German Chancellor Merkel becomes first head of the federal government to officially visit Dachau

On 20 August, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the site of the former concentration camp at Dachau, not far from the Bavarian capital of Munich, and said there that young people must know what kind of wrongdoing once came out of Germany. She is the first head of the federal government ever to visit the monument.

"This is an extraordinary moment for me," Merkel said. Her visit to Dachau included a meeting with Holocaust survivors. "Remembering people’s fates here fills me with deep shame and sorrow."

The chancellor was invited to the former camp at the invitation of Max Mannheimer, who is himself a Holocaust survivor. He and Merkel jointly laid a wreath at the monument to the victims of Nazi despotism there. 

Merkel’s trip to the former concentration camp has sparked a wide-ranging discussion in Germany, as the chancellor visited the site between campaigning in Erlangen near Nuremberg and another election rally in the town of Dachau. Some consider it indecorous for her to have visited the site in that context.

Steffen Seibert, the chancellor’s spokesperson, has rejected that criticism. He says Mannheimer did not invite Merkel to visit the site with him until he learned she was planning to campaign in the town of Dachau.

Between 1933 and 1945, more than 200 000 people were imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp, more than 41 000 of whom died there. At first the camp was only for political prisoners, but later people were imprisoned there for being gay, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jewish, or Roma.