Mike Pence visits Dachau Nazi concentration camp, but makes no formal comment
Dachau held more than 200,000 prisoners of which more than 30,000 died
Mike Pence visited former Nazi concentration camp on Sunday (19 February) and was joined by a survivor of the camp and other officials. The US vice president apparently did not speak publicly during his tour.
Pence was in Germany to speak at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday (18 February) and travelled to Brussels later on Sunday for meetings with Nato and EU officials.
During his Dachau visit which Pence made with his wife Karen and eldest daughter Charlotte, a tour of the former concentration camp, passing through the wrought iron gate bearing the inscription, "Arbeit macht frei", or "Work sets you free".
The group walked around the prison yard and inspected a map showing the camps around Germany and various Nazi-occupied countries in Europe.
The Pences also met with Karl Freller, director of the Foundation of Bavarian Memorial Sites as well as Abba Nabor, a Jewish Lithuanian, a survivor of the camp who now lives in Israel, according to ABC News
Dachau was built in 1933 near Munich holding more than 200,000 people, and was responsible for more than 30,000 deaths in its 12-year existence. In April 1945, US troops liberated the camp.
The vice president's visit to Dachau follows widespread condemnation over Donald Trump omitting to mention the Jews in his address for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
When questioned as to why there was no acknowledgement of the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said "we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered", with Holocaust victims including "priests, gypsies, people with mental or physical disabilities, communists, trade unionists, Jehovah's Witnesses, anarchists, Poles and other Slavic peoples, and resistance fighters".
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said the exclusion of the word "Jews" was "puzzling and troubling".
Controversy has dogged the US vice president in the past. As governor of Indiana, he signed the controversial Religious Restoration Act, giving businesses the right to discriminate against LGBT people on religious grounds.
Around 200 demonstrators marched to Pence's neighbourhood on the streets of suburban Maryland before his inauguration, and held a LGBT dance party outside his home.
"We are here tonight to send a clear message to Daddy Pence that we will not tolerate bigotry and hate in our country," organiser Firas Nasr told CNN on the night, citing Pence's past support of conversion therapy (use of pseudo-psychiatric methods to convince homosexuals to change their sexuality), anti-LGBT record and his opposition on same-sex marriage.
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