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(AP) — U.S. Vice President JD Vance visited the Dachau concentration camp memorial on Thursday, walking the solemn halls with a group that included a Holocaust survivor once held at the site of so much suffering and mass murder and experiencing firsthand a powerful symbol of World War II.
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The tour came amid an ongoing war in Europe in which Vance is serving as a key conduit for the Trump administration. The vice president on Friday has critical talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the three-year Russia-Ukraine conflict.
A light rain and sleet mix fell as the vice president and his wife, Usha Vance, spoke to a group of dignitaries near one of the concentration camp’s gates. The couple then listened intently to details about the camp from its director and other museum officials. Among those participating was from Abba Naor, a Holocaust survivor who was held at Dachau.
The second couple, holding hands, eventually moved inside and to a long concrete room in front a large map plotting concentration camps. The area was Dachau’s administrative room.
They next saw the intake room, where those interred arrived at the camp. It included a series of museum cases filled with personal belongings of those who were held there, like watches and government ID cards.
🚨 US VP JD Vance visited the Dachau concentration camp in Germany today and read: Never again. Vance was accompanied on the visit by Holocaust survivor Abba Naor, 97, who was sent to Dachau when he was 13. Naor immigrated to Israel in 1946 to Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot. pic.twitter.com/v6XLfznp7n
— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) February 13, 2025
“That’s where you started?” Vance said to Naor.
Both Joe Biden, during the administration of President Barack Obama, and Mike Pence, in Trump’s first term, also visited the Dachau memorial as vice presidents.
Vance laid a wreath with a red, white and blue ribbon stenciled with “We remember” and “United States of America” embossed in gold lettering at a large sculpture known as the International Monument. Inaugurated in 1968, the monument was designed by Nandor Glid, who was persecuted as a Jew by the Nazis in his home country Yugoslavia and joined the resistance to Nazi occupation forces.
Dachau was established in 1933, the year Hitler took power, as one of the first concentration camps. More than 200,000 people from across Europe were held at the camp, and more than 40,000 prisoners died there in horrendous conditions. U.S. soldiers completed the liberation on April 29, 1945.
Vance, a Republican, is on a five-day visit to France and Germany, his first overseas travel since becoming vice president last month.
