OSWIECIM, Poland — Movie icon Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the location of the Auschwitz Nazi loss of life camp on Wednesday, assembly a Holocaust survivor and the son of Holocaust survivors and saying it’s time to “terminate” hatred.
The “Terminator” actor and former California governor considered the barracks, watchtowers and stays of gasoline chambers that endure as proof of the German extermination of Jews and others throughout World Warfare II.
He additionally met with a girl who as a 3-year-old baby was subjected to experiments by the infamous Nazi physician Josef Mengele.
“This can be a story that has to remain alive, it is a story that now we have to inform over and over,” he mentioned after his go to to the location of the loss of life camp, talking in a former synagogue that now’s house to the Auschwitz Jewish Heart Basis.
He stood alongside Simon Bergson, the muse’s chairman, who was born after the conflict to Auschwitz survivors, and talked about his circle of relatives historical past.
“I used to be the son of a person who fought within the Nazi conflict and was a soldier,” the 75-year-old Schwarzenegger mentioned in Oswiecim, the city the place the Auschwitz website is situated.
PHOTOS: Schwarzenegger visits Auschwitz in message towards hatred
He mentioned he and Bergson, who’re shut in age, had been united of their work.
“Let’s struggle prejudice collectively and let’s simply terminate it as soon as and for all,” Schwarzenegger mentioned.
Bergson added: “Arnold and I reside proof that inside one technology hatred could be shifted totally. Governor, thanks for becoming a member of us right here at the moment.”
His go to to the location in southern Poland, which was below German occupation throughout WWII, was his first and got here as a part of his work with the Auschwitz Jewish Heart Basis, whose mission is to struggle hatred by way of schooling.
He obtained the muse’s inaugural “Preventing Hatred” award in June for his anti-hatred stance on social media. He mentioned he couldn’t attend in particular person then as a result of he was filming a brand new motion collection in Canada and was in a “COVID bubble.”
He vowed that Wednesday’s go to wouldn’t be his final.
“I’ll be again,” he mentioned, utilizing a well-known line from “The Terminator.”
Schwarzenegger, who’s initially from Austria, has spoken overtly previously about his father, Gustav Schwarzenegger, being a Nazi soldier throughout the conflict.
He advised Russians in a video posted on social media in March that they had been being lied to concerning the conflict in Ukraine and accused President Vladimir Putin of sacrificing Russian troopers to his personal ambitions.
In that video he introduced up painful recollections about how his personal father was lied to as he fought, and the way he returned to Austria a damaged man, bodily and emotionally, after being wounded at Leningrad.
Historians estimate that round 1.1 million folks had been killed at Auschwitz throughout the conflict. Round 1 million of them had been Jews. Some 75,000 Poles had been killed there, in addition to Roma, Russian prisoners of conflict and others.
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Gera reported from Warsaw.