Vice President JD Vance toured the Dachau concentration camp in Germany on Thursday ahead of the Munich Security Conference and a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy set for Friday.
Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, toured the site that has become a powerful symbol of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany against Jews and other minority groups during World War II.
“What happened here should never happen again,” Vance said to a group of dignitaries near the entrance to the camp.
“I’ve read a lot in books,” he added. “But being here, and seeing it up close in person, really drives home what unspeakable evil was committed and why we should be committed to ensuring that it never happens again.”
The pair, who toured the site alongside 96-year-old Abba Naor, a Holocaust survivor who was an inmate at Dachau, also laid a wreath with a red, white and blue ribbon at the base of the International Monument – a bronze sculpture that depicts humans entangled in barbed wire.
They then stopped at a wall that reads “Never again” in five different languages. In front of the wall sits an urn with the ashes of an unknown prisoner.
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More than 200,000 people were held at Dachau between 1933-1945 and experts believe that more than 40,000 people were killed there.
Vance is the latest top American official to visit the site. It was toured by President Joe Biden, both as vice president during the Obama administration and as commander in chief, as well as by Vice President Mike Pence during the first Trump administration.
“I really am really moved by this site,” Vance said. “It’s very important that it’s here, and it’s very important that those of us who are lucky enough to be alive and can walk around, can know what happened here and commit ourselves to do everything to prevent it from happening again.”
Vance’s five-day trip to Europe will also include his attendance of the Munich Security Conference, which begins Friday.
There he will meet with world leaders, including Zelenskyy, alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Vance and the Ukrainian president are expected to discuss President Donald Trump’s plans to end the three-year-long war.
