Angela Merkel will be the third in her role to tour the extermination camp • International Auschwitz Commission: "Important Solidarity in a Time of Anti-Semitic Insults"

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel // Photo Archive: Reuters

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in Poland this Friday. For the first time in her 14 years as chancellor. In doing so, Merkel will become the third German chancellor who does.

Before her were Helmut Schmidt, who visited in 1977, and Helmut Kohl, who visited in 1989 and 1995.

Christophe Hubner, vice chairman of the International Auschwitz Commission, sees the visit as symbolic.

Auschwitz camp // Photo archive: IP

At the same time, Federal states in Germany are expected to approve a € 60 million donation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which marks 10 years of its founding. Merkel was invited to the fund's request and accepted.

Merkel, accompanied by the Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Moravitsky and a survivor of the camp. Her visit will begin by walking through the camp's notorious gate, followed by a minute silence near the "wall of death" where thousands of prisoners were shot. Later you will bear things.