Ed Miliband has spoken about encountering antisemitism and lighting a candle for his grandfather who died in a Nazi labour camp as politicians prepare to mark Holocaust memorial day.
The Labour leader, who has said he wants to be the UK’s first Jewish prime minister, said the day was emotional for everyone whose families were affected by the Holocaust.
Miliband said he had not talked much about his grandfather’s death when growing up but it had marked him. “It’s 70 years since my grandfather died in one of the camps and I marked that about 10 days ago... It’s a Jewish thing, you light a candle and I know this sounds almost unbelievable, but it’s only about six months ago that we discovered the full circumstances of what happened to my grandfather. He ended up in Germany in a labour camp, which is where he eventually died according to the records. I went to Yad Vashem, the place in Israel where they have records on the Holocaust, and that’s where we discovered more information about what had happened to him.
“It’s a kind of way of remembering. It’s a Jewish thing to remember and I talked about it with a friend of mine and we agreed that was the right thing to do. I lit the candle and my kids, my eldest son Daniel said to me ‘what’s that for?’ and he’s five so it’s hard to explain. I explained it was my grandfather who I didn’t meet and who died at a very young age.”
Miliband said it was important to remember the horror of the Holocaust as well as the hope associated with people who protected Jews from harm.
Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, he said: “It’s awful and it makes me feel incredibly lucky. There’s horror and there’s hope, because it’s also the case that many members of my family were saved because they were Jews who were hidden by decent people. There’s another story, which is that there were 17 members of my family who were sheltered in a Belgian village – that’s on my father’s side – and it was only because of the decent people in that village who helped them.”
Miliband said it was especially important to remember the Holocaust at a time of rising antisemitism in the world. The Labour leader said he had been subject to abuse on Twitter but only targeted once because of his Jewish heritage when in Poland.
He said most Britons were not antisemitic.
“We should always be vigilant about antisemitism – and there is evidence that there is a bit of a rise of antisemitism in this country – but I think we should also remember that the vast majority of people right across our country are incredibly decent people who would be as appalled by antisemitism as Jews in Britain are too. And I think it’s really important to remember that as we also are vigilant about antisemitism wherever we find it.”
Miliband will join the prime minister, David Cameron, and deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, at a ceremony on Tuesday to remember the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Speaking on LBC radio, Cameron recalled his visit to the camp last year, saying the memory kept coming back to him.
