British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer visit the Memorial And Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, a former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, in Oswiecim, Poland, Jan. 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Aleksandra Szmigiel

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland on Friday ahead of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the site, which is seen as a symbol of the horrors of the Holocaust.

Starmer was accompanied by his wife Victoria, who is Jewish, at the concentration camp where more than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were killed by the Nazis during World War Two.

“Nothing could prepare me for the sheer horror of what I have seen in this place,” Starmer said in a statement released by his office. “It is utterly harrowing.”

“The truth that I have seen here today will stay with me for the rest of my life. So too, will my determination to defend that truth, to fight the poison of antisemitism and hatred in all its forms.”

Britain’s King Charles is due to attend a commemoration service at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial on Jan. 27.

Starmer will meet his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, later to begin talks on a new treaty to work more closely together to “protect Europe from Russian aggression,” according to a British government statement on Thursday.

The pair are expected to hold a press conference in the evening.

Starmer made the visit to Poland on his way back from Ukraine, where he signed a 100-year partnership with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday, pledging to work with Ukraine and allies to offer the country robust security guarantees if a ceasefire is negotiated with Russia.