The memorial in Auschwitz reminds us of the blind hatred and cruelty that fuels the war in Ukraine

When I drove back to England from Moscow in February 2019 at the end of my four and a half year diplomatic posting to Russia, I stopped at Auschwitz. As I walked through the neatly laid out rows of buildings, and clambered over the shattered remnants of the gas chambers that the Nazis destroyed on their way out, I was deeply moved. Auschwitz serves as a vast and chilling reminder of the depths of human cruelty that can be reached at times of war.

During my time in Russia, I also visited Zmievskaya Balka, in Rostov on Don, a holocaust memorial site where the Nazis shot and gassed 27,000 innocent civilians by a ravine, over the space of a year, which I found equally moving.

Today, for the third year in a row, Russia was not be invited to the annual commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp. This followed a decision by the Director of the camp museum, keen to make a political statement following the outbreak of war in Ukraine. In the grander scheme, it fits within a now established pattern of cancelling Russia on the international stage.

This particular snub is made more significant because of Russia’s role in the liberation of Auschwitz. On 27 January 1945, soldiers of the Red Army’s 332^nd Rifle Division arrived at the Nazi concentration camp near the Polish town of Oświęcim or, to use the Germanic, Auschwitz. There, 7,000 emaciated prisoners, mostly older people and children too sick to walk, remained of the 1.3 million people who had passed through the gates, never to return.

One million completely innocent people – mostly Jews, but also communists, homosexuals and gypsies – died in gas chambers, perhaps the most heinous crime against humanity every committed in modern history.

Anyone who claims to be a diplomat should work night and day to prevent the possibility of this type of genocide or a loss of life from war on this scale ever happening, to people of any nationality, race or faith. It is totally reprehensible.

Events like the Auschwitz memorial offer a sombre reminder of the cost of unchecked hatred to humanity at a time of war.

Western powers that support Russia’s exclusion from the Auschwitz memorial, are willfully complicit in the continuance of a war in Ukraine by any estimation has already killed or injured more than one million people in that country.

Not only does this reek of the most unbelievable double standards. It raises questions about where cancellation sits as a tool of foreign policy.

Those aims have never been articulated, beyond the red-faced intention to impose an unspecified cost on Russia for actions with which western leaders don’t agree.

Excluding Russia from the Auschwitz memorial won’t minimise or reduce the loss of life in Ukraine from a war that could have ended in March 2022.

It will not help bring an end to the war or the start of a process of peace talks.

Nor will it cause internal political turmoil within Russia or undermine that country’s ability to fight, at a time when Ukraine is losing ground, and precious lives, every day.

There is no foreign policy benefit to the exclusion of Russia from memorial events such as this. Nor to Russia’s exclusion from international sports and cultural events.

The only purpose exclusion serves is to inflame already hard-wired feels of mutual animosity and hatred between Russia and Ukraine and between Russia and western nations.

I have seen first hand how British diplomacy has focused on the active exclusion of Russia from international events since at least 2014. This diplomatic cancellation prevents any possibility of direct dialogue with Russian leaders through bilateral meetings, commemorative events, or multilateral gatherings like the UN. The one exception to this is the UN Security Council, where British and American figures are forced to sit in the same room as their Russian counterparts.

Senior British and US political figures have refused to attend Russia’s Victory Day celebrations in Moscow – the anniversary of the end of World War II (or The Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia) – since 2014. In 2019, and at British instigation, Russia was excluded from major celebrations to mark the 75^th anniversary of Operation Overlord – also known as the D-Day invasion of Normandy by British, American and Canadian troops. These events started in the UK on 5 June 2019 with Her Late Majesty the Queen in attendance, with Royalty, Heads of State and Government.

The pre-war Normandy Format of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine was established at commemorative events to mark the 70^th anniversary of D-Day in France in 2014.

Memorials offer a chance for people to reflect on the mistakes of the past that led to the hideous evil of the Nazi deathcamps, or the futility of the millions of soldiers and civilians who have died too soon because of war.

More specifically, memorials offer an opportunity for people from opposing sides in prior conflicts to come together in a spirit of peace and reconciliation.

They offer a chance to remember and say, never again.

Not inviting Russia simply takes away another opportunity to discuss terrible events that are happening today, and say, no more fighting. No more death. And no more hatred.

From the comfort of our homes in the west, we are mercifully spared the harrowing effects of war in Ukraine. The US, UK and EU have succeeded in containing and maintaining the fighting to within the hermitically sealed borders of Ukraine, so death and despair doesn’t have to intrude too deeply on our middle class, affluent lives. Today, most European citizens carry on as if blind to the death or injury of over a million people in Europe.

Because our leaders have told us that Ukraine can ultimately win, and because there is a complete absence of free and independent journalism in the UK, we believe them.

On days like today, we share a sense of disgust that such depths of human cruelty could have been reached just eighty years ago in Poland.

Camps like Auschwitz represent the ultimate expression of primal hatred for the ‘other’ and for people who are different in any way.

The liberation of Auschwitz put an end to a vile period in history that we said we would never forget.

And yet millions of other people have died in wars since 1945.

Death and cruelty plays out daily today in Ukraine.

The blind cancellation of Russia is not driven by strategy or clear foreign policy goals. It is most of all a statement of hatred towards Russia by tinpot technocrats, in Brussels, London and Washington.

Yet empty hatred won’t end war in Ukraine or anywhere.

Hatred offers the way into wars, seldom out of them.

Hatred led to the heinous atrocity committed by Hamas of October 7 2023 and to genocidal actions of the Israeli state that followed in Gaza.

Wars are never started through human kindness and efforts by all sides to come together in a spirit of peace and mutual understanding.

The commemorations today in Auschwitz, attended by His Majesty King Charles and many other dignitaries, remind of of the need to embrace people who look, think, act and pray in different ways to ourselves. And to strive to see the good in everyone.

I pray as we remember the victims of the holocaust, we feel empowered to bring a swift end to the war in Ukraine, and to all wars happening now.