Rt Hon Theresa May - Why Holocaust Education is so Important

Last year, in 2014 I had the pleasure of spending a little time with UK Home Secretary and constituent MP, Theresa May. I was extremely grateful that Ms May set aside a little time within an extremely busy schedule to allow me to ask her a few questions about why holocaust memorial and education is so important for us globally, both socially and politically. Here's what Ms May had to say on the issue:

1) Q: Why is learning about holocaust so important within compulsory education?

Well I think it is important that young people understand what happened during the holocaust and hey see and understand the depths to which man’s inhumanity to man, can go. Sadly of course, we’ve seen in recent years, genocides such as in Rwanda, but it’s so important people understand what happened during the holocaust.

And I think what the Holocaust Educational Trust does in actually taking youngsters to Auschwitz, showing them what it was like, just brings it into much sharper focus for people and so I’m very pleased that schools in my constituency do actually participate in this and give young people that opportunity.

And of course, in terms of [Key] Stage 3 history curriculum, there is education about the holocaust as part of that, which I think is important.

2) Q: And what about its political significance?

I think it’s important particularly in fact, for the same reasons it’s important that young people learn about it. First of all it is important that we all remember and recognise what can happen when a regime such as the one in Nazi Germany takes the actions it did, takes the attitude that it did, towards groups of people, and then takes the action that led to the many millions of deaths that occurred during the holocaust.

It is a sharp wake up call to politicians to remind us of the depths to which human beings can go and that’s important in itself but it’s important today as well, for another reason which is that sadly we still see people wanting to take up violence against others, hate crimes occurring.

I recently participated in an event run by the community safety trust and visited a group that is funded by the Jewish community, that works to provide security to synagogues, to provide support and information to young people at university for example about how to protect themselves from anti-Semitic behaviour and abuse and hate crimes. How sad it is that that is still necessary today. Despite what we saw happening during the holocaust and despite what we should have learnt from that.

And so for politicians today, we have to recognise, the problems that still exist in society, in relation to hate crimes and those can be hate crimes against people of a variety faiths for example but we still see hate crime out there today and we have to be aware of it and recognise it.

And Holocaust Memorial Day reminds us of the extremities that human beings are willing to go to when there is that hatred among them.

3) Q: And it’s resonance globally?

I think we all would have hoped that, as human beings, we would have learned and would have recognised that that was not what should occur. Sadly of course we have seen, as in the genocide in Rwanda that once again people, because people happen to belong to a different sort of group within their society, we saw genocide on the scale that we did.

What we want, obviously what we all want is to ensure that events like that do not happen again. That’s why Holocaust Memorial is relevant, not just for us here in the UK, but relevant globally.

But it is also relevant because we see hate crime, at a lesser level, elsewhere as well, in parts of Europe, I am aware of. So these are messages that we need to KEEP giving to people and keep reminding people of. We would all want to be in a situation where we didn’t need to but sadly, the evidence is, we do need to continue. That’s why that constant memorial, reminding people of what did happen and what can happen, is so important.

4) Q: What’s your view on educating adults about the holocaust?

Well, young people go through school, and they become adults obviously, and they can take that through into their adulthood and take that understanding through into their adulthood.

I think what’s important in what the Holocaust Educational trust but particularly the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust does is there is a point in time each year, when the issue is raised and the profile of the issue is raised, so that reminds adults about the issue and can act as a trigger. Hopefully some people will say, well actually I want to know more about this, as a result of seeing that memorial and see people taking that time to say we need to recognise, we need to remind ourselves of what CAN happen between human beings. And hopefully people will then take that forward.

But In the whole arena of trying to reduce hate crime, trying to deal with hate crime, and also to do with extremism of course, government has a role to play.

One of the things we’ve done is to encourage the proper recording of hate crime so we get a much better understanding of what is happening. And also as a government we’ve taken a more robust view, than has been done previously in relation to extremist preachers, for example.