Here is my look at the speech at the 2005 Auschwitz commemoration by Vladimir Putin:

I was there as British Ambassador to Poland, standing behind the rows of world leaders.

It was dark and cold: a painful minus 8 degrees C. We lucky lesser VIPs at the back could move around a bit to try to stay warm. The leaders themselves had to sit still for some two hours, and suffered accordingly. Our minds all wandered to what it must have been like for the tens of thousands of doomed Auschwitz inmates in these dismal freezing conditions. Some of the remaining Auschwitz survivors were there too, sitting well wrapped up and lost in the agony of their memories.

President Putin did not look dismayed by the cold. He rose to give his speech. Alas he used it to press ill-disguised post-Soviet hardline talking-points:

Auschwitz does not just appeal to our memory, it appeals to our reason. Here, on this earth, soaked in blood and the ashes of victims of Nazism, we can truly see the future that fascism was preparing for Europe …

And here, on this tortured earth, we must say clearly and simply: any attempts to rewrite history, to put victims and executioners, liberators and occupiers on the same level, are immoral and incompatible with the thinking of people who consider themselves Europeans.

His message here? It’s immoral to compare Nazi concentration camps with Soviet gulags, or Nazism with Communism. Some of us, of course, believe that it’s immoral not to compare them.

Speeches on such occasions are all about tone. Words alone in such a bleak, freezing, appalling setting don’t help much. They’ve all been said.

How to approach this task? Easy:

If you are invited to make a short keynote speech at Auschwitz, remember one thing if you want to hit just the right tone in front of shivering elderly Auschwitz survivors. Once again, it’s never about you.

While we are on the subject of the Soviet ‘liberation’ of Auschwitz, let’s spare a moment to remember the staggering life of Witold Pilecki: “When God created the human being, God had in mind that we should all be like Captain Witold Pilecki, of blessed memory.” He volunteered to enter Auschwitz as a prisoner to help send reports back to the Allies.

A hero beyond any belief. So he was murdered by the Polish/Stalin Communists in 1948.