logo
Ten years after it was first announced, Britain's Holocaust memorial has still not been built. Why?

Ten years after it was first announced, Britain's Holocaust memorial has still not been built. Why?

Telegraph27-01-2025

Last January, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a 98-year-old
Born in 1925 in Poland, Ms Lasker-Wallfisch was sent to the concentration camp when she was 18 and only spared because she could play the cello, becoming part of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz.
She banged the table in frustration as she decried the proposed monument – a collection of 23 large bronze 'fins' jutting out of the ground – and subterranean ''learning centre', which she said was 'almost an insult.'
'What are we learning now that we haven't learned in 80 years?' she said. 'We shouldn't kill each other? Good idea'.
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, celebrated every year to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz. Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, Ms Lasker-Wallfisch, now 99, is one of Britain's last living links with the Holocaust.
Against a background of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and international fury at Benjamin Netanyahu's leadership of Israel, anti-Semitic attacks in the UK are at record levels according to the Jewish security charity the Community Security Trust (CST). The need to remember the Holocaust has rarely been more urgent. So why has the proposed monument, more than a decade in the planning, become one of the most fraught schemes in government?
Despite enjoying cross-party political support, the proposal has been the target of concerted opposition, including a successful judicial review. This prompted a new law, the Holocaust Memorial Bill, to facilitate the construction of the memorial and underground learning centre. The estimated costs have more than tripled, from £50m to in excess of £150m, including at least £75m of public money.
Critics argue that the proposal, designed by the scandal-hit architect David Adjaye, will take the wrong form in the wrong place at the wrong price, carried along by political inertia. At worst, they warn, the memorial could even misrepresent Britain's relationship to the Holocaust, or increase the risk of anti-Semitic attacks.
But supporters, including Sir Ephraim Mirvis, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth contend the memorial is essential. Last summer, Mirvis said the 'moral duty to preserve the lessons of the Holocaust could not be greater'.
'This [monument] … sends a timely message, not only about our national undertaking to remembering this dark period of our history but, more importantly, about the kind of future we want to create together,' he said.
Britain's relationship to the Holocaust is complicated. The Kindertransport, in which the UK took in nearly 10,000 mostly Jewish children from across Nazi-occupied Europe, was a compromise brought about by Parliament's reluctance to accept adult refugees. Other celebrations of Britain's resistance to Nazi Germany can be complicated by the sense that more could have been done to help.
It was not until 1979 that Michael Heseltine, as Margaret Thatcher's environment secretary, announced that there would be a permanent memorial to the Holocaust, opposite the Cenotaph on Whitehall. But nobody could agree on what exactly to put there. Lord Carrington, the foreign secretary, who won the Military Cross as a tank commander during Operation Market Garden in 1944, objected that the memorial had 'nothing to do with Britain.' The space on Whitehall is still empty.
In the end, a Holocaust memorial was built in Hyde Park, at the east of the Serpentine, and unveiled in 1983. It comprises two boulders on a bed of gravel, surrounded by a little copse of silver birch trees. On one of the boulders is an inscription, in Hebrew and English, with a quote from the Book of Lamentations: 'For these I weep. Streams of tears flow from my eyes because of the destruction of my people.' Although it is elegant, there is no denying that it is out-of-the-way and little visited. A statue at London's Liverpool Street station, meanwhile, commemorates
Nevertheless, the Holocaust is hardly ignored in the UK. The Imperial War Museum in Lambeth, less than a mile from Parliament, has a widely admired permanent Holocaust exhibition, which receives more than 600,000 visitors a year and has just been spruced up as part of the museum's £33m refurbishment. There is a National Holocaust Museum Centre and Museum in Nottinghamshire; Holocaust Centre North in Huddersfield; and the Wiener Holocaust Library in Russell Square.
The saga over a new monument began in 2014 when then-Prime Minister David Cameron launched a Holocaust Commission to establish whether the UK needed to do more to preserve the memory of the Holocaust.
The commission reported back the following year and recommended a 'striking and prominent new National Memorial', along with a visitor centre which would teach tourists about the Holocaust. The report also argued that the British memorial should be located near the centre of government, echoing the prominent memorials in Berlin, Washington DC and Jerusalem.
They settled on Victoria Tower Gardens, a peaceful little Grade II-listed park by the Thames on the southern side of Parliament. Cameron said the memorial would stand beside Parliament 'as a permanent statement of our values as a nation'. The monument would cost around £50m and open in 2017. Seven years later, nothing has been built, after a litany of complications.
The location was controversial from the start. Victoria Tower Gardens is small and popular with local residents. There are already three memorials in it: the Emmeline & Christabel Pankhurst memorial, the Buxton Memorial Fountain to the abolition of slavery, and Rodin's sculpture, The Burghers of Calais. The winning design, by the architect David Adjaye, comprised 23 large bronze fins, creating 22 spaces to represent the countries most affected by the Holocaust, along with a subterranean visitor centre. The fins would loom over these other memorials and occupy a large percentage of the park's open space.
In an interview, Adjaye said 'disrupting the pleasure of being in a park is key to the thinking' behind his plan. In a further complication, in 2023 Adjaye was accused of sexual assault and harassment by three women who had worked with him. He denied the accusations but stepped back from the Holocaust memorial, among other projects.
Mirvis, for his part, refers to the creation of the memorial as a 'sacred task'.
'I appreciate that there are some detractors,' he wrote in Jewish News in 2020. 'There are some people who are opposed to this idea.
