Angela Merkel in Auschwitz: 'I am filled with deep shame'

For the first time during her 14-year tenure as chancellor, Angela Merkel paid a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial — the site of the largest death camp run by Nazi Germany. She was accompanied by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and museum director Piotr Cywinski as well as leaders of Jewish organizations.

Merkel began the visit by walking through the infamous gate at the entrance to the camp, emblazoned with the Nazi slogan: "Arbeit macht frei" (Work will set you free). Merkel is only the third German chancellor to ever visit the camp. Over a million Jews, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma and anti-Nazi fighters.

The visit coincides with the 10th anniversary of the creation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. Merkel announced Germany is donating €60 million ($66 million) to the foundation. In her remarks, she noted: "Nothing we do can bring back the people who were murdered here. This is a story that needs to be told time and time again ... to ensure these crimes are not repeated."

Standing alongside Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki, Merkel laid a wreath at the Death Wall execution site at Auschwitz. Thousands of people were shot by SS soldiers at the site, the majority of whom were Polish political prisoners. She later listened to testimony from Holocaust survivors who recalled the horrors they experienced while imprisoned at the camp.

"I am filled with a deep shame in the face of the crimes that were committed here by Germany," Merkel said in a speech at the site. The visit comes amid a new wave of anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany, with the chancellor vowing: "We will not tolerate any form of anti-Semitism."