She made a short, emotional speech saying the camp "fills me with deep sadness and shame" and said it was a warning of the dangers of indifference³.

 

The visit took place during Mrs Merkel's election campaign and was followed by a rally in a beer tent. 

 

Political opponents called the combination "tasteless". 

 

Some 30,000 people died in Dachau before it was liberated⁴ by US soldiers on 29 April 1945.

 

It was the first camp to be built by the Nazis⁵ in March 1933. 

 

Mrs Merkel, who toured the remnants of the camp, said it stood for "a horrible and unprecedented⁶ chapter of our history".

 

"At the same time, this place is a constant warning: how did Germany reach the point of taking away the right of people to live because of their origin, their religion... or their sexual orientation⁷?"

 

She said the "vast majority of Germans" had closed their eyes to what was going on, and said her visit was intended "to be a bridge from history to the present and into the future that we want to continue to build".

 

Max Mannheimer, the 93-year-old president of the Dachau camp committee, had long lobbied for Mrs Merkel to go to the camp, near Munich in southern Germany.

 

He hailed her decision as "historic" and a "signal of respect for the former detainees".

 

But a leader of the opposition⁸ Green party, Renate Kuenast, described Mrs Merkel's programme of the camp visit followed by an election rally as a "tasteless and outrageous⁹ combination".

 

"If you're serious about commemoration at such a place of horrors, then you don't pay such a visit during an election campaign," she told the daily Leipziger Volkszeitung.

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