Baroness Deech (CB)

My Lords, I have been careful to confine my remarks to the precise amendment, so I do not want to stray into other issues. I just want to pick up on three small points. First, the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, mentioned Ben Helfgott. It is the case that most of the remaining Holocaust survivors do not know what is being done in their name or the details of it. In fact, people have gone to great lengths to stop them finding out. I was temporarily banned from talking to a group of survivors in north London in case they found out what was going on. However, one of the greatest survivors, Anita Lasker- Wallfisch, is opposed to this project; I believe that there will be some comment from her in the Times tomorrow. Secondly, it is a matter of profound Jewish scholarship that the Holocaust is diluted by mixing it with other genocides, but there is no time to go into that now. Finally, even if the Jewish community had money, it supports its own people through a number of charities. If it was called on to come up with £200 million, there would be nothing left for anything else. It is a misconception that this is a community project or that the community should pay for it.