German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday crossed the gates of the former Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland for the first time in her 14 years as leader, promising to battle a new wave of anti-Semitism.
Merkel is only the third German chancellor ever to visit the Nazi camp where 1 million Jews were killed between 1940 and 1945, and which has come to symbolize the Holocaust as a whole.
Her trip, which comes ahead of the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945, is being seen as an important political message.
Photo: Reuters
On the eve of her visit, 65-year-old Merkel said that “the fight against anti-Semitism and against all forms of hate” was a priority for her government.
She also hailed a new 60 million euros (US$66.6 million) donation for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation that was approved by Germany’s federal states on Thursday.
Merkel began her visit by walking under the Nazi slogan Arbeit macht frei (“Work will set you free”) that still hangs over the gates of the camp.
She also held a minute’s silence by the Death Wall where thousands of prisoners were shot dead and visited the site of a gas chamber and a crematorium.
Merkel’s visit “is a particularly important signal of attention and solidarity at a time when Auschwitz survivors are victims of anti-Semitic insults and hate-filled e-mails,” Auschwitz International Committee deputy chairman Christoph Heubner said.
Merkel was accompanied during the visit by a survivor of the camp, 87-year-old Bogdan Stanislaw Bartnikowski, as well as Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Ronald Lauder, head of the World Jewish Congress, also took part in the visit.
In total, 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, including non-Jewish Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma and anti-Nazis.
Many were killed the same day they arrived at the camp.
Merkel was following in the footsteps of former German chancellors Helmut Schmidt, who visited in 1977, and Helmut Kohl, who visited in 1989 and 1995.
She has already visited several of the former camps in Germany over many years and has been to Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center five times.
In 2008, she became the first German chancellor to address the Israeli parliament. In that speech, she spoke of the “shame” that Germans still feel.
Merkel has called the Holocaust a “break with civilization,” and has voiced concern about the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany.
Her visit comes two months after an attack aimed at a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle in which two people were killed — part of a growing trend.
German police data show that anti-Semitic offenses rose by almost 10 percent last year from the previous year to 1,646 cases — the highest level in a decade.
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