Keir Starmer makes 'utterly harrowing' visit to Auschwitz with wife Victoria
Share:
Keir Starmer has said the horrors of Auschwitz will "stay with me for the rest of my life" as he visited the Nazi death camp for the first time. The Prime Minister said nothing could have prepared him for the "sheer horror" of the place and his determination to stamp out the "poison" of anti-Semitism had been strengthened further by the harrowing visit.
He was accompanied by his wife Victoria, whose father came from a Polish-Jewish that emigrated to Britain before the Second World War. The couple laid a wreath, with a note that read: "In honour of those so brutally murdered in this place. We will never forget.".
More than 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, including around 960,000 Jews. Those not killed in gas chambers died through starvation, disease, execution, brutal beatings or medical experiments. Speaking after his visit, Mr Starmer 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.
“My visit today has also shown me more clearly than ever before, how this was not the evil deeds of a few bad individuals. It took a collective endeavour by thousands of ordinary people who each played their part in constructing this whole industry of death.
