U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a congressional delegation Tuesday to the Auschwitz memorial site in Poland ahead of the 75th anniversary of the day Soviet troops liberated the sprawling World War II German Nazi death and concentration camp complex where an estimated 1.1 million people died.
At the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial, Pelosi laid a wreath at the reconstructed wall where several thousand prisoners were executed, most of them members of the Polish resistance. She also placed a memorial light at the monument to all of the camp's victims, the majority of whom were European Jews.
Elzbieta Witek, the speaker of the lower house of Poland's parliament, or Sejm, and Senate Speaker Tomasz Grodzki, accompanied their American peer. Pelosi and Grodzki were later to hold talks.
In this image provided by the US Consulate General in Krakow, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, center, and speakers of Poland's parliament lay wreaths at the executions Death Wall of the World War II Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau during a visit to the site of the former camp just days before the 75th anniversary of its 1945 liberation by the Soviet troops, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, in southern Poland, on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2020. (US Consulate General in Krakow via AP)
In a statement ahead of the trip, Pelosi said the purpose of her visit the Holocaust memorial site was to “reaffirm America's enduring commitment, our sacred pledge: Never again.”
“We must honor the memories of those murdered in this incomprehensible horror by maintaining constant vigilance against hatred and persecution today," said the statement.
From Poland, Pelosi and the six-member bipartisan delegation plan to go to Israel to attend a conference marking the anniversary of the death camp's liberation.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, centre, and a Congressional delegation during a visit to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, Tuesday Jan. 21, 2020. At the memorial site in southern Poland, Pelosi laid a wreath at the Auschwitz Death Wall where inmates were executed, ahead of the upcoming 75th anniversary of its liberation by Soviet troops. (TVN via AP)
From 1940-45, some 1.1 million people, mostly Jews from across Europe, but also Poles, Roma and Russian prisoners of war, were shot to death, killed in gas chambers, and died of starvation or other mistreatment at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The Red Army liberated the camp on Jan. 27, 1945, an event now observed annually as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. by the Red Army.