'I respect their views [...] but I beg to differ. I differ with them in the strongest, most passionate way. Locating this particular initiative and development in Victoria Tower Gardens is an inspirational choice of venue. It is a wonderful location.'
Residents have been less enthralled. 'I'm Jewish, and it's wonderful that there's a proposal to have a Holocaust memorial in the capital,' says Louise Hyams, a Conservative councillor on Westminster Council. 'But the one that's proposed is too large and overpowering. This was the ugliest of the proposals.
'More than that, the local residents value the park as somewhere they can go. In that area, there's a lot of social housing and people don't have gardens. They were very upset that this park would be taken away. It was the wrong monument in the wrong location. The atmosphere of the park would obviously change if there was a Holocaust memorial in it.' Others argued that the memorial would damage the park's flora, and increase the risk of flooding.
Hyams adds that the park will cause 'congestion' and might attract hostile as well as respectful visits. 'It is just going to cause trouble in that location,' she says. 'I don't want it to cause the opposite of what it wants to achieve. I don't want it to cause anti-semitism.' She believes the Imperial War Museum, with its existing Holocaust exhibition and large open spaces, would be a better location for any new memorial.
Perhaps the most concerted opposition to the memorial, however, has come from Baroness Deech, a Jewish crossbench peer whose father fled the Nazis to Britain. She queries the value not just of the selected design, but the whole concept of a memorial.
'There was a report recently that found around half the people in the world hold anti-Semitic views, even in places where there are no Jews,' she says. 'There are in the world over 300 Holocaust memorials and nobody seems ever to have carried out an impact assessment. Do they do any good? The answer is obviously 'no, they' don't. I think in part this is because they are more and more politicised, but also because they all place the Holocaust in a sort of box. 'This happened 80 years ago, it was the Nazis, the Germans, we're frightfully sorry, full stop. Nobody seems to draw the dotted line from then until now. It's as if they sanitize it, saying 'it was all a long time ago, it's hermetically sealed.'
She adds that the site next to Parliament, which has been chosen for political purposes, is also likely to make the memorial a target. In April 2024, police covered up the Hyde Park memorial out of fear vandals might deface it.
'[The new memorial] will be the focal point for vandalism, protest and worse,' Deech says. 'All the marches that go on at the moment will converge on Victoria Tower Gardens. I've studied this, and abstract memorials are more prone to being defaced than figurative ones. The Kindertransport memorial in Liverpool Street has remained untouched. But abstract ones like this one, which don't have any meaning, no appeal to the heart, will immediately get red paint all over them and worse. The ruination of the park, which is inevitable, will be blamed on the Jewish community, most of whom don't want it. It has been largely by non-Jews and imposed on the Jewish community whether they want it or not. The Holocaust survivors I've been in contact with don't want it, because they can see it's pointless.'
The proposal has carried on regardless. After a public enquiry, planning permission was finally granted for the memorial in July 2021. Four months later, the High Court allowed a legal challenge against that permission. Opponents argued that a London County Council Act from 1900 prohibited building in the park. The High Court overturned the planning permission the following April, a decision further upheld by the Court of Appeal. To build the memorial, Parliament would have to pass a new law. In February 2023, the government introduced the Holocaust Memorial Bill for this purpose. With cross-party support, it has passed easily through Parliament, despite the objections.
'It is perceived as risky for politicians to oppose it,' says Prof Richard Evans, one of the world's leading historians of the Second World War and a long-standing opponent of the scheme. Not only is the memorial 'rather ugly', he says, but the proposed study centre is 'really second rate.'
'There are better ways of commemorating the Holocaust,' he says. 'We need the best we can get. The proposals are not adequate. They run the risk of making this country look ridiculous.'
For Evans, part of the problem is the nature of the memorial itself, which he says risks distorting Britain's history with the Holocaust. 'I'm concerned it may give a misleading impression of Britain's response to Nazi anti-Semitism, which was not entirely laudable,' he says. 'There were many barriers put up to the emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany, although of course some very good things were done, like the Kindertransport. But to say that Britain was preserved because of democracy is seriously misleading. After all, it was the Weimar Republic's democracy that let in and was destroyed by the Nazis, leading to the Holocaust.' Britain's acceptance of Hitler's Anschluss with Austria, and the appeasement exemplified by the Munich Agreement, also helped create the conditions for the Holocaust.
Evans also believes that the memorial risks distracting from the serious business of educating people, especially young people, about the Holocaust, especially important given the
Seemingly undeterred by the opposition to the project, successive governments have continued to support it. After Sir Keir Starmer was elected Prime Minister in July, he doubled down on the plan.
'We will build that national Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre and build it next to Parliament, boldly, proudly, unapologetically,' he said, addressing the Holocaust Education Trust in September. '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.'
Last autumn Cameron, now Lord Cameron,
'Our goal has always been, in the shadow of Parliament, to have a memorial to events which started off in a parliament through a democratic process which became undemocratic,' he says. 'In Britain, America and other countries around the world, the political and democratic process found it very hard to engage with something that became the catastrophe of the 20th century. It was a difficult time when Parliament faced big dilemmas and didn't rise to the challenge.'
Given the momentum behind the Bill, there is little risk it will not make it through the Lords this year. Construction of the memorial seems likely to follow soon after. The builders need to get a move on. Otherwise, the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors may not live to see it, whether they want it or not.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

