Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.
Senior Muslim leaders have joined the descendants of Holocaust survivors in prayer during a historic visit to Auschwitz.
The delegation was led by Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, the secretary general of the Saudi Arabia-funded Muslim World League, and is thought to be the most senior group of Islamic faith representatives to ever visit a Nazi death camp.
“To be here, among the children of Holocaust survivors and members of the Jewish and Islamic communities, is both a sacred duty and a profound honour,” Mr Al-Issa said during the ground-breaking visit.
“The unconscionable crimes to which we bear witness today are truly crimes against humanity. That is to say, a violation of us all, an affront to all of God’s children.”
The Muslim leaders stood side by side with figures from the oldest Jewish advocacy group in the United States, the American Jewish Committee, which had helped organise the trip.
1/16
80,000 shoes line a display case in Auschwitz I. The shoes of those who had been sent to their deaths were transported back to Germany for use of the Third Reich
Hannah Bills
2/16
Barracks for prisoners in the vast Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. Here slept as many as four per bunk, translating to around one thousand people per barracks. The barracks were never heated in winter, so the living space of inmates would have been the same temperature as outside.
Hannah Bills
3/16
Hannah Bills
4/16
Sign for the Auschwitz Museum on the snowy streets of Oswiecim, Poland
Hannah Bills
5/16
The Gateway to hell: The Nazi proclamation that work will set you free, displayed on the entrance gate of Auschwitz I
Hannah Bills
6/16
A disused watchtower, surveying a stark tree-lined street through Auschwitz I concentration camp
Hannah Bills
7/16
Stolen property of the Jews: Numerous spectacles, removed from the possession of their owners when they were selected to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz
Hannah Bills
8/16
A sign bearing a skull and crossbones barks an order to a person to stop beside the once-electrified fences which reinforced the Auschwitz I camp
Hannah Bills
9/16
The peace and the evil: Flower tributes line a section of wall which was used for individual and group executions
Hannah Bills
10/16
Life behind bars: Nazi traps set to hold the Third Reich’s ‘enemies’. In Auschwitz’s years of operation, there were around three hundred successful escapes. A common punishment for an escape attempt was death by starvation
Hannah Bills
11/16
Burying the evidence: Remains of one of the several Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers
Hannah Bills
12/16
Hannah Bills
13/16
The three-way railway track at the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. This was the first sight the new camp arrivals saw upon completion of their journey. Just beside the tracks, husbands and wives, sons and daughters and brothers and sisters were torn from each other. Most never saw their relatives again
Hannah Bills
14/16
A group of visitors move through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Viewed from the main entrance watchtower of Auschwitz-Birkenau
Hannah Bills
15/16
“The Final Solution”: The scale of the extermination efforts of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau can be seen by comparing the scale of the two figures at the far left of the image to the size of the figure to the left of the railway tracks’ three point split
Hannah Bills
16/16
Each cattle car would transport up to one hundred people, who could come from all over Europe, sometimes from as far away as Norway or Greece. Typically, people would have been loaded onto the trucks with around three days food supply. The journey to Auschwitz could sometimes take three weeks.
Hannah Bills
1/16
80,000 shoes line a display case in Auschwitz I. The shoes of those who had been sent to their deaths were transported back to Germany for use of the Third Reich
Hannah Bills
2/16
Barracks for prisoners in the vast Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. Here slept as many as four per bunk, translating to around one thousand people per barracks. The barracks were never heated in winter, so the living space of inmates would have been the same temperature as outside.
Hannah Bills
3/16
Hannah Bills
4/16
Sign for the Auschwitz Museum on the snowy streets of Oswiecim, Poland
Hannah Bills
5/16
The Gateway to hell: The Nazi proclamation that work will set you free, displayed on the entrance gate of Auschwitz I
Hannah Bills
6/16
A disused watchtower, surveying a stark tree-lined street through Auschwitz I concentration camp
Hannah Bills
7/16
Stolen property of the Jews: Numerous spectacles, removed from the possession of their owners when they were selected to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz
Hannah Bills
8/16
A sign bearing a skull and crossbones barks an order to a person to stop beside the once-electrified fences which reinforced the Auschwitz I camp
Hannah Bills
9/16
The peace and the evil: Flower tributes line a section of wall which was used for individual and group executions
Hannah Bills
10/16
Life behind bars: Nazi traps set to hold the Third Reich’s ‘enemies’. In Auschwitz’s years of operation, there were around three hundred successful escapes. A common punishment for an escape attempt was death by starvation
Hannah Bills
11/16
Burying the evidence: Remains of one of the several Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers
Hannah Bills
12/16
Hannah Bills
13/16
The three-way railway track at the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. This was the first sight the new camp arrivals saw upon completion of their journey. Just beside the tracks, husbands and wives, sons and daughters and brothers and sisters were torn from each other. Most never saw their relatives again
Hannah Bills
14/16
A group of visitors move through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Viewed from the main entrance watchtower of Auschwitz-Birkenau
Hannah Bills
15/16
“The Final Solution”: The scale of the extermination efforts of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau can be seen by comparing the scale of the two figures at the far left of the image to the size of the figure to the left of the railway tracks’ three point split
Hannah Bills
16/16
Each cattle car would transport up to one hundred people, who could come from all over Europe, sometimes from as far away as Norway or Greece. Typically, people would have been loaded onto the trucks with around three days food supply. The journey to Auschwitz could sometimes take three weeks.
Hannah Bills
At one point while touring the camp, dozens of those in the 62-strong Muslim delegation from 28 countries bowed their heads to the floor and prayed.
The visit came just days before international commemorations to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Red Army on 27 January 1945.
The network of concentration camps in Auschwitz, situated in southern Poland – then occupied by Germany during the Second World War – held 1.3 million people, of whom 1.1 million were killed.
Most of those who died in the camps were Jews, including 865,000 who were immediately gassed to death on their arrival.
David Harris from the American Jewish Committee said the trip led by Mr Al-Issa was “the most senior Islamic leadership delegation to ever visit Auschwitz or any Nazi German death camp”.
Among those who travelled from the US to the ceremony were children of Holocaust survivors.
In recent years, the Muslim World League has sought to promote a more moderate brand of Islam and build relationships with Jewish groups, in line with the modernisation programme launched by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The charity was founded by Saudi Arabia in 1962 and remains primarily funded by the oil-rich Gulf monarchy.