Pope Francis pays tribute to victims of Auschwitz Nazi death camp

Pope Francis visited Friday the site of the former Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, where he asked for God’s mercy and forgiveness for the human cruelty that led to deaths of over one million mainly Jewish people.

The Pope started his tour of the Auschwitz camp, created by the Nazi regime in 1940, under the infamous “Arbeit macht frei” (Work sets you free) iron sign that marks the entrance to the now museum and memorial.

“Dear God, have mercy on your people. Dear God, forgive us for such cruelty,” Pope Francis wrote in Spanish in the memorial book at the end of his tour.

He arrived in the early morning to meet with the museum director, and was taken to see Block 11, where prisoners used to be locked in underground cells to die of hunger and thirst.

Pope Francis conducted a prayer in the courtyard where the Polish priest Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to be executed in the place of a parent who had been condemned to death.

For his actions, the Polish priest was beatified by Pope Paul VI in 1971 and canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982.

In a tour otherwise conducted in silence, the Pope met and talked with several Auschwitz survivors, as well as holders of the Righteous Among the Nations title, given by the State of Israel to those who helped Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Pope Francis lit an oil lamp at the “death wall,” between prison Blocks 10 and 11, to commemorate the many thousands of prisoners who were executed there by Nazi firing squads.

The Pope also visited the socalled “Auschwitz 2” Birkenau camp later on Friday, which was constructed under orders of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as part of his “final solution” in his objective to exterminate all Jewish people in Europe.

Pope Francis arrived on Wednesday in Poland, in his first official visit to the country, to take part in the Krakow 2016 World Youth Day celebrations and is expected to stay until July 31.