CNN responds after police detain correspondent Jason Carroll during LA protests coverage
CNN responds after police detain correspondent Jason Carroll during LA protests coverage

The Independent

time17 minutes ago

  • The Independent

CNN responds after police detain correspondent Jason Carroll during LA protests coverage

CNN correspondent Jason Carroll was briefly detained by Los Angeles Police Department officers on Monday night while covering the ongoing protests against Donald Trump's immigration raids, prompting the network to respond that it was 'pleased' the matter was resolved quickly. With much of the national media's attention centered squarely on LA now that the president has mobilized the National Guard and Marines to respond to the anti-ICE demonstrations, Carroll was reporting from one of the protests in the city. Shortly after wrapping up a live dispatch during anchor Laura Coates' broadcast, however, Carroll found himself with his hands behind his back as law enforcement officers began leading him away. Noticing the situation, Coates stopped her discussion with CNN analyst John Miller to ask Carroll what was happening. 'I am being detained,' the reporter exclaimed, his mic still live. 'I'm being detained, Laura.' After Carroll asked the officers if he was being arrested, one of the cops could be heard telling him that he was being led away from the protest scene and would not be allowed to return. 'We're letting you go. You can't come back. If you come back, you will be arrested,' the officer stated. 'Because then if you come back in, then you go.' At that point, a man identifying himself as working for The New York Times told Carroll that his crew had 'video of you guys' and that if CNN needed it later, the network just needed to call the paper. 'Thank you, I appreciate that,' Carroll responded. The CNN correspondent would thank the officers after he was escorted behind the police perimeter before turning back to Coates to explain to viewers what happened. 'I was called over, and the officer told me to put my hands behind my back. I said, 'Am I being arrested?' And he said, 'You are being detained,'' Carroll told viewers. 'I was walked out of the area. They took down my information.' According to Carroll, it didn't matter to the officers that he had clarified that he was a reporter for CNN, as they were adamant that he needed to leave the scene. 'They did not put me in zip ties, but they did grab both my hands as I was escorted over to the side,' he continued. 'They said you are being detained while we lead you out of this area. You are not allowed to be in this area.' A CNN spokesperson confirmed to The Independent that Carroll and his production team were briefly held by the LAPD, adding that they were thankful that the situation was defused in a swift manner. 'A CNN reporting team was briefly detained in Los Angeles while capturing the events that were unfolding as police attempted to clear an area during the ongoing protests and police and military response in the city,' the spokesperson said in a statement. 'We are pleased the situation resolved quickly once the reporting team presented law enforcement with their CNN credentials. CNN will continue to report out the news unfolding in Los Angeles.' Meanwhile, Caroll said on Monday night that he wasn't too bothered by the police detaining him while he was reporting from the demonstration, noting that it essentially comes with the job. Still, he did say this came as a bit of a surprise. 'You take a lot of risks as the press. This is low on that scale of risks, but it is something that I wasn't expecting, simply because we've been out here all day,' he concluded. 'I've covered any number of protests, and normally the officers realize that the press is there doing a job.'

