U.S. Vice President JD Vance will visit the Dachau concentration camp memorial in Germany on Thursday, making a stop at one of the most powerful symbols of the Holocaust amid a burst of global antisemitism.
Vance’s stop on his first overseas trip comes ahead of the annual Munich Security Conference, where he will discuss President Donald Trump’s push to end the three-year-old Russo-Ukrainian War.
Dachau was established about 10 miles northwest of Munich in March 1933— shortly after Hitler came to power—and was the first Nazi concentration camp. While the first prisoners interned at the camp were known political enemies of the Nazi regime, it was increasingly used to incarcerate Jews. More than 200,000 people passed through the camp, and tens of thousands died there in horrific conditions until U.S. troops liberated it in April 1945.
The vice president’s wife, Usha, is expected to accompany him on the visit to Dachau, which is part of a five-day visit to France and Germany.
Joe Biden visited Dachau with his granddaughter in 2015, when he was vice president, and has made the trip with other children and grandchildren as well, while U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited Dachau in 2017.
