The snow lay in drifts over the railway lines at Auschwitz, when Keir Starmer went to pay his respects last week. His wife, Victoria, the granddaughter of Polish Jews who fled to sanctuary in England, stood beside him in the biting cold looking out over the tracks that once ferried unimaginable numbers of people to their deaths.
Afterwards, the prime minister talked about the relics of the dead discovered when the concentration camp was liberated: the piles of shoes, many in children’s sizes, and the suitcases hurriedly packed by people forced from their homes. What he had seen would stay with him, he said. It was “the ultimate warning … of where prejudice can lead”.