Will the SNP's anti-nuclear energy policy survive?
Will the SNP's anti-nuclear energy policy survive?

The National

time28 minutes ago

  • The National

Will the SNP's anti-nuclear energy policy survive?

Just take Wendy Wood, one of the founders of the National Party of Scotland – which later grew into the SNP. As early as 1953, the artist and Scottish independence campaigner was vocally against ​​the nuclear power site Dounreay on the north coast of Caithness, which has been in the long process of being decommissioned since 1994. In the 1970s and 1980s, the wider anti-nuclear movement – which organised mass protests against the likes of Torness power station in East Lothian, which is set to close in 2030 – also had strong ties to pro-independence circles and the SNP. It's a link that has stood until today, with the wider Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) long backing Scottish independence. READ MORE: Former Sky Sports presenter banned from business for football betting scam The SNP, meanwhile, has itself had a long-standing commitment to block new nuclear projects through devolved planning powers. But Labour are pushing for nuclear energy to make a comeback across the UK, lumping pressure on the Scottish Government to do the same. On Tuesday, Keir Starmer promised there would be no more 'dithering' about backing nuclear power as the UK Government committed to the Sizewell C plant and the development of new small modular reactors (SMRs). The Prime Minister said the 'change of mindset' would help free the UK from reliance on international fossil fuel markets and prevent price spikes such as those in the wake of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Scottish Labour, of course, were at the ready with anti-SNP attack lines. 'A Scottish Labour government with Anas Sarwar as First Minister will end the SNP's ban on nuclear power which is blocking jobs and investment from being created in Scotland,' Scottish Secretary Ian Murray said. The SNP, for the time being, are not for moving. Acting Energy Secretary Gillian Martin said in response to the announcement that the Scottish Government will continue to focus on renewable energy not nuclear power. The party's energy spokesperson at Westminster, Dave Doogan, also hit out at the UK Government. "The evidence is clear that nuclear is extortionate, takes decades to build and the toxic waste is a risk to local communities – Scotland's future is in renewables, carbon capture and links to Europe, not more money for white elephants,' he said. But could that be changing? Polls certainly indicate that Scots aren't totally opposed to the idea of nuclear power. SNP supporters too – over half of the party's voters believe nuclear power should be part of Scotland's mix of clean energy generation, a poll suggested last month. The Opinium survey for the campaign group Britain Remade (which, to note, was founded by a former energy and climate adviser to Boris Johnson) found 57% of those who voted for the party in last year's general election believe nuclear power should be included in Scotland's energy mix to meet the 2045 net zero target. READ MORE: Palestinian shop 'abruptly evicted' from Edinburgh property after 12 years A total of 56% of Scots thought nuclear power should be part of Scotland's clean energy mix to meet the targets, while 23% disagreed, and 21% said they did not know. This isn't a totally new phenomenon, either. Ipsos polling in 2022 found that more of the Scottish public support the building of more nuclear power stations in Scotland (39%) than oppose it (32%). Meanwhile, an SNP source told The National last month that the party's stance on atomic energy is softening. 'The younger membership honestly couldn't give two shits about this sort of stuff,' they said. 'The younger membership are quite distant from CND.' The source also said that Labour continuing to pursue the Tory nuclear policy might eventually make the SNP stance appear 'dated' but predicted any changes in policy would come further down the line given the Holyrood election is in just a year's time. But will Scottish Labour's recent shock win in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election change things? Before last year's General Election, John Swinney scrapped the Nicola Sturgeon and Bute House Agreement-era 'presumption against' new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. Instead, going forward, the party said it would look at licenses on a "rigorously evidence-led, case-by-case basis". Will the party take this so-called 'pragmatic' approach with nuclear, too?

