David Miliband has thanked Poles for saving his Jewish mother’s life during the Holocaust, an act to which he owes his life.

"My mother was born here, her life was saved by those who risked theirs sheltering her from Nazi oppression," the Foreign Secretary said on an official visit to Poland yesterday.

Mr Miliband , who lost many family members to the Nazis, broke off from his official visit to pay respects at his family tomb in the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw after meeting museum officials at Brandt Square, the leafy park soon to be the location of Warsaw’s Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

"He’s gone to visit the family grave," Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, leader of the museum’s Development Team, said. "This is quite a homecoming."

Mr Miliband’s Jewish mother, Marion Kozak, is from Czestochowa in southern Poland, from where she emigrated in the 1950s. His paternal grandparents were also Polish Jews and emigrated after fighting for the Soviets in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-21.

When Hitler and Stalin occupied Poland in 1939, 80 members of Mr Miliband’s family were killed in the ensuing Holocaust, many of them at the German extermination camp of Auschwitz.

"I am fortunate in that it is my parents' generation that encountered fascism, not me," Mr Miliband said this month. "But when I say [the BNP] are the descendants of the people we fought in the 1940s, I am thinking of my Dad and my Mum and my relatives."

In a speech later in the day, Mr Miliband spoke of the "deep and real bonds" between Poland and the UK, and said he considers himself one of the million of Britons with Polish blood.

"Jews and Poles are becoming more aware of the bonds they have with one another," Ms Kirshenblatt-Gimblett said. "There is a stereotype among some Jews that Poles are and always have been anti-Semitic, which is nonsense."

The American historian Richard C. Lukas has estimated that up to 3 million Polish Gentiles were in some way involved in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust, which may have led to about 450,000 Jewish lives being saved. Israel has awarded more than 6,000 Righteous Among the Nations medals to Poles, the highest number given to any nation.

About 70 per cent of American Jews and 60 per cent of Israelis have roots in Poland, according to Tad Taube, of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture.

Poland is currently experiencing a "Jewish Revival", embodied in such events as the annual Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, which starts this weekend.

Representatives of the Foreign Secretary declined to add detail to his mother's war story.

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