OSWIECIM, Poland — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany voiced a feeling of ‘‘deep shame” during her first-ever visit on Friday to the hallowed grounds of the former Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz -Birkenau, where Adolf Hitler’s regime murdered more than a million people.
Merkel noted that her visit comes amid rising anti-Semitism and historical revisionism and vowed that Germany would not tolerate anti-Semitism. She said Germany remains committed to remembering the crimes that it committed against Jews, Poles, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, and others.
Speaking to a gathering that included former Auschwitz inmates, she said she felt “deep shame in the face of the barbaric crimes committed by Germans here.”
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Merkel also brought a donation of $66.6 million to help conserve the physical remnants of the site .
Associated Press