Merkel visits Auschwitz for the first time in her 14 years as German chancellor
German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a symbolic visit to the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz on Friday, for the first time in her 14 years as premier. She is expected to give a speech at a ceremony, which Merkel is attending alongside Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and camp survivors, and pause for a minute’s silence at the “Black Wall” where Nazi SS officers carried out executions by firing squad.
Nazi Germany executed more than 1.1 million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Holocaust, the vast majority of whom were Jews. The gas chambers at the site near Krakow, Poland, were key in the Nazi campaign to wipe out Europe’s Jewish population. More than 6 million Jews were killed.
Merkel’s trip, the first by a German chancellor in almost a quarter-century, comes just two months after a deadly shooting at a synagogue in Halle, and as Germany once again grapples with rising anti-Semitism. Given Merkel’s “very clear attitude” toward the crimes of the Nazis, it should not be a cause for criticism that she has not made an official visit to the site until now.