Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)

My Lords, some years ago I visited the Dachau concentration camp just outside Munich. It made a huge impression on me, as did visiting the memorial and learning centres in Jerusalem and in Berlin. One thing particularly struck me, perhaps because it touched me personally. In Dachau there was a display of the different badges prisoners in the concentration camp were required to wear. One of those badges was a pink triangle, which was reserved for the prisoners who were detained there because they were homosexual. Some 50,000 people are estimated to have been given severe life sentences by the Nazis, and some 15,000 to 20,000 were sent to concentration camps for being homosexual. Most of them died or were killed. Some were subject to horrific experiments, including castration. I think it would be the effect of the noble Lord’s amendment that the learning centre should not provide information or education about that part of the atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany. Sometimes the word Holocaust has been used to include those atrocities. I understand, of course, the force of his argument and the purpose of his amendment—his wish to reserve the education centre and its focus for the appalling crime of attempted genocide perpetrated against Jewish people. If homosexuals, who were also targeted by the Nazi regime, are to be excluded from this learning centre, we should acknowledge that and be conscious of it. Perhaps alternative educational provision can be made. If they should be included—the atrocities were committed against a smaller number of people but were by the same regime with the same sort of motive—then I am not sure the amendment allows for that and should itself be amended at a later stage, should this House accept it tonight. I do not in any way seek to belittle the crime of attempted genocide against the Jewish people—of course not. Nor do I think we should ignore or belittle what was done to people by the same Nazi regime simply because they were gay.