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Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said he was determined to fight the “poison” of antisemitism during a visit to the site of Auschwitz. He was in Poland for talks with the country’s political leaders to discuss defence and security.
Sir Keir, in Poland for talks with the country’s political leaders to discuss defence and security, said nothing could have prepared him for the horror of what he had seen. “It is utterly harrowing,” the prime minister said. “The mounds of hair, the shoes, the suitcases, the names and details, everything that was so meticulously kept, except for human life,” he added.
In a news conference with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Sir Keir said he was determined to deepen the two countries’ security collaborations. His visit comes just over a week before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was the largest Nazi concentration camp.
Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War Two. The prime minister recalled feeling “a sickness” and “air of desolation” as he tried to make sense of “the enormity of this barbarous, planned, industrialised murder”.
The visit, Sir Keir said, showed “more clearly than ever before” that the Holocaust “took a collective endeavour by thousands of ordinary people who each played their part in constructing this whole industry of death”.
He was joined by his wife Lady Victoria Starmer, who is Jewish and had visited Auschwitz once before. She was equally moved, the prime minister said, adding: “It was her second visit, but no less harrowing than the first time she stepped through that gate and witnessed the depravity of what happened here.”
While in Poland, Sir Keir and Tusk discussed defence, energy security, climate and illegal migration in Europe, the prime minister told a news conference.
The prime minister condemned the lack of consistency when people use the phrase “never again”, as people rightly condemn the persecution of Jewish people during World War Two, but fail to call out antisemitism in other circumstances. “But where is never again, when we see the poison of antisemitism rising around the world in aftermath of October 7?” Sir Keir asked.
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