Australian universities hesitate on antisemitism definition amid academic freedom concerns
Australian universities hesitate on antisemitism definition amid academic freedom concerns

The Guardian

time31 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Australian universities hesitate on antisemitism definition amid academic freedom concerns

Months after the release of a new definition of antisemitism, a string of Australian universities are yet to adopt it amid concerns it may contravene academic freedom. The academic board at the Australian National University (ANU) has declined to adopt the definition, paving the way for the university to become the first to reject the policy, while at least 11 other institutions have not yet made a decision. Peak Jewish groups last week accused the ANU of allowing an 'unsafe and unwelcoming campus' over the board's decision not to adopt the definition endorsed by Universities Australia (UA) in February that closely aligns with the contentious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, after a parliamentary inquiry into antisemitism on campuses. The UA definition has faced some criticism since its release. The National Union of Students (NUS) and National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) rejected the definition over free speech and academic freedom concerns. University of Sydney students overwhelmingly voted to reject university management's adoption of the definition, over similar concerns, at a meeting convened by the Student Representative Council. UNSW, Deakin University, Victoria University, University of Technology Sydney and RMIT University were waiting for the outcome of consultation between the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency and the Higher Education Standards Panel, which were tasked by UA to ensure the definition upholds higher education standards and freedom of expression. James Cook University will examine the definition when it reviews its discrimination policy later this year, as will the University of Adelaide at the request of its council, while Charles Darwin University is considering the 'best positioning' of the definition within its policy framework to 'ensure that academic freedom and expression is honoured'. The University of the Sunshine Coast's academic board will consider the definition in coming months, while the University of Newcastle is 'actively engaging' with stakeholders to consider 'different perspectives' on the matter. The University of Queensland senate endorsed the definition, which was later discussed by the academic board in March, and is working to 'finalise' its decision. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email On Friday 23 May, the last day of term, ANU's academic board chair, Prof Tony Connolly, informed the ACT Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) the board would recommend against adopting the definition and instead intended to adopt a broader anti-racism definition based on a 2023 report released by the university's anti-racism taskforce. An ANU spokesperson confirmed the board had recommended a definition of racism be adopted and 'anti-racism culture' be developed in accordance with the taskforce's recommendations. The academic board holds significant authority in developing and approving university policies but it is ultimately up to the executive to decide whether to endorse its decision. The spokesperson said the university had not rejected the UA definition and was 'continuing to work with our community to determine the best approach and consider the matter through the appropriate governance processes'. Last Friday, the heads of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) and the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism (5A) wrote to the ANU vice-chancellor, Prof Genevieve Bell, expressing their 'dismay' at the board's decision. 'By reason of many examples of antisemitic behaviour at ANU, your campus has become unsafe and unwelcoming for Jewish students,' the letter read. 'Absent a credible definition of antisemitism at ANU, we do not see how the university intends to identify antisemitic conduct and respond appropriately to it.' The working UA definition, first developed by Group of Eight institutions, was unanimously endorsed by 39 vice-chancellors in February, based on work with Jillian Segal, the special envoy to combat antisemitism. The definition says criticism of Israel can be antisemitic 'when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions and when it calls for the elimination of the state of Israel or all Jews or when it holds Jewish individuals or communities responsible for Israel's actions'. 'Substituting the word 'Zionist' for 'Jew' does not eliminate the possibility of speech being antisemitic,' the definition states. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Liat Granot, a co-president of the AUJS, addressed ANU's academic board last month, encouraging it to adopt the definition. Granot said rejecting the definition made Jewish students feel 'incredibly exposed, unsupported and disillusioned'. 'This definition was seen as the last straw … to a hope we had in the institution's ability to protect us. That's been crushed,' she said. In March, the NTEU's ACT division secretary, Dr Lachlan Clohesy, wrote to Connolly urging him to oppose the UA definition. Clohesy said the definition was 'inconsistent with fundamental principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech', and risked conflating legitimate criticism of the Israeli state and government with antisemitism. Clohesy said some Jewish NTEU members had taken particular issue with the 'inclusion of Zionism as part of Jewish identity' in the definition, and the 'underlying assumption that a Jewish person is likely to be Zionist'. 'NTEU is also concerned that the adoption of this definition could lead to attempts to initiate disciplinary [action] against ANU staff in future,' he wrote. The ECAJ and 5A urged the board to reconsider its position and to 'recognise that a non-legally binding, working definition of antisemitism that reflects the Jewish lived experience, is essential'. 'The ANU academic board … comprised of academics with no specialised anti-racism mandate, and which has a focus on academic freedom, is not the appropriate body to evaluate whether the UA definition should be adopted.' A UA spokesperson said the body respected the autonomy of universities to make their own decisions, 'including how best to implement policies and principles that support student safety and free expression'. More than 20 universities did not provide a comment.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store