Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday morning toured Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Germany, as part of his inaugural foreign trip to Europe.
Pence’s wife, Karen, and their daughter, Charlotte, were escorted around the barracks, crematorium and gas chamber on the grounds of the site, located in Upper Bavaria, Germany. Foundation of Bavarian Memorial Sites Director Karl Freller, site director Dr. Gabrielle Hammerman, and a Dachau survivor, Abba Naor, joined the family at the camp, which was established in 1933.
The Pences were silent for the majority of the tour and the couple held hands for a large portion of it.
Naor told the group about his life at the camp, recalling a normal meal was “a slice of bread.”
“If it was a miracle that we survived, I don’t know,” Naor said.
He recalled the morning “they came,” telling the Pences about the “strange faces we had never seen,” which may have been in reference to Japanese-American troops who liberated the prisoners.
The Pences paid tribute to the International Memorial, Jewish memorial and Catholic memorial on the grounds, placing a wreath on the first and stopping by the others.
Before leaving, the vice president and his family attended an hour-long service at the Church of Reconciliation, located at Dachau.
Pence spent Saturday at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
