Boris Johnson urges public to ‘call out and stamp out’ antisemitism where they see it during first Auschwitz visit

Johnson was speaking at a ceremony organised by the European Jewish Association (EJA) as part of its annual two-day delegation in Poland attended by politicians from across Europe.

He went on to call for action amid the rising tide of antisemitism across the West, and warned of the dangers of turning a blind eye to antisemitic sentiment when it is masked as criticism of Israel.

“When Jews in Western Europe are being berated just for how they look or dress, when synagogues are being vandalised and Jewish worshippers killed, when unmistakably anti-Jewish sentiment is spilling from the lips of people who normally think of themselves as kind and decent, and when keffiyeh-wearing mobs of middle-class intellectuals are taking to the streets of Western capitals to chant that Israel must be wiped out, from the river to the sea; we are being warned again, as humanity has been warned in the past,” he said. 

[Missing Credit]

Johnson, who was visiting Auschwitz for the first time, also chastised “foolish” people who think “this outbreak of prejudice and hatred will be confined to Jews”.

He said: “Look at history, because if people are capable of believing the odious and preposterous lie, that persecution of one minority will somehow fix the problems of society or the economy, then there is no limit to the lies they will believe. All the suffering they will inflict on those they have been persuaded to see as the outsider, the other, the stranger.”

He went on: “We cannot be so arrogant or so conceited as to believe that it cannot happen again. It can happen again, because it did happen again [on October 7], and that is why, in the name of all those who died and who suffered here, in the name of the all the brilliant lives of innocent men, women and children that were snuffed out for the sake of a perverted ideology and prejudice we must – all of us, everyone – hear the warnings from the past on our streets of our cities, and resolve to do everything in our power to ensure that this place, this memorial is enough for us and for our children to defeat the awful cycle of history”.

He concluded by urging everyone to “call out antisemitism now wherever you see it … and stamp it out.”