A campaign video posted by UK Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer ignited controversy over its use of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin as its backdrop without referencing it.
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The video showed Starmer speaking with prominent left-wing politicians in Germany, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, making the case that the UK could benefit from having the Left in power just like Germany is supposedly in better shape thanks to Olaf's socialist policies as the head of the ruling party SPD.
Video: Twitter
In the minute-long video, Starmer walks in Berlin, including near the parliament and its nearby Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and at one point the video shows him touring the memorial and speaking of the war in Ukraine. He also says in that part of the video that his party should "follow in the footsteps of the SPD."
This apparent politicization of the memorial, struck many in Britain as odd, especially in light of Starmer being a pro-Israeli leader and a polar opposite of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, whose tenure was marred by many cases of antisemitism within Labour, which led to scathing reports and contributed to his ultimate ouster.
Joe Glasman, head of political and government investigations at the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: "It is a matter of decency and long-established convention in Germany that you never stoop to using the Berlin Holocaust Memorial as some kind of a prop. But to incorporate the Memorial as the backdrop for a political clip that does not even mention the Holocaust is an insult."
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