WARSAW, Poland (AP) — 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 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 a statement ahead of the trip, Pelosi said the purpose of her visit to the Holocaust memorial site was to “reaffirm America’s enduring commitment, our sacred pledge: Never again.”
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.
