet with survivors or interact with them using virtual reality, and said he would travel to Auschwitz personally.
“I know there is nothing quite as powerful as seeing it for yourself,” he said.
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