UK PM Cameron pays respects in Auschwitz

British PM David Cameron at the entrance gate to the Nazi german concentration camp of Auschwitz. Photo: PAP/Jacek Bednarczyk

Cameron visited both the original concentration camp of Auschwitz as well as Auschwitz-Birkenau, lighting a candle at a monument dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust.

David Cameron wrote in a book of remembrance that Auschwitz was “this place where the darkest chapter of human history happened,” adding that the world must “never forget” the attrocities which took place there.

In citing Nobel peace prize winner Elie Wiesel, who was interred at the camp, Cameron said that “to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time”

Cameron was accompanied by Piotr Cywinski, Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on his visit, which comes after a commission was set up in the UK earlier this year to examine how the the country remembes the Holocaust.

The commission wants to a create a “permanent and fitting memorial” to the Nazi victims, the BBC reports, adding that the British PM said that proposals would be made public next month to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

The last British PM to visit Auschwitz was Cameron’s predecessor, Gordon Brown, who came in 2009. Before then, Speaker of the House of Commons Michael J. Martin visited in 2004, as well as the then Chief Rabbi of the UK, Jonathan Sacks and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams in 2008. (jb)

Source: PAP/BBC