Hansard is the official record of debates in the United Kingdom Parliament. The full digitised archive is available free online and is fully searchable. For Holocaust research, Hansard is the primary source for the British government’s wartime knowledge of and response to the persecution of European Jews.
The most-cited Hansard record is the statement made by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to the House of Commons on 17 December 1942, in which the Allied governments formally acknowledged the German programme of extermination of the Jews of Europe. The statement was followed by a minute’s silence in the Commons. The full text is available in the Hansard archive under the date.
Other Hansard material relevant to Holocaust history includes parliamentary questions on the Kindertransport and other refugee policy from 1938 onwards, debates on the Mandate of Palestine and Jewish immigration, the post-war debates on the Genocide Convention, and the more recent debates on the Holocaust Memorial Day Act of 2001 and the proposed national memorial at Westminster.
Website: hansard.parliament.uk
Historical Hansard (pre-2005): api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard