On 17 December 1942, the House of Commons rose in silence following a government statement condemning the “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination” of Jews by Nazi Germany.

The gesture was a spontaneous response to foreign secretary Anthony Eden’s statement regarding the Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations – the first formal Allied acknowledgement of what would later be known as the Holocaust.

It is considered one of the most poignant occasions in parliament’s long history.

Eden’s statement was delivered in response to a private notice question tabled by Sydney Silverman, the Labour MP for Nelson and Colne. Silverman asked the government for information regarding the German plan to deport Jews from occupied countries to Eastern Europe to “put them to death before the end of the year”.

Eden rose to deliver the response produced by 11 governments: the United States, the United Kingdom, the USSR, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Yugoslavia, alongside the French National Committee.

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The foreign secretary told the House that “reliable reports have recently reached His Majesty’s government regarding the barbarous and inhuman treatment to which Jews are being subjected in German-occupied Europe”.

Reciting the text of the declaration, Eden told MPs that the German authorities were “now carrying into effect Hitler’s oft repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe”.

He stated: “From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported, in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern Europe. In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettoes established by the German invaders are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries.”

He continued: “None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labour camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions.”

Eden maintained that those responsible for these crimes “shall not escape retribution”.

Following the statement, Silverman said Eden had given “eloquent expression to the conscience of humanity in this matter”.

Liberal MP James de Rothschild spoke on behalf of the Jewish community in Britain.

He said: “Among the Jewish subjects of His Majesty there are many today who have been in this country only for a generation or so. They will feel that, but for the grace of God, they themselves might be among the victims of the Nazi tyranny at the present time.”

William Cluse, the Labour MP for Islington South, then asked whether it would be appropriate for the House to mark the news of this “disgusting barbarism”.

Cluse said: “Is it possible, in your judgment, Mr Speaker, for members of the House to rise in their places and stand in silence in support of this protest against disgusting barbarism?”

The House of Commons speaker, Edward FitzRoy, replied that such a gesture “should be a spontaneous act by the House as a whole”.

The Hansard record notes simply: “Members of the House then stood in silence.”

A Daily Mail journalist covering the event stated: “One after another M.P. stood until all, in their hundreds, sombre-garbed and sombre-faced ranks, were on their feet. I can tell you that there were many eyes which were not dry and there was not, I dare swear, a throat without a lump in it…

“I have never seen anything like this silence which was like the frown of the conscience of mankind.”

The reading of the declaration was repeated in the House of Lords by the lord chancellor, John Simon.

Lord Addison, Labour leader in the upper chamber, said that he was “glad to hear of the immense, moving satisfaction with which this declaration was received a short time ago in the other House.”

He told the House: “If ever, in the history of the world, there was a crime for which the obliteration of those responsible was merited, surely it is to be found in this series of crimes.”

The Bishop of London argued that no perpetrator should be able to “shelter himself behind the orders of superior authority.”

He said: “These deeds are so repugnant to the laws of God and to every human instinct of decency that whoever takes a share in them must receive due retribution for them.”

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The Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations, delivered to the commons by Eden, represented the culmination of intelligence regarding the German war machine’s systematic murder of Jews in central and eastern Europe.

Previously, in August 1941, Winston Churchill as prime minister had assessed Ultra intercepts (encrypted enemy communications) concerning the massacres committed by Einsatzgruppen units in the Soviet Union.

In a radio broadcast on 24 August 1941, Churchill announced that “whole districts are being exterminated”.

He added: “We are in the presence of a crime without a name.”

By the summer of 1942, specific details began to reach the West. Gerhart Riegner, the Swiss representative of World Jewish Congress, received intelligence gathered by German industrialist Eduard Schulte regarding the Final Solution concept.

In August 1942, Riegner sent a telegram to Howard Elting Jr, the US vice-consul in Geneva. He warned that Hitler intended to deport between 3.5 million and 4 million Jews to the East for “extermination”.

Sydney Silverman, chairman of the British section of the World Jewish Congress, also received the telegram and led in distributing it.

On 21 August, Roosevelt warned those responsible for the persecutions that “the time will come when they shall have to stand in courts of law in the very countries which they are now oppressing and answer for their acts.”

On 10 December 1942, the Polish government-in-exile issued a formal note titled The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland, authored by Count Edward Raczyński, the Polish minister of foreign affairs. This 16-page document provided the diplomatic basis for the allied declaration.

The BBC broadcasted the joint declaration into occupied Europe.

In the years following Eden’s recitation of the declaration, MPs did express misgivings at a perceived lack of allied action.

In February 1943, Labour MP Seymour Cocks asked home secretary Herbert Morrison: “Does my right honourable friend realise that when the House of Commons stood as a mark of sympathy in connection with this matter it was not intended as a signal for the government that they should stand still and do nothing?”

The declaration’s promise of retribution did not halt the German death machine. By the end of the war in 1945, approximately six million Jews had been murdered – around two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population.

The vow to bring those responsible to justice was partly realised at the Nuremberg Trials.

Other leading Nazi officials, such as Adolf Eichmann, who oversaw the implementation of the Final Solution, initially escaped capture. Eichmann was eventually captured by Israeli agents in Argentina, tried, and hanged in Israel in 1962.

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On 15 December 2022, the House of Commons marked the 80th anniversary of the declaration.

Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle invited the House to observe a minute of silence.

He said: “Before we start our business, I wish to invite the House to commemorate a tragic and sombre event. On 17 December 1942 – 80 years ago, on Saturday – the then foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, read to the House a declaration issued by the wartime allies condemning the treatment of Jewish people by the Nazis in occupied Europe.

“The declaration followed a diplomatic note sent to the allied powers a week earlier, by the Polish foreign minister in exile – the first official report that the Holocaust was under way.”

He added: “To remember that important moment, and as a tribute to all those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis, I now invite the House to join me for a minute of silent reflection.”

Seven survivors of the Holocaust were present in the gallery to witness the tribute.