OSWIECIM, Poland: Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the site of the former German Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Poland on Wednesday, vowing to fight hatred and discrimination and keep the history of what happened alive. spent there between 1940 and 1945.
Austrian-born Schwarzenegger, 75, is the son of a Nazi Party member who served in the German military during World War II.
Former California Governor and Chairman of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation, Simon Bergson, son of Holocaust survivors, underscored how prejudice can be shattered within a generation.
“He (Bergson) was born after World War II into this wonderful Jewish family and I was the son of a man who fought in the Nazi war and was a soldier,” he told reporters.
“A generation later – here we are…we are both fighting prejudice, hatred and discrimination.”
More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in the gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease at Auschwitz, which the Nazis set up in occupied Poland during World War II.
Schwarzenegger entered the camp through the main gate which bears the phrase “Arbeit macht frei”, or “Work sets you free”. He then visited the Auschwitz Memorial Museum exhibit and a crematorium.
He placed candles at the “Wall of Death”, where German soldiers shot many inmates, and at a monument to the victims in the Birkenau section of the camp.
During the visit, he also met Holocaust survivor Lidia Maksymowicz, who was detained in the camp when she was three years old.
“People like her can help us never stop telling this story about what happened here 80 years ago…it’s a story that needs to stay alive,” Schwarzenegger said.