Andrew Dismore

At this week’s London Assembly plenary Andrew Dismore, Labour London Assembly member for Barnet and Camden spoke in the debate on Holocaust education to highlight the continuing problems of Antisemitism.

Andrew’s speech about commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day from Andrew Dismore on Vimeo.

After speaking about his role in the introduction of Holocaust Memorial Day when he was the MP for Hendon and the importance of recognising all victims of genocide, Mr Dismore highlighted the example of the anti Semitic twitter trolling of brave Jewish student Izzy Lenga, who spoke out after posters proclaiming ‘Hitler was right’ were posted up on her university campus.

Mr Dismore then referred to the recently published University College London Centre for Holocaust Education report, which revealed that almost 2/3rds of secondary school students do not know what anti Semitism means.

Mr Dismore said:

‘The report shows that 83% of the 8000 secondary students in the study believed the Holocaust was an important subject and 70% wanted to learn more, but the study also revealed that knowledge and understanding is often limited and based on inaccuracies and misconceptions, popular myths that go unchallenged. Only 37% knew what anti Semitism means and most could not explain why the Jews were murdered.

‘Most thought Holocaust perpetrators had no choice but the reality was that the soldier or police officer who refused would be given other duty; and most students had little understanding of Britain’s knowledge and weak response.

‘The report shows just why Holocaust education is so important and why it was right for the then Labour Government to provide funds to the Holocaust Educational Trust take students from every secondary school on visits to Auschwitz and for subsequent Governments to continues the funding.’