Visit To Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp

Visit To Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp

I have just returned from my first visit to Poland as Prime Minister and while there I visited Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi concentration camp.

Now that I have done so, I have a new understanding of the burden of memory. Distance from the Holocaust in time and geography does not lessen but increase our obligation to remember and to resist.

The murder of six million Jews and countless Roma, Poles and other Eastern Europeans, gay men and lesbians, trade unionists, disabled people and political and religious opponents of the Nazis is a terrible indictment not only of the absolute evil of the perpetrators, but of the moral blindness of all those who looked aside.

That is why we can never pass by on the other side when we see another suffer - each and every instance of injustice and persecution and discrimination calls on us not to stand by, but to stand up.

British people stood up against the evils of fascism with a bravery and resilience unsurpassed in other nations and I am incredibly proud to announce today a new award of recognition for the extraordinary acts of courage of a number of British citizens who rescued others from the evils of the Holocaust.

Their families and the Holocaust Educational Trust have been campaigning to bring these British Holocaust heroes to public attention and I am delighted that we will be able to honour their sacrifice and service in this way.

ENDS

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