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(CNN) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Auschwitz on her first visit to the former Nazi concentration camp in 14 years as leader.
Merkel's trip to Poland on December 6 came in the midst of growing anti-Semitism in Germany, and is considered an important gesture in the fight against this scourge. In October, an armed man in the city of Halle killed two people while attempting to storm a synagogue in Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
A German government spokesman said Merkel traveled to Auschwitz to "commemorate the victims of National Socialist crimes and remember Germany's eternal responsibility for the Shoah."
According to the official schedule, the chancellor will keep a minute of silence on the so-called Black Wall in the main Auschwitz camp, where thousands of prisoners were shot dead.
Then he will visit the Birkenau extermination camp, where he will give a speech and place a wreath of flowers. Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, President Andrzej Duda and Auschwitz Survivor Bogdan Stanislaw will accompany her.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Prime Minister of Poland, Maeusz Morawiecki, and the director of the Piotr Cywinski Museum, walk through the door "Arbeit Macht Frei" in the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland, on 6 December 2019. (REUTERS / Kacper Pempel)
How many German leaders have gone to Auschwitz?
Merkel is only the third chancellor in Germany to visit the site of the death camp, which operated in Nazi-occupied Poland. Helmut Schmidt was the first to go in 1977, followed by Helmut Kohl in 1989 and 1995.
Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, who heads the Research Center on anti-Semitism at the Technical University of Berlin, said a visit by a German leader to Auschwitz remains "a very important event."
"It's a statement," he said. "Angela Merkel is very aware of what she is doing, these are her last years in office and it is important that she go."
Marie-Sophie Adeoso of the Anne Frank Educational Center in Frankfurt added that Merkel's visit is very necessary. "I find it surprising that in almost 25 years, no German chancellor has visited Auschwitz," he said.
"It's something to do ... anti-Semitism is real in Germany today and it is [important] to keep reminding us of the historical legacy we carry as Germans."
Why has it taken so long?
While it will be his first visit to Auschwitz, Merkel has visited several Holocaust memorial sites in the past, including the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem.
"It's always a matter of where you go when you want to make this kind of symbolic memory and Angela Merkel went to Yad Vashem several times to do this, that's probably one of the reasons, I think, why she hasn't been to Auschwitz yet" said Magnus Brechtken, deputy director of the Leibniz Institute of Contemporary History.
Merkel visited Israel several times and in 2014 she received the highest civil award in the country for her "fight against anti-Semitism and racism, particularly through education."
In 2009, he accompanied President Barack Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to the site of the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald, near Weimar, in central Germany.
In 2013, she was criticized after visiting the Dachau concentration camp during an election campaign.
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Merkel, former US president Barack Obama, and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel pay their respects during a visit to the former Buchenwald concentration camp in 2009. (MANDEL NGAN / AFP via Getty Images)
Why is it still so important?
Earlier this year, a senior government official warned German Jews not to use traditional kipa in public settings due to security concerns following the rise of anti-Semitic attacks.
Merkel is the third German chancellor to visit Auschwitz. (Photo: Markus Schreiber)
In a speech in which he introduced government measures to combat right-wing extremism and hate crime in October, Merkel referred to statistics from the European Agency for Fundamental Rights, which said 89% of Jews interviewed in Germany think That anti-Semitism is growing.
According to her, the country must face anti-Semitism and said that the Holocaust was possible because "a large majority of the German population [was] looking the other way."
His visit to Auschwitz is another important gesture in the fight.
"After the attempted mass murder of Jews in Halle, everything that underlines the determination of German authorities to combat anti-Semitism in a practical and symbolic manner should be done whenever they can," Wolf Kaiser told CNN in an email. historian and member of the German delegation in the International Alliance for the Holocaust Remembrance.
How are leaders invited to Auschwitz?
Pawel Sawicki, spokesman for the Auschwitz Memorial, said the museum does not invite state leaders to visit the site. This also applies to important events, such as the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp in January 2020.
"The museum ... did not invite any politician as an individual," said Sawicki, adding that the monument informs the states of the European Union and other countries that donate to the museum that the anniversary will be celebrated.
"If you want to participate, we expect information about your own state delegations," said Sawicki, who says he doesn't remember that the museum has denied an official visit.
Sawicki said the invitation to Merkel came from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which manages the endowment fund for the preservation of the monument and celebrates its tenth anniversary. Germany is the largest donor of the foundation.
What does the extreme right say about it?
Germany has seen a series of electoral gains from the far-right AfD party, whose leaders in the past questioned Germany's emphasis on the memory of the Holocaust.
In a recent election in the state of Thuringia, in eastern Germany, AfD doubled its participation in the vote. The party is led locally by Björn Höcke, a politician who previously called the Berlin Holocaust monument a "shame monument".
Brechtken said the motivation behind statements like that is clear. "There is a great deal of knowledge, research, public memory and there are certain groups represented in AfD that want to get rid of this."
“I would say that most people understand that a society that has been self-critical in the way it manages its past is also better able to deal with problems and be more alert if there are threats and challenges… those challenges, [go] from populist movements to anti-Semitic movements and extremist movements, ”he said.
"That's why [Merkel] went, she represents the majority."
Angela MerkelAuschwitz
