Sir Keir Starmer has called his visit to Auschwitz “utterly harrowing” and said he was determined to fight the “poison of antisemitism”.
The prime minister visited the former Nazi concentration camp where he laid a wreath ahead of the 80th anniversary of its liberation, during a trip to Poland to meet its political leaders.
After he and his wife Victoria, who is Jewish, visited the site, Sir Keir said: “Nothing could prepare me for the sheer horror of what I have seen in this place. It is utterly harrowing. The mounds of hair, the shoes, the suitcases, the names and details, everything that was so meticulously kept, except for human life.
“As I stood by the train tracks at Birkenau, looking across that cold, vast expanse, I felt a sickness, an air of desolation, as I tried to comprehend the enormity of this barbarous, planned, industrialised murder: a million people killed here for one reason, simply because they were Jewish.”
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Historians estimate about 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in Auschwitz over less than five years as part of the Nazi’s extermination plan. The camp was liberated by the Soviet army on 27 January 1945.
Sir Keir, who was on his first trip there, said it was Lady Starmer’s second visit but it was “no less harrowing than the first time she stepped through that gate and witnessed the depravity of what happened here”.
He added that their visit truly showed him how “this was not the evil deeds of a few bad individuals, it took a collective endeavour by thousands of ordinary people… in the hatred of difference”.
“The lessons of this darkest of crimes are the ultimate warning to humanity of where prejudice can lead,” he said.
Pic: Reuters
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