Pence, Kushner visit Auschwitz memorial

WARSAW, Poland — U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited the memorial site of Auschwitz on Friday along with the Polish president and Jared Kushner, the son-inlaw of President Donald Trump.

It was the first visit for Pence, a conservative Christian, to the site where German forces murdered 1.1 million people, most of them Jews but also Poles, Roma and others, during the Nazis’ occupation of Eastern Europe during World War II.

Pence and his wife, Karen, were joined by Polish President Andrzej Duda and first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda.

“It seems to me to be a scene of unspeakable tragedy, reminding us what tyranny is capable of,” Pence said hours later during an event Friday evening on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

“I traveled in our delegation with people who had family members who had been at Auschwitz — some had survived, some not. But to walk with them and think that two generations ago their forebears came there in box carts and that we would arrive in a motorcade in a free Poland and a Europe restored to freedom from tyranny is an extraordinary experience for us, and I’ll carry it with me the rest of our lives,” Pence said.

Pence toured an exhibition hall that includes human hair and personal belongings of the victims before a wreath-laying at the Death Wall in a courtyard where prisoners were executed.

The second part of the visit took them to the nearby satellite camp of Birkenau, the site of the murder of Jews from across Europe.

The couples also placed candles at a memorial to the Holocaust victims.