Sadiq Khan has stressed the vital need for Holocaust education in all schools as he attended the ceremony at Auschwitz on Monday marking the 80th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation.
Speaking to Jewish News, as he also visited the site of the Jewish ghetto in nearby Krakow to honour the memory of those who faced Nazi tyranny, the Mayor of London praised communal organisations working to ensure that the lesssons of the Shoah are not forgotten.
Singling out the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for their continued work in this field, Khan said had never been more important that school kids “know the real version of history” and build “a resilience to lies and distortion.”
The mayor said it was a sad state of affairs that extremists on both left and right political wings enjoy a “coalescence around lies, misinformation, distortion” in relation to the Holocaust.
“It is vital every child learns about the Holocaust in a proper, considered way, ” said Khan, praising the UK government’s pledge to ensure every child at school in this country is taught the history of that period.
“So when they see these short clips on Tik Tok, when they see nonsense on social media, they know it’s nonsense,” he added.
“The best antidote to false information on social media is for those of us that have been here, met Holocaust survivors, met those whose parents perished, to tell the story,” Khan said.
“And I tell you this, in London, we’ve got the biggest Jewish community in the country, almost 150,000 Londoners who are Jewish, who have a parent, a grandparent, a sibling, an uncle an auntie who perished in the Holocaust, or who survived the Holocaust.”
He praised Keir Starmer and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s push to ensure all schools in the UK had the resources to offer education on the Shoah to every pupil.
The London mayor has repeatedly made it his duty to attend Holocaust commemorations either in this country, or abroad since he was first elected.
But he said it “pained him” to realise that at Monday’s ceremony, at which 50 survivors were due to attend “this may be the last milestone of commemoration where we have survivors, and that’s why it’s so so important for them to be able to tell their stories.”
Recalling previous visits to Aushwitz and Krakow he said: “The reality when you come to Poland, you can see the wall of the Krakow ghetto, you can see the train lines that were built to take the cargo, and when I say cargo I mean people.
“You can see for yourself where the track ended – the track ended in the concentration camp.
“You can see for yourself the chimneys, where people are literally burnt to death.
You can see for yourself the possessions, the shoes, the glasses, the hair of those who perish.
“That’s why it’s really important for me to be here, not just because I’m here to commemorate the atrocity – but also I can bear witness to what happened more than 80 years ago, and also the liberation.”
Khan said that it would fall on all who visited to continue to tell the story of what happened, as the number of survivors dwindled.
“I think it is the responsibility of non-Jewish people as well, because we can’t leave it just to Jewish people to tell the story.
“Everyone has a responsibility to tell the story.”
The mayor accepted that the past 16 months of conflict in Gaza had impacted on relations between Jewish and Muslim Londoners.
But he said “discord is a recipe for disaster” and spoke of his hope that the ceasefire and hostage and prisoner releases could bring an end to the deadly conflict in Gaza, and ease divisions in this country.
“We’ve got so much in common – Kosher and Halal, so much in common in terms of suffering discrimination, so much in common in terms of humanity,” added Khan, who stressed than many inter-communal friendships continue to remain intact.
