Angela Merkel became Tuesday the first active German Chancellor to visit the former Nazi death camp in Dachau, located near Munich, where the Nazis killed more than 41,000 people before US troops liberated it in April 1945.
During the visit, she laid a wreath at the camp's memorial, toured the museum and met with Holocaust survivors.
"This is a very significant moment for me," she declared. "The memory of these fates fills me with deep sadness and shame."
‘’The name Dachau is tragically famous as it serves as a model for the concentration camps,’’ the chancellor said.
The Nazis opened Dachau in March 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power, to house opponents of the Third Reich and later those deemed undesirable by the Nazis, such as Jews, homosexuals, Roma, prisoners of war and political opponents.
The SS imprisoned more than 200,000 people at Dachau, which became a model for other concentration camps built by the Nazis during their 12 years in power.
Merkel was accompanied on her visit by 93-year-old Max Mannheimer, one of the survivors of the camp and the president of the committee of former prisoners. Six members of Mannheimer's family died during the Holocaust.
"It is a great honor and an historic event for us survivors," said Mannheimer, who had long lobbied for the chancellor to visit the camp. He said he saw her decision as a "signal of respect for the former detainees."
Merkel said she was concerned about ongoing extreme-right in Germany and urged people to show more courage in the fight against neo-Nazi movements.
"We must never allow such ideas to have a place in our democratic Europe," Merkel said.
She stressed there was a "common European consensus" to battle right-wing extremist tendencies in the member states, adding that "we must never accept that such lines of thought have a place in our democratic Europe."
Merkel's visit to Dachau comes less than a week after she officially launched her election campaign for a third term as chancellor.
Germany's parliamentary elections are set to be held on September